Every company can make profits, but this is profiteering. This is gouging.The Rockford File is the story of how one very expensive prescription drug threatened to financially cripple an entire city. That city is Rockford, Illinois, an old industrial town outside of Chicago. Rather than using a health insurance company, Rockford has, for years, paid its own health care costs for its 1,000 employees and their dependents. When Rockford got hit with the drug bill it was so enormous the mayor at the time set out to understand why. Larry Morrissey: Everybody's asking the question, "Why is health care so expensive?" Because the fix is in. That's the answer. That's the short answer. When Larry Morrissey was mayor of Rockford he was hit with a crisis: the city was bleeding money.
Correspondent Lesley Stahl with Don Haviland
Lesley Stahl: You found out that the health care budget was going bust.
Larry Morrissey: Yea, the budget was out of control.
Lesley Stahl: And you had to squeeze other things. Like what?
Larry Morrissey: Hiring police and firefighters. Keeping firetrucks and other equipment on the streets. We started realizing that pharmaceutical costs were skyrocketing.
Express Scripts HQ
Lesley Stahl: And I heard that it was just one drug.
Larry Morrissey: One particular drug called Acthar.
In 2015, two small children of Rockford employees were treated with Acthar, a drug that's been on the market since 1952. It's used to treat a rare and potentially fatal condition called infantile spasms that afflicts about 2,000 babies a year.
Lesley Stahl: Do you remember how much was on the budget for those two babies?
Larry Morrissey: We were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for these sick baby cases.
Lesley Stahl: Close to $500,000-- is what we heard.
Larry Morrissey: Combined, yeah.
Lesley Stahl: Combined.
Larry Morrissey: Yeah.
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"Every company can make profits, but this is profiteering. This is gouging."[]/url]