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Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, which drew the ire of patient groups and politicians after raising the price of an anti-parasite tablet more than 50-fold, said it will discount the drug as much as 50% to hospitals and take other steps to help patients afford the cost. ... The amount of the discount Turing announced on Tuesday will depend on how much of the drug hospitals use. Even at the full 50% off, however, the drug will still cost far more than before Turing increased its price. In addition, health insurers would have to pick up the tab for patients who keep taking the drug after leaving the hospital. (Rockoff, 11/24)

Turing Pharmaceuticals, which sparked a 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. But it said it would offer discounts of up to 50 percent to hospitals and would take other measures to help patients afford the medicine. (Pollack, 11/24)

Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, the drugmaker that raised the price of an anti-infective drug Daraprim by more than 5,000 percent, suggested that it won’t cut the drug’s list price, instead offering to negotiate discounts with hospitals. “A reduction in Daraprim’s list price would not translate into a benefit for patients,” Nancy Retzlaff, Turing’s chief commercial officer, said in a statement. The company did say it would negotiate discounts with hospitals of as much as 50 percent. (Langreth, 11/24)

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel concluded that a new drug from BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. hasn’t been proven to effectively treat the fatal disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy, saying studies simply didn’t prove the medicine worked in most patients. The outside panel found that trials of the drug, called drisapersen, fell short of proving it helped children with the illness, which is progressive, crippling and afflicts male children. But some panelists left open the possibility that individual children might yet respond to the drug, despite the overall negative finding. (Burton, 11/24)

Pfizer Inc.’s $160 billion megadeal with Allergan Plc, which comes with the benefit of an overseas tax address, is likely to be envied by competitors who won’t be able to do much to mimic it. The idea is certainly alluring. Many large drugmakers, including Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co., are flush with cash and under pressure from investors to continue to grow quickly. Doing an “inversion” deal to relocate their legal domiciles abroad would give them a lower tax rate and let them use cash earned overseas in the U.S. without having to pay a 35 percent levy to repatriate the money. (Chen, 11/24)