Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) created the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program (DPNP). The aim of the program is to reduce the cost of pharmaceuticals for Medicare. A key question is how are investors viewing this policy and how is it impacting their investment decisions. A paper by Canestaro, Patterson and Campbell (2025) aimed to…
From Hwang, Jakob and Squires (2025) in AER: Insights: Cousin marriage rates are high in many countries today. While previous studies have documented increased risks of infant and child mortality, we provide the first estimate of the effect of such marriages on life expectancy throughout adulthood. By studying couples married over a century ago, we…
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) recently released a new strategy to “Make America Healthy Again.” The strategy includes: Promoting evidence-based prevention Empowering people to achieve their health goals Driving choice and competition for people A Health Affairs Forefront article from Joshua M. Liao notes three broad goals: increasing patient engagement, better leveraging…
The answer seems to be the latter. The Times (UK) reports. Eli Lilly, the US-based manufacturer of Mounjaro, said it was hiking the UK list price for the medication from September 1 to bring it in line with other nations…Eli Lilly is increasing the amount it charges pharmacies. The rate for a middle-sized 5mg dose…
On July 31, President Trump sent letters to some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world (AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Genentech, Gilead, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Regeneron, and Sanofi) asking them to fundamentally change drug pricing in the US. What was…
According to a Health Affairs Scholar paper by Geoffrey Joyce out this month, the answer is ‘yes’. He writes: Most PBM contracts tie their compensation to a percentage of a drug’s list price, creating a financial incentive to favor high-cost, high-rebate drugs on plan formularies at the expense of lower-cost generics and biosimilars. Furthermore, the…
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report titled “How Changes to Funding for the NIH and Changes in the FDA’s Review Times Would Affect the Development of New Drugs.” The report evaluates two scenarios: A permanent 10 percent reduction in the amount of funding that the government provides to the NIH, and…
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…