With tens of millions on hand, drug makers fight state efforts to force down prices

Drug makers are sick and tired of coming under attack for high prices.

And they’re spending tens of millions to try to make it stop.

“We’re under unprecedented pressure because there really is profound misunderstanding out there,” Acorda Therapeutics CEO Ron Cohen, who chairs the industry trade group Biotechnology Innovation Organization, told a crowd at BIO’s conference here this week.

“Together we’re going to fight back, and we’re going to win,” Jim Greenwood, the CEO of BIO, said in his keynote address.

Bills that would have required drug companies to justify, explain, or even cap their prices have faltered in about a dozen states in recent months. Last week, however, brought two blows to the industry: Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin Drug signed into law a transparency act that requires drug makers to justify price hikes. Similar legislation passed in the California state Senate.

Meanwhile, the industry is girding for another California fight this November over a ballot measure that seeks to cap some drug prices. A similar measure is in the works in Ohio. And the industry fears such ballot measures could pop up elsewhere.

But drug makers aren’t responding by cutting prices  — or even by keeping them stable.