Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
President Trump’s May 12 Executive Order around Most-Favored-Nation drug pricing argues that countries outside the US need to raise their prices on pharmaceuticals saying that many other countries are “freeloading” and paying less than their share for pharmaceuticals. In response, pharmaceutical companies have increased prices in the UK and even threatened to “walk away” from…
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…
Many people don’t understand why pharmaceuticals cost so much money. Don’t pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money? The answer is ‘yes’, but only if the drugs are successful. A paper by Wouters et al. (2024) found that: Based on data for 361 of 558 new therapeutic agents approved over the study period (median follow-up…
From an interesting review paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives by Craig Garthwaite: Although research and development investments clearly respond to market opportunities, the exact benefits created by these incremental investments remain unclear. This is largely because the exact marginal products developed in response to these incentives are elusive to identify. Certainly, the amount…
That is what an analysis from PwC finds, at least with respect to stock market returns. Our PwC equal-weight index of 50 pharma companies analyzes the sector’s total shareholder returns performance relative to the S&P 500 Equal Weighted Index. From 2018 through November 2024, the PwC pharma index returned 7.6% to shareholders, compared with more…
Why were drugs not included in Medicare in 1965? And the answer is, because drugs didn’t matter. They were not all that good, and they didn’t do a lot… We now see pharmaceutical care as the heart of treating someone; not so then. Steven Grossman, Executive Director – Alliance for a Stronger FDA It’s amazing…
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS’) Prescription Drug Consumer Price Index (CPI‐Rx) looks at price changes for drugs dispensed at outpatient retail pharmacies. However, many pharmaceuticals–especially infusions and injections–are administered at physician offices or hospitals. How would including physician-administered drugs impact the CPI-Rx? That is the question a paper by Hicks, Berndt and Frank (2024)…
Recently, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is getting a lot of attention, particularly for its provision that allows CMS to start drug price negotiation for selected drugs 9 (small molecules) or 13 (biologics) years after drug launch. However, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) has proposed a number of a number of payment…
Potentially so, argues Adam Fein of Drug Channels. There are two mechanisms for this. First, for drugs not covered in the maximum fair price negotiations, Fein argues that drugs with high list prices and large rebates would lead to more net savings compared to drugs with lower list price and rebates in part because in…
For patients with serious illnesses, timeline access to efficacious medications is paramount. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) was created in part to help expedite drug approvals and insure these products are save and effective. As stated in a paper by Grünwald and Stargardt (2024): The EMA [European Medicines Agency] was founded in 1995 primarily to…