Why Doing Someting About ‘Pay for Delay’ Will Have to Wait
Amid all the ink going to what the proposed health-care overhaul would do, we wanted to note an easy-to-overlook provision that it won’t do: eliminate many so-called pay-for-delay deals.
Those are the oft-criticized pacts under which branded drug makers give something to generic makers stall cheaper copycat versions coming on the market. The deals, which usually involve settlements of patent disputes between the generic and branded drug makers, result in consumers paying the higher branded prices until the generic counterparts arrive.
President Obama’s health proposal unveiled last month included a provison to nix such deals that the Federal Trade Commission didn’t like and the House also such a ban in a separate bill. But it’s not going to happen, at least not as part of the overhaul package now nearing votes in Congress.
The reason is because Democratic leaders are trying to avoid provisions that will kick up even more of a ruckus than they already face in trying to get a reconciliation bill through the House and Senate. Backers think they can return to the delay issue later in the year.
“We’re pretty sanguine that we’re going to be able to get it done this year,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz told Dow Jones […]
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