McCaskill Demands Explanation for Nostrum’s Price Hike

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) called on Nostrum Pharmaceuticals, a drugmaker with facilities in Kansas City, to explain a reported 400 percent price hike in its bladder infection treatment, nitrofurantoin.

The lawmaker wrote the company a letter demanding an explanation after the Financial Times last month reported it had sharply increased the price from $474.75 to $2,392 for a bottle of the antibiotic, according to Elsevier’s Gold Standard drug database.

“This is a shocking price increase for a generic antibiotic that was first approved by the FDA in 1953,” McCaskill said in her letter to Nirmal Mulye, CEO and chairman of Nostrum Laboratories, nitrofurantoin’s manufacturer and a subsidiary of Nostrum Pharmaceuticals.