Does pharma’s bad break have legs?

There’s a specter haunting the drug industry, one that stretches beyond what has been a disappointing earnings season for the sector’s leading lights.

As STAT’s Matt Herper writes, underlying those underwhelming sales numbers is a growing concern that pharma just won’t be able to grow like it used to. The problem is that the year-on-year price hikes that for so long sustained the drug business may be a thing of the past. And the numbers aren’t moving in pharma’s direction.

In the third quarter of last year, list prices — the ones set by drug companies — rose by 4.1 percent, but net prices — the money pharma actually collects — fell by 5.1 percent. That disparity could be a bad omen for the industry.

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