Pharma CEOs: ‘European drug prices are too low’

At least according to CEOs from Novartis, Sanofi and AstraZeneca. Reuters reports: European drugmakers are urging the EU to allow higher medicine prices, warning that without stronger investment incentives, the bloc would fall further behind the U.S., where tariff threats have triggered a wave of pharma investment announcements. AstraZeneca Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot said…

Quantifying the Impact of Medicaid Expansion

How did Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act impact health insurance coverage, cost and mental health? That is the question asked by Andreyeva, Rochford and Marthey (2025). They use 2011-2019 data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to examine outcomes for Americans aged 26–54 with at least one child living in the…

This week in Pharmaceutical policy under President Trump

Tariffs on pharmaceuticals. First, President Trump has voiced his goal to impose tariffs on pharmaceutical products made overseas. The New York Times reports: Mr. Trump said in remarks to reporters on Monday that pharmaceutical tariffs would come in the “not too distant future.”“We don’t make our own drugs anymore,” Mr. Trump said. “The drug companies…

Food is Medicine?

Everyone knows that eating healthy is good for your health. But should we think of food as a type of medicine? A paper by Ridberg et al. (2025) examines public perceptions of different interventions to get people to eat better to improve their health. Health systems are increasingly deploying Food Is Medicine interventions, which incorporate…

Trump to end the IRA ‘pill penalty’

As reported by EndPoints: President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order offering support for a change to the IRA’s “pill penalty,” one of the industry’s long-standing policy priorities that could affect billions of dollars in drug costs under Medicare. The executive order on drug pricing contains a grab-bag of policy proposals, some of…

Measles continues to spread

The Hill reports: The measles outbreak has now surpassed 700 reported cases in the U.S., raising the pressure on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to rein in the deadly virus.Overall, 712 cases have been reported with new cases being discovered in Kansas, Ohio and Indiana, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The outbreak has…

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Federal judge nixes FDA’s lab-developed test rule. Is AI a solution to the hospital staffing crisis? PBM price floor in Montana? AI finds new uses for old drugs. Measles comes to California (map)