Coalition fights drug patent extension

Firms use strategy to stretch out profits from lucrative drugs

By Ceci Connolly THE WASHINGTON POST

March 25 — When the heartburn medicine Prilosec hit the market 12 years ago, doctors and patients couldn’t get enough of it. By 2000, it was the best-selling drug in the world and generated an estimated $4.7 billion in U.S. sales for maker AstraZeneca.

BUT NOW the distinctive purple pill is giving the nation’s governors, private companies — and other people who pay the medical bills — heartburn.

Faced with tight budgets and rising medical costs, big health care consumers were counting on the price to plummet last fall. That’s when Prilosec’s 20-year patent was set to expire and a cheaper generic version would have been available. But through a series of legal and regulatory maneuvers, AstraZeneca has kept its generic competitor off the market, and consumers say they are paying the price.

Governors estimate a one-year delay would cost state Medicaid programs $300 million. At General Motors, where 346,000 Prilosec prescriptions were written for employees last year, the carmaker loses $1.3 million every month it cannot purchase the generic version, said the company’s chief pharmacist, Cynthia Kirman.

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