Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
In a recent report, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) examines the UK’s “translational readiness gap”—the persistent failure to move cutting-edge laboratory models into the actual creation of medicines to treat patients. The Attrition Problem and the Translational Gap Modern drug development is a high risk endeavor. Approximately 90% of drug candidates that…
That is the question asked by a 2022 NBER working paper by Pierre Dubois, Ashvin Gandhi and Shoshana Vasserman. Methodology: Demand Side Model The authors used IQVIA data on revenues and quantities of drugs sold to hospitals from 2002 to 2013 across US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK markets. The authors define a…
Simple: get people vaccinated. Dr. Oz agrees. The New York Times reports: Dr. Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director, told CNN on Sunday that there was a simple solution to the raging measles outbreak in South Carolina, which has infected more than 900 people and become the largest U.S. outbreak in recent…
That is the title of a paper I published today in Journal of Market Access & Health Policy with co-authors by Karim EI-Kersh, Nadine Zawadzki, Catelyn Coyle, Shurui Zhang, Dhruv Dalal, Anna Watzker, and Dominik Lautsch. The abstract is below: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and cancer share high mortality and complex prognoses. Due to PAH’s…
Regulation and Theory of the Adjacent Possible. Alex Taborrok on Trump pharmaceutical plan. Double negotiation? IRA + MFN. Mass General Brigham will provide AI pre-visits. Are ‘mobile crisis’ teams in crisis?
FDA’s January 2026 draft guidance on Bayesian methodology in drug and biologics trials signals a clear willingness to see Bayesian methods used for regulatory decisionmaking around clinical trials. The guidance lays out how sponsors (i.e., pharmaceutical manufacturers) should pre-specify priors, success criteria, and simulations so that Bayesian designs remain interpretable, control error rates when needed,…
Let’s say that there is a very severe disease—let’s call it horriblitis—with significant impacts on patient morbidity and mortality. The only available treatment for horriblitis is drug called BlackPill. BlackPill improves health outcomes by 1 QALY over best supportive care (BSC), but costs $500,000 over the patient’s lifetime. While not cost effective by traditional standards,…
Here they are: Human-centric by design. The development and use of AI technologies align with ethical and human-centric values. Risk-based approach. The development and use of AI technologies follow a risk-based approach with proportionate validation, risk mitigation, and oversight based on the context of use and determined model risk. Adherence to standards. AI technologies adhere…
From CMS yesterday: On January 27, 2026, CMS announced the selection of the below list of 15 drugs payable under Medicare Part B and/or covered under Medicare Part D for the third cycle of negotiations (initial price applicability year 2028), based on total expenditures for drugs payable under Part B and/or covered under Part D…
President Trump unveiled “The Great Healthcare Plan” on January 15, 2026, calling on Congress to reduce prescription drug prices, lower insurance premiums, and increase healthcare price transparency. The plan proposes four main components: codifying Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) drug pricing agreements that the administration has negotiated with 16 pharmaceutical manufacturers, targeting prices at the lowest international levels;…