Pharmaceuticals Regulation

Are drug price transparency laws informative?

In many cases, the answer is ‘no’. At least that is the findings from a paper by Ryan and Sood (2019). As reported in FiercePharma:

Sood and Ryan reviewed 166 drug pricing laws passed between 2015 and 2018 and found that 35 bills in 22 states included transparency mandates. Only seven of the laws were deemed informative, such as Maine’s law requiring drugmakers to report net prices and Oregon and Nevada laws forcing pharma to report profits.
Of the less-effective laws, one key problem was compelling list-price disclosures. As Sood pointed out, not only is that information already readily available, list price is pretty disconnected from the real price patients pay, and it doesn’t reveal who’s making the profits and where.


USC Schaeffer.

This study is especially informative as lawmakers have tried to require pharmaceutical manufacturers to disclose drug prices in advertisements, although this mandate has been struck down by the courts.

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