Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
If you had a life-threatening disease and were offered a choice of treatments, would you opt for a one-time cure or for weekly treatments for the rest of your life? The answer for most people is unsurprising: a cure. Cures eliminate the inconvenience of ongoing treatment, decrease caregiver burden, and reduce patient anxiety. Although we…
That is the title of an article in Spotlight on Market Access published by MMIT Radar. The article examines how FDA decisions to expedite getting treatments to market will be received by payers. The Healthcare Economist is quoted extensively in the article: Payers have two key concerns, maintains Jason Shafrin, Ph.D., senior director of policy…
What will Trump’s “favored nation” policy do to drug prices and innovation? How will 340B reforms affect the price hospitals charge for drugs? Myself and my colleague Jim Baumgardner weigh in with our thoughts in an article in FormularyWatch. “US drug prices will certainly fall. However, prices outside the US will rise,” Jason Shafrin, PhD,…
That is the title of my recent piece in STAT News. Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration announced the creation of Project Facilitate. This pilot program facilitates access to innovative treatments for cancer that have not yet been approved by individuals who aren’t able to enroll in clinical trials. This move suggests that the…
Below are two posters I am presenting at the 2019 International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) Annual Meeting. The first poster I presented today, the second poster below I will be presenting tomorrow, May 21, between 6-7pm CDT. HOW MUCH DO INDIVIDUALS VALUE ACCESS TO INNOVATIVE LUNG CANCER THERAPIES? A STATED PREFERENCE SURVEY…
The 2019 International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) Annual Meeting has kicked off in New Orleans. One interesting Panel that I am moderating is titled “How much should we – and can we- pay for gene therapies?” I am serving as the moderator and the panelists on this issue panel include: Anupam B.…
The Healthcare Economist was once again named as one of the top 100 economics blogs by Intelligent Economist. In fact, this blog was list first in the “Sub-field Economic Blogs” category (clearly my sub-field is healthcare). Thanks to all my readers and to Intelligent Economist for the award.
In a recently published paper in PharmacoEconomics, I–along with co-authors Devin Incerti, Jeff Curtis, Darius Lakdawalla, and Jeroen Jansen–describe a recently developed open-source platform for measuring the value of treatments for rheumatoid arthritis. The model itself is here, but and the abstract from Incerti et al. (2019) is below: Objective The nature of model-based cost-effectiveness…
This is the topic of a recent publication with co-authors Kata Bognar, Katie Everson, Michelle Brauer, Darius Lakdawalla and Felicia Forma. The full title is Does knowledge of patient non-compliance change prescribing behavior in the real world? A claims-based analysis of patients with serious mental illness. The abstract is below, but do read the whole thing…
A recent viewpoint from Fendrick and Shope (2018) argues for the need for Precision Benefit Design. Successful implementation of precision medicine will need to address several system-wide challenges, including administrative complexities, the creation of new financing models, and aligning provider- and patient-focused initiatives. The enormous clinical potential of precision medicine sheds light on the critical…