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Rep. Katie Porter disembowels pharma exec with whiteboard math
Busting out a whiteboard during a hearing on Wednesday, the congresswoman from California jotted down the skyrocketing price of Celgene drug Revlimid between 2005 and 2020 and asked former CEO Mark Alles, “Did the drug start to work faster? Were there fewer side effects? How did you change the formula or production of Revlimid to justify this price increase?” After trying to claim that the company’s discovery that it could sell the drug to patients suffering from diseases other than cancer was an improvement, Alles conceded that no, the formula hadn’t been changed, which is where Porter went in for the kill.
“Do you know what this number is? Does it ring any bells?” she asked Alles—who at this point should’ve been wetting himself—while writing “$13 million” on the board. Alles said he wasn’t totally sure but if he had to guess, figured she might be referring to “[his] compensation in some way.” Alles guessed right, and as Porter noted, his 2017 pay was “200 times the average American’s income” and 360 times what the average senior gets in Social Security. Scrawling a chilling “$2.1 million” on the board, Porter reminded Alles that that was the portion of his take-home that came from Celgene “hitting yearly earning targets,” and that “any increase in the price of Revlimid would also increase your bonus.” Did Alles perhaps recall how much he personally received in bonuses over two years as CEO solely because Celgene raised the price of Revlimid? Luckily, Porter was happy to remind him: “In fact, you personally received half a million dollars, personally, just by tripling the price” of the drug. Alles was participating in the hearing virtually, so Porter couldn’t actually finish by shoving a dry erase marker up his ass, but her closing statement probably approximated what that would’ve felt like. “So to recap here,” she told Alles, “the drug didn’t get any better, the cancer patients didn’t get any better—you just got better at making money. You just refined your skills at price gouging.”