Merck Offers Candid Details on Pricing Practices

Jan. 29, 2017

Merck has published a report outlining the company's average list price increases for its products, as the industry deals with widespread pricing criticism.

Merck published figures on its website showing that the average list-price increase across Merck's brand-name drugs and vaccines ranged from 7.4% in 2010 to a peak of 10.5% in 2014. The average increase in its net prices (the amount Merck actually receives after factoring in rebates and other discounts), ranged from 3.4% in 2010 to a peak of 6.2% in 2012, according to the document.

"The price conversation over the past year has been driven and dominated by the justified public outrage in response to companies that hiked prices by triple digits, or had a business model based primarily on price increases. That is not true of Merck – and, to give credit to others, that is not true for many other innovative, R&D-based drug companies either," said Adam Schechter, president of Global Human Health at Merck in a recent blog post.

See the Merck document here