Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
That is the topic from my article out today at The Evidence Base. An excerpt is below: On May 12, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order calling for “most favored nation” (MFN) drug pricing in the US. Key questions you may have include: ▪ What is MFN pricing? ▪ Which countries will be included in…
That is the topic of a JMCP Viewpoint by Sean Sullivan, Jens Grueger, Aidan Sullivan, and Scott Ramsey. Some excerpts: The Budget Lab at Yale University projected that a 25% ad valorem tariff would increase medication costs by an “average of around $600 per year per household in the United States.”3 Tariffs can also create supply…
Perhaps so according to Politico: Trump early next week is expected to sign an executive order directing aides to pursue the initiative, called “most favored nation,” for a selection of drugs within the Medicare program. The idea would use the administration’s authorities to force prices down… White House officials initially pressed congressional Republicans to draft…
That is the title of a paper by Arnold and Priestley (2025). They examine whether gun purchase wait periods impact suicide rates using both variation in gun laws by state over time as well as variation in a county’s distance to the nearest state without a waiting period. First, some background on US gun purchase…
This is a new organization that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. aims to create, consolidating the functions of many federal health organizations and cutting significant staff. The Guardian reports: Robert F Kennedy Jr said the nation’s health agencies will cut 10,000 jobs from their 82,000-person workforce – an enormous reduction the US health secretary characterized as…
On Tuesday (11 March 2025) the European Commission presented the draft of its new Critical Medicines Act (CMA). The Science Media Centre España writes that the CMA’s objective is: …to address the serious shortage of medicines and healthcare products, reduce external dependence on critical medicines and ingredients — especially from Asia — and guarantee the…
A paper by Proudman et al. (2024) finds that doing so would be extremely expensive. Including all preclinical, clinical and post-approval R&D activities, total annual costs to maintain the average lifecycle level of 49.4 approved drugs across all disease areas during the 2018–22 period was estimated to be $139.6 billion. Including only pre-launch costs, total…
One reason are the administrative obstacles and frictions that eligible individuals have to overcome to receive the public services. A paper by Herd and Moynihan (2025) in the Journal of Economic Perspectives provides an overview of the literature. Such burdens are the experience of policy implementation as onerous, and arise via learning costs (knowing about…
In a statement today, CMS confirmed that Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been given access to CMS payment systems: CMS has two senior Agency veterans – one focused on policy and one focused on operations – who are leading the collaboration with DOGE, including ensuring appropriate access to CMS systems…
Chuanzi Yue and Marisa Miraldo argue in a recent Health Affairs Forefront piece that the answer is ‘yes’, but I am highly skeptical of their claim. Will IRA cause firms to allocate funds from marketing to R&D? One point they make is that the IRA’s Medicare Drug Price Negotiation program will reduce pharmaceutical expenses on…