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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  53
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 response of Novum shows that______.
选项 A、they are not under the supervision of FDA
B、they are not regulated by the public
C、they claimed to offer affordable drugs to the public
D、they dare not to reply to the comment
答案C
解析 推理判断题。根据定位词定位到最后一段。该段提到诺威姆药业的反应，“发言人告诉公众，该公司是由‘一群志同道合的投资者建立的，他们认为公司的焦点在于为病患提供经济实惠的治疗创新品’”，故C项为正确选项。
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