With most of our generic drugs made in China and India, concerns about drug shortages are naturally rising amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, no amount of data analysis can systematically pinpoint which drugs are at highest risk of shortage. That’s because information on where the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in our drugs are made is kept hidden from public view. We must place our trust in the FDA (who clearly has this information) to do everything in its power to maintain ample supply of critical drugs in this country. But the FDA is not alone in its efforts. All across this country, we have been humbled to witness the tireless efforts of researchers and members of the media who are trying to piece together this drug supply chain puzzle to help identify where potential risks and weak points may lie. We were motivated to help assist these people in their noble efforts. So we wondered, could we use public drug pricing data as a “flashlight” that could help guide the efforts of researchers wandering through the dark and vast interconnectedness of the drug supply chain in hopes of finding information that can help Americans through this crisis? After working through and tossing out many ideas, we settled on two dashboards: A complete rebuild of our drugmaker market share dashboard, and a new dashboard that identifies drugs experiencing abnormal price increases. This report walks through how to use these new tools, and provides warnings on how to use, and how not to use these tools.

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Recent reports have demonstrated that brand-name medication prices are not increasing at the same rate as prior years. While slowing list price increases can be helpful, and certainly understandable given the amount of coverage drug prices have gotten over the previous year, it misses one of the key points within the brand drug marketplace. Brand-name drug cost pressures have less and less to do with year-over-year price increases and more to do with the launch prices of new brand name medications when they initially come to market. So naturally, we saw an opportunity for a visualization to shed some light on launch prices. This report introduces the latest visualization added to the 46brooklyn toolkit: the 46brooklyn Drug Pricing Launchpad. Spoiler alert! Brand-name drug launch prices are rising aggressively. This is a problem for sure, but why it’s a problem may surprise you. This report will take you on a journey through the lifecycle of a drug, and illustrate how high pre-rebate list prices on brand-name drugs today become a profit opportunity for the supply chain off generic drugs in the future.

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