Hospitals Rattled by Drug Price Increases

The problems, hospital administrators say, extend well beyond the increases that have grabbed headlines and caused public outrage, most notably the 5,000 percent spike by Turing Pharmaceuticals and its former chief executive, Martin Shkreli, in the list price of a drug to treat the parasitic infection toxoplasmosis. Pharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions, which can be beyond regulators’ reach, are only part of the dynamic. Some companies have raised prices more modestly but repeatedly for a variety of medications old and new, and those increases add up over time.