Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
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…
That is the title of an FTI White Paper published this year where I was a co-author alongside Antoine Mialhe, Sabiha Quddus, Anne-Sophie Deman, Suhail Thahir and Agnes Sipiczki. The role of Intellectual property (IP) in the development of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics became a central tenant in discussions on how to ensure access to…
Based on one study from Sweden, the answer is ‘no’. A paper by Johansson and Svensson (2022) use data from Sweden on regional variation in drug spending. First, some background on the Swedish approach for prescription drugs spending. The Swedish national health service offers universal coverage for all residents. The system is decentralized in 21…
An article from the Health Affairs forefront article from Ho and Vertinsky (2022) argues ‘yes’, but the use of any such such information for cost-based pricing is short-sighted. The Ho and Vertinsky say drug cost disclosure would be useful because (i) currently there is little information on the cost of drug development, (ii) it is…
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…
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…
When new drugs are approved, FDA limits their on-label use to the treatment of specific diseases. A key question is whether the definition of a disease should be narrower or broader. Make the disease definition too broad, then there may not be strong evidence from the clinical trial to support its use among these types…
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…
New pharmaceutical products aim to help individuals live longer, healthier lives. However, when new drugs come to market, they are typically indicated for a specific disease. In the real world, however, many individuals face multiple conditions. In fact, 57% of Americans have 2 or more medical conditions and 27% have 5 or more medical conditions.…