There's nothing inherently illegal about it, but legislators are questioning whether it could be a sign of an antitrust violation.
In 1998, the drug company Amgen launched a transformative arthritis treatment called Enbrel. At the end of 2002, federal regulators approved a similar drug called Humira.
The drugs work in fundamentally the same way. They are approved for many of the same ailments. They have been hugely valuable to patients — and big drivers of profits for the two pharmaceutical companies that make them. Humira brought in $14 billion last year for AbbVie. Enbrel was the top moneymaker for Amgen, with $5.4 billion in revenue.
But the similarities don't end there. They've also undergone closely timed list price increases, nearly identical in magnitude, for more than a decade — more than tripling in price since they were launched.
