Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThree of the world’s largest drugmakers, including Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., are being accused of fixing prices for erectile dysfunction drugs in Switzerland, according to Bloomberg News.
Lilly, Pfizer Inc. and Bayer AG, rivals in the male impotence-drug market, fixed prices in Switzerland and should be punished, a panel of the Swiss Competition Commission, said yesterday.
Lilly makes Cialis; Pfizer makes Viagra; and Bayer sells Levitra. The three companies made “inadmissible vertical competition agreements” by maintaining a recommended public selling price for the drugs, the panel said yesterday, according to Bloomberg.
“The recommended public selling price covered the drugmakers, pharmacies and physicians,” Olivier Schaller, a spokesman for the commission, told Bloomberg. “It was widely followed.”
The drugmakers have 20 days to respond before the commission decides whether to follow the panel’s recommendation to punish the companies or stop them from suggesting prices for the pills, Schaller said. The probe started in June 2006.
“We are confident that we respected Swiss law,” Petra Streit, a spokeswoman for Lilly, told Bloomberg. Streit declined to comment on the specifics of the investigation.
Bayer and Pfizer declined to comment on the investigation.
An estimated 15 million to 30 million men have problems getting or maintaining an erection, according to the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.