Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
I’ve mentioned this in a number of previous posts, but large scale importation from Canada won’t work to bring down US drugs prices. The US market is too large and Canada does not have the supply to meet US demand. Further, policies proposing drug importation from Canada assume that Canadians will be passive actors in…
Last month, the US Food and Drug Administration published a final rule providing guidance for allowing drug importation from Canada. The drugs have to be approved by the Government of Canada’s Health Canada’s Health Products and Food Branch (HPFB) and can be imported by States or Indian Tribes, or in certain circumstances by pharmacists or…
A recent paper in BMJ Open by Moore et al. (2020) aims to estimate the cost of pivotal trials for recently approved drugs. The authors use the IQVIA CostPro Mid-Level Tool to estimate the cost of these trials. Note that a pivotal trials is one that provides ‘substantial evidence’ of benefit to justify marketing approval,…
I have written about the 340b program a number of times on this blog in the past (e.g., “The 340B Program: An Overview“, “340B Facts and Figures“). A new commentary by Thomas and Schulman (2020) in Health Services Research provides some additional information. For instance, why was 340B originally enacted? Blame the Medicaid Drug Rebate…
As for other “moneyed interests,” no fewer than 30 Big Pharma and small biotech firms are racing for treatments and vaccines. Moderna turned around a vaccine batch in just 42 days. Gilead Sciences is already in Phase 3 trials for its remdesivir treatment for Covid-19. Straight off President Trump’s announcement of FDA approval for antimalarial…
A paper by Hernandez et al. (2020) in JAMA examines trends in branded drug prices using data from SSR Health between 2007 and 2018. The authors find the following: From 2007 to 2018, list prices increased by 159% (95% CI, 137%-181%), or 9.1% per year, while net prices increased by 60% (95% CI, 36%-84%), or…
Kaiser Family Foundation has a nice overview of how Medicaid pays for prescription drugs. Below, I except from this helpful piece, but do check out the full article here. One point that many may not realize is that State Medicaid Agencies do not actually buy pharmaceuticals directly from manufacturers. Rather, they reimburse retail pharmacies that…
New drugs have the potential to not only extend patients’ lives but also change their quality of life. But are the drugs approved by the FDA reflective of the broader US population? If there were lots of drugs developed for men but not women,or whites but not blacks, health gains from new drugs would be…
While at the national level, there has been much press about President Trump’s aim of compelling pharmaceutical companies to disclose prices on TV ads (since blocked in the Judiciary), at the state level changes are also afoot. A number of states are making moves to compel pharmaceutical companies to disclose drug prices. Others are compelling…
Consider the case of two drugs, Drug A and Drug B. Both drugs treat patients with the same disease. Further, assume they are close substitutes. When Drug A loses it’s patent and generics can enter the market, one would expect Drug A’s market share (brand + generic) to rise. In fact, Drug A’s market share…