Congress grills pharma executives

Seven CEOs from large pharmaceutical firms were brought before Congress today. And they got an earful from both Demogratic and Republican Congressmen. The executives were critique for selling too many opioids. They were critiqued for legal manuevers to extend brand name drugs’ patent life. But most of all, they were critiqued for high drug prices.…

IVI Webinars On New Open-Source Value Model

IVI will be hosting two webinars introducing our new open-source value model in non-small cell lung cancer. Devin Incerti and Jeroen Jansen will lead the webinar tomorrow. Modernizing Models for Value Assessment: A Detailed Discussion of the Open-Source IVI-NSCLC Model Date: February 27, 2019 at 2:30 PM EST / 11:30 AM PST Content: In-depth discussion…

Marginal Structural Models

So you want to compare two treatments–for instance Treatment A and Treatment B–in order to see which one has largest impact on health outcomes. Sure you could do a randomized controlled trial, but let’s say you don’t have the funding for that. You could use real world data to conduct just such an analysis. Let’s…

Surprise billing

Let’s say you go to an in-network provider. If you have fairly generous health insurance (i.e., not a high-deductible health plan), one would expect the cost sharing to be fairly modest. That is not always the case. You may be charged out-of-network cost sharing rates through no fault of your own. In a report by…

Are value-based pricing arrangements more common than we thought?

The answer appears to be ‘yes’ according to a survey by Mahendraratnam et al. (2019). After surveying subject matter experts that were senior representatives from payer organizations and pharmaceutical manufacturers on value-based pricing arrangements (VBA), they found: More than 70% of VBAs implemented between 2014 and 2017 were not publicly disclosed. Furthermore, although consideration of…

Measuring the value of pharmaceuticals over time

Measuring treatment value is difficult. Costs are relatively easier to measure but benefits are often more difficult, particularly impact on caregiver burden, productivity, quality of life and other factors. Not only that, but the “benefits” that accrue to a person may vary by individual. Some individuals may prefer treatments that are more effective, but with…