Warren Calls for Federal Investigation Into Inhaler Manufacturer GSK for Profiteering, Endangering Children by Pulling Lifesaving Asthma Inhalers off the Market
Big Pharma Scheme Costs Medicaid Billions; “GSK’s greed may have had deadly impacts.”
Several months after Flovent’s discontinuation, patients who had previously been using Flovent faced a 24% rise in hospitalizations.
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote to the Principal Deputy Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Juliet Hodgkins, requesting an investigation into GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for its role in making inhalers inaccessible for children and grossly price gouging Medicaid.
“I write to request that your office conduct an investigation into the outrageous profiteering by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), whose brazen circumvention of the American Rescue Plan Act’s (ARPA’s) Medicaid rebates has raised drug costs for taxpayers and patients alike—while putting patients at grave risk,” wrote Senator Warren.
GSK increased the price of Flovent HFA, the go-to inhaler for children with asthma, by about 50% between 2013 and 2023—far above the inflation rate. To disincentivize these kinds of exorbitant price hikes and incentivize price drops, Congressional Democrats passed ARPA in 2021 to increase the rebate that drugmakers must pay to Medicaid if they raise the price of a drug faster than the inflation rate.
Instead of lowering its price to avoid paying increased rebates—as its competitors did for other brand-name products, in some cases by up to 70 percent—GSK chose to discontinue Flovent HFA entirely and, in its place, introduce an authorized generic alternative at an artificially high price, costing Medicaid nearly $1 billion in 2024 alone. As a result of this switch, the cost for the generic drug is now much higher than the original brand-name product, causing many health insurers to discontinue coverage. As a result, thousands of children were left without access to their inhalers after Flovent HFA was discontinued.
This has had an acute impact on young children with asthma, who cannot tolerate most other inhaler medications. Reports have shown that pediatricians are worried and “are now regularly seeing children who require repeat hospitalizations and ED visits because their needed controller medicine is not covered by insurance and therefore the asthma gets out of control.” In one major city, doctors even reported a “dramatic increase” in childhood deaths due to uncontrolled asthma.
“Given the ongoing budgetary consequences for Medicaid and the deadly consequences for patients, I write to request that your office review the impacts of GSK’s choice to discontinue Flovent while replacing it with a more expensive authorized generic,” concluded the Senator.
This continues Senator Warren’s efforts to use every tool available to the government to push GSK to lower drug prices:
- In March 2024, Senator Warren sent the letter in response to GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) discontinuing the brand-name version of Flovent HFA, the go-to inhaler for children, blasting the company for its price-gouging strategy that may cause millions of children to lose access to one of the few drugs that is appropriate to treat their asthma and allergies.
- In December 2024, Senator Warren sent GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) a follow-up letter on its decision to discontinue Flovent HFA, the go-to inhaler for children, and replace it with an authorized generic version of the drug.
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