The $89,000 a year price tag on deflazacourt, a corticosteroid owned by Marathon Pharmaceuticals and recently approved for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), is inciting ire from members of Congress this week.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) and Representative Elijah Cummings (D-Md) sent Marathon Pharmaceuticals a letter on Monday asking why deflazacort (Emflaza), a drug that’s widely available outside the country for $1,000 to $1,600 a year, has such a steep price in the US.
“We believe Marathon is abusing our nation’s ‘orphan drug’ program, which grants companies seven years of market exclusivity to encourage research into new treatments for rare diseases — not to provide companies like Marathon with lucrative market exclusivity rights for drugs that have been available for decades,” Sanders and Cummings wrote.
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