AbbVie, Drugmakers Inflated Humira Price, Labor Union Says (1)

Pharmaceutical companies AbbVie, Pfizer, Amgen, and Mylan have driven up the cost of rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira by illegally agreeing to delay competing medications, a New York grocery store workers’ union said in a lawsuit.

The list price for the world’s top grossing drug has swelled to as much as $50,000 per patient per year, a United Food and Commercial Workers local said in a federal lawsuit filed in Chicago March 18. AbbVie, the drug’s manufacturer, is using a “thicket” of more than 100 patents to block similar products from entering the market, the union says....