Hi, I'm Erica Pandy and welcome to Axios Recap, where we begin to one big story.

It's Thursday, October 21st, and we're focused on drug price hikes.

Indeson, an anti-inflammatory rectal suppository that treats arthritis, cost $198 for a box of 30 back in 2008.

And today, that same box costs more than $10,000.

That's 52 times higher over the span of 10 years.

How does this even happen?

Well, Indicin is just one small example of price gouging within the pharmaceutical industry.

In 2015, Martin Schrelli famously upped the price of Deriprim, a parasite infection treatment for those with HIV, from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

And while lawmakers are eager to produce legislation to stop these price hikes, nothing has stopped these drug companies from price gouging. Will drug price reform be next on the lawmakers' agenda?

In a moment, Axios reporter Bob Herman on skyrocketing drug prices and why it matters.

And we're joined now by Axios's health care reporter Bob Herman. Hey, Bob. Hey, Erica.

Bob, in your reporting, you track one drug, Indycin. Take me through how in a little over 10 years,

it increased in price by 52 times. So, Indycin is an anti-inflammatory rectal suppository. It's been around

for a long time, and in fact,

it's actually off patent, which means any drug company out there could create another version,

another generic of it, and it'd be fine. But no other companies have stepped up to do that because

there's a relatively minor drug. Anderson is actually very similar to a drug that brought a lot of criticism over

the years from Martin Screlli. Same exact dynamics at play here. So in 2008, these suppositories

had a price tag of $198, and over time, it's now over $10,000 for the same box of suppositories.

Nothing's changed about them, but the price has gone up 52 times.

So is Indycin a weird case, or is this kind of dramatic price increase happening with

other drugs too?

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