62-year-old drug just got 5,000% more expensive

Daraprim, a treatment for malaria and toxoplasmosis, is now 5,455% more expensive than it was only two months ago. The drug’s price jumped from $13.50 to $750 a pill, bringing the annual cost of treatment into the hundreds of thousands for some patients, and possibly out of reach for many.
The price bump was put in place by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a privately held biotech company, shortly after it acquired the drug from Impax Laboratories in August for $55 million. The hike has since faced intense pushback from medical professionals, politicians, and patient-protection groups.
Overall, brand-name drug prices have been on the rise, increasing by 14.8% in 2014, according to research firm Truveris. While price gains can be partially attributed to more effective new treatments as well as shortages for certain drugs, a portion of the increases are a credit to business strategies like Turing’s, which aim to buy low-profile, neglected drugs and re-market them as higher-value specialty medicines.
Daraprim is not the only fairly old drug that’s seen astronomical price increases recently. The price for Cycloserine, a medicine used to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis, increased to $10,800 for 30 pills from $500 in August. Two heart drugs owned by Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Isuprel and Nitropress, saw their prices increase by 525% and 212% respectively this year. Even everyday drugs like antibiotic doxycycline have been affected, with its price rising to $1,849 a bottle in April 2014 from $20 a bottle in October 2013.