Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
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…
Hydery and Reddy (2024) provide a nice primer on drug formularies. Below is a quick overview. What is a formulary? A formulary is a continually updated list of medications, products, and technologies supported by current evidence-based medicine, as well as the judgment of physicians, pharmacists, and other relevant experts in the diagnosis and treatment of disease…
Using commercial claims data between 2009-2018, a paper in Health Services Research by Lalani et al (2024) finds that: Rebates are rising as a share of cost Fewer patients have $0 out-of-pocket cost Patient out-of-pocket costs growth was 2.9x as large as net drug cost growth Specifically: List prices increased 4.4%/yr (interquartile range [IQR], 1.1%…
That is the title of a recent paper by Hernandez and Hung (2024). The article provides an excellent review of how drugs get reimbursed in the US and who the key players are. I provide an abbreviated summary below, but do read the full article. The players Manufacturers research, develop, and bring new drug products…
I just came across a nice overview article titled The financial ecosystem of pharmaceutical R&D. The white paper was developed for the Netherlands government and provides an overview of the drug development process and how (and by whom) it is financed. The white paper answers the following questions: What do different players do within the…
According to the OECD, In 2021 the U.S. spent $1,432/capita on pharmaceuticals compared to only $517/per capita in the UK. The UK’s figure was slightly higher that Poland and Norway, but less than Latvia, the Slovak Republic, Portugal and Romania. How does the UK spend so little on drugs? Many people focus on the efforts…
Pham et al. (2023) uses data on regulatory decisions and health technology assessments (HTAs) in Australia, Canada, and the UK and compares them to the drugs that are FDA-approved in the US. They find that: The FDA approved 206 new drugs in 2017 through 2020, of which 162 (78.6%) were granted marketing authorization by at…