Health Beat: Health care M&A spending sets new record in 2015

Editor’s note: Each Wednesday, Talk Business & Politics provides “Health Beat,” a round-up of health-related topics.

HEALTH CARE M&A SPENDING SETS NEW RECORD IN 2015: The health care merger and acquisition market has set a new record in 2015, with less than a month left to go to the end of the year. More than $549 billion has been spent on health care transactions as of this date, according to data from Irving Levin Associates, Inc. That is 42% higher than the previous record set last year, with $387.7 billion spent on 1,312 transactions. So far in 2015, 1,285 deals have been recorded.

The $160 billion mega-merger between Pfizer Inc. and Allergan plc announced earlier this week put the total well over 2014’s total. That deal alone comprises 29% of the year’s spending on health care transactions. Two other mega-deals, the $54.2 billion Anthem/Cigna deal and the $37 billion Aetna/Humana deal, account for 18% of the spending.

BIPARTISAN SENATE REPORT SAYS PHARMACEUTICAL FIRMS PUSHED STRATEGY TO MARK-UP HEP C DRUG TO $1,000 PER PILL: Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and senior committee member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on Tuesday released the results of an 18-month investigation into the pricing and marketing of Gilead Sciences’ Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi and its second-wave successor, Harvoni.

Drawing from 20,000 pages of internal company documents, dozens of interviews with health care experts, and a trove of data from Medicaid programs in 50 states and the District of Columbia, the investigation found that the company pursued a marketing strategy and final wholesale price of Sovaldi – $1,000 per pill, or $84,000 for a single course of treatment – that it believed would maximize revenue. Building on that price, Harvoni was later introduced at $94,500. Fostering broad, affordable access was not a key consideration in the process of setting the wholesale prices, the Senate report concluded.

HHS: PATIENT SAFETY EFFORTS SAVE 87,000 LIVES AND NEARLY $20 BILLION IN COSTS – A newly released study from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shows that Affordable Care Act provisions led to an estimated 87,000 fewer patient deaths in hospitals and saved U.S. taxpayers nearly $20 billion in health care costs as a result of a reduction in hospital-acquired conditions from 2010 to 2014.

The 2015 report notes that 50,000 fewer patients died in hospitals and $12 billion in health care costs were saved between 2010 and 2013. Preliminary estimates show that, in total, hospital patients experienced 2.1 million fewer hospital-acquired conditions from 2010 to 2014, a 17% decline over that period.