Drug companies continue to raise prices despite public backlash

(credit: Gatis Gribusts)

Last week, as Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin signed off on the first state law requiring drug companies to justify steep price hikes, Pfizer was in the process of raising the list prices of its drugs by an average of 8.8 percent, according to a Pfizer spokesperson. The price boost follows a similar one in January, which involved raising the list price of more than 100 drugs, some by as much as 20 percent.

Pfizer isn’t alone in this trend. Drug companies including AbbVie, Eli Lilly, Merck, and Bristol-Myers Squibb also continue to steadily raise prices across the board—although, it's happening at “modestly lower” rates than those seen in 2015, as FiercePharma reports.

The march towards ever higher drug costs continues despite strong public outcry. The firestorm has mostly centered on figures such as the executives of Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Martin Shkreli. The former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals became notorious for raising the price of a life-saving anti-parasitic drug by more than 5,000 percent as well a running an alleged Ponzi-like scheme. But soaring price increases is an industry-wide phenomenon.