President Joe Biden’s career-defining victories over Big Pharma — reforming Medicare to lower prices and capping inhaler costs for millions of Americans with lung disease — are facing an unlikely threat: drug companies going green.
Drug companies are taking advantage of a global climate treaty to boost profits. The treaty, signed by some 120 countries nearly a decade ago, is now providing inhaler makers with a golden escape hatch from Biden’s reforms that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol is pushing major pharmaceutical companies to redevelop their inhalers without greenhouse gases. And that has given them regulatory cover to stamp out competition by launching climate-friendly versions of old drugs. When those devices come to market as early as next year, they will cost Medicare and Medicaid billions of extra dollars, and they’ll give major drug companies, which have committed to cap out-of-pocket costs for inhalers at $35, an opportunity to raise their prices.
AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline produce some of the most widely used inhalers in the United States, including Symbicort and Ventolin. They plan to seek regulatory approval for new, climate-friendly inhalers in 2025. The corporations have invested nearly $1 billion each to develop versions of their blockbuster drugs that don’t rely on planet-warming hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, to propel medication into the lungs.
