Turing does volte face on cutting price of drug Daraprim

Turing Pharmaceuticals, which sparked fury two months ago by sharply increasing the price of a 62-year-old drug, said on Tuesday that it would not reduce the list price of that drug after all, despite strongly hinting earlier that it would do so.

But, it said, it would offer discounts of up to 50 per cent to hospitals and would take other measures to help patients afford the medicine.

Turing's chief executive, the former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, had said in interviews that Turing would cut the price of the drug, Daraprim. But he had never said by exactly how much, although at one point he suggested it might be by about 10 per cent.

In announcing its decision on Tuesday, Turing said it was not as important to cut the list price as to reduce the cost to hospitals, where most patients get their initial treatment.

''A drug's list price is not the primary factor in determining patient affordability and access,'' Nancy Retzlaff, Turing's chief commercial officer, said in a statement. ''A reduction in Daraprim's list price would not translate into a benefit to patients.''

The company pledged that no patient needing Daraprim would ever be denied access.

Some patient advocates and infectious disease doctors said the actions were not enough. Although most patients are initially treated in the hospital, they said, that typically is for several days, and then patients have to take the drug for weeks or months after they leave.

''This is, as the saying goes, nothing more than lipstick on a pig,'' Tim Horn, HIV project director for the AIDS research and policy organization, Treatment Action Group, said in an email.

Daraprim, which has been on the market since 1953, is the preferred treatment for toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can cause severe brain damage in babies, people with AIDS and others with compromised immune systems. Turing, a start-up based in New York, acquired the drug in August for $55 million and immediately raised the price about 50 times, to $750 per tablet from $13.50.

Besides saying it would cut the price to some hospitals, Turing said on Tuesday that it would come out with a bottle containing 30 pills instead of the current 100, making it less costly for hospitals to stock the drug. It also said it would offer sample starter kits at no cost to community doctors so they would have the drug on hand to begin immediate treatment in an emergency.

Dr Carlos del Rio, a professor at Emory University and chairman of the HIV Medicine Association, said that even with the 50 per cent discount to hospitals, the drug was still much more expensive than it was five months ago. ''They are still pricing it way above what the price of the medication should be,'' he said.

Turing said it would reduce co-payments for commercially insured patients to no more than $10 per prescription and would donate money to a charity to help Medicare patients meet their co-payments. It said it would provide Daraprim free to qualified uninsured patients with incomes at or below 500 per cent of the federal poverty level.

Such patient assistance programmes are standard for companies selling extremely high-priced drugs. They enable the patients to get the drug while pushing most of the costs onto insurance companies and taxpayers.