Why does the UK pay less for medicines?

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…

Effect of pharmaceutical innovation on longevity

Using data from 2006-2018 across 26 high-income countries, Lichtenberg et al. (2022) measures the relationship between pharmaceutical innovation and longevity. Innovation is measured by “mean vintage…of the drugs used to treat each disease in each country” where vintage is defined as the year of worldwide launch. For the U.S., the authors found that: …the diseases…

Are generic drug prices too low?

Perhaps the answer is yes, if we want to have a more resilient supply chain. At least that is the argument from a commentary by Mattingly and Conti (2022): Several medications that patients need have been in short supply before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, including low-priced, off-patent generic drugs. The White House recently released…

340B Court Cases

The Public Health Service Act (PHSA) in 1992, created a program to allow hospitals providing care for underserved communities to be able to access discounted drugs. The program–known as the 340B Drug Pricing Program, has been described as follows: …[The] law requires pharmaceutical manufacturers participating in the Medicaid program to enter into a second agreement…