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  3. A US drug company has increased the price of an acne cream by more than 3,900% to $9,561 in less than 18 months in the latest ex

A US drug company has increased the price of an acne cream by more than 3,900% to $9,561 in less than 18 months in the latest ex

admin2021-02-21  57
问题    A US drug company has increased the price of an acne cream by more than 3,900% to $9,561 in less than 18 months in the latest example of drug "price cheating", which has enraged the American public and become a central topic of debate in the presidential election campaign.
   Novum Pharma, a recently formed privately held Chicago-based company, bought the rights to drug Aloquin in May 2015. The 60g cream, which contains two cheap ingredients, was sold by its previous owner, Primus Pharmaceuticals, for $241.50. Novum almost immediately increased the price by 1,100%, and hiked the price higher still in January 2016. Figures seen by the Financial Times show the company increased the price a third time last week to take the cost to $9,561.
   So-called "price cheating", in which companies buy the rights to older drugs and then vastly increase their cost, has provoked outrage across the country and led to calls for reform of the US healthcare system.
   Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton claimed "It’s time to move beyond talking about these price hikes and start acting to address them. All Americans deserve full access to the medications they need— without being burdened by excessive, unjustified costs." Clinton said she would change the law to allow the "emergency importation" of safe alternative treatments from abroad.
   Aloquin contains two cheap active ingredients: a decades-old antibiotic, iodoquinol, and an extract from the aloe vera plant. Iodoquinol can be bought for as little as $30 a tube and aloe vera cream costs a few dollars.
   The drug is labelled as "possibly effective", as the US Food and Drug Administration has stated that there is only limited evidence that the drug is effective.
   Novum has also drastically increased the price of its other two skin creams, Alcortin A and Novacort. The drugs are prescription only, with the cost being mostly covered by health insurance or government assistance. In instances when the full cost of the treatment isn’t covered by insurance, Novum provides coupons to reduce the proportion that patients have to pay, while collecting the rest from the health plan.
   The company, which is privately held and does not publish figures on sales or profits, did not reply to requests for comment. A spokesman told the public that the firm was founded by "a group of like-minded investors who believe in the firm’s focus of providing therapeutic innovations that are affordable for patients".
The price of the Aloquin is considered as cheating for______.
选项 A、the price has been raised for many times
B、patients cannot get access to medicines they need
C、the increase of the price has been dramatic
D、the drug is not effective at all
答案C
解析 推理判断题。根据定位词定位到第三段。该段中提到了“price cheating”(“价格欺骗”)，即“公司买下之前药品的生产权，之后大幅提升其价格”，所以Aloquin的定价被认为是欺骗，原因是之前药品价格很低，之后售价急剧上升，故C项为正确选项。
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