Outgoing Valeant CEO to testify at drug pricing hearing
The Senate Aging Committee announced that outgoing Valeant Pharmaceuticals CEO Michael Pearson has received a subpoena and is expected to testify at an April 27 hearing on increasing medication costs.
Valeant announced on March 21 that Pearson would leave the company but to continue to serve as CEO and a director until the company hires his replacement.
Valeant has received criticism since last year for increasing the prices of medications it bought. For instance, the Wall Street Journal reported last April that Valeant purchased the rights to two heart drugs (Nitropress and Isuprel) and increased their list prices by 525 percent and 212 percent, respectively.
Valeant announced last week that it had wrongly booked $58 billion in revenue. The company also recently launched a website with rebuttals to allegations against the company.
The Senate Aging Committee also held hearings in December 2015 and in March 2016. The committee said in a news release that Americans would spend more than $328 billion on prescription medications this year, while the federal government will spend another $110 billion in payments through Medicare, Medicaid, Veteran Affairs and other programs.
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.