Questcor's pricing issue

The Wall Street Journal: Questcor Has A Drug Problem
After Questcor Pharmaceuticals raised the price of the drug Acthar, its sole product, more than 10-fold in 2007, its shares began a climb from pennies to $14 and change. Acthar now costs $50,000 to $100,000 as a treatment of last resort for multiple-sclerosis symptoms or for infantile spasms, a terrible seizure disorder that affects a few thousand babies a year. However, the federal government won't pay such prices for patients who receive Questcor's drug under Medicaid. In fact, the Union City, Calif., company must rebate the full cost of its high-priced drug for Medicaid patients. One exception has been those in the Medicaid managed-care plans of a couple of dozen states (Alpert, 2/13).

---

This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.