- Don’t let drug companies run Nevada’s health care industry (thenevadaindependent.com)Medication prices could be capped under proposed Nevada bill (reviewjournal.com)
Members of both political parties agree that keeping life-saving prescription drug prices reasonable saves lives; however, there is an ongoing debate about the best way to accomplish this goal...For many Democrats, government-imposed price controls are the solution. This past legislative session, they passed Assembly Bill 250, which would prevent the major drug manufacturers from inflating the cost of our prescription drugs by having the government set these products’ prices...Republicans, on the other hand, argue that promoting marketplace competition is a more effective solution than more government. That’s why Gov. Joe Lombardo rightly vetoed this bill...Regardless of where one falls on the political spectrum, everyone in this state should agree that regulating away the private market entities that help restrain the drug companies’ ability to rig prices higher shouldn’t be the answer. And yet, that’s exactly what the drugmakers are telling them to do...READ MORE
- Dr. Scott Atlas warns COVID-19 shutdown will cost Americans millions of years of life (news.yahoo.com)The COVID-19 shutdown will cost Americans millions of years of life (thehill.com)Congressman Biggs and Dr. Scott Atlas break down the scientific analysis of COVID-19
Dr. Scott Atlas, senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center, repeats call to end coronavirus lockdowns...WATCH VIDEO
- Elizabeth Warren: It’s time to let the government manufacture generic drugs (washingtonpost.com)
Forty-seven states and the Justice Department are investigating a price-fixing conspiracy that’s driving up the cost of generic drugs in the United States. One investigator called it “most likely the largest cartel in the history of the United States.” This crisis calls for action. That is why I’m introducing legislation to authorize the public manufacture of generic drugs wherever drug companies have warped markets to drive up prices....Drug companies use the “free market” as a shield against any effort to reduce prices for families. But they’re not operating in a free market; they’re operating in a market that’s rigged to line their pockets and limit competition. The entire pharmaceutical industry in reality runs on government-granted monopolies, mostly in the form of long-term patent protections...
- Promoting Competition To Address Pharmaceutical Prices (healthaffairs.org)
Under ideal market conditions, competition among producers of a commercial good can drive down prices. The market for pharmaceuticals, however, is inefficient in many ways, leading to rapid price increases in recent years, even for some drugs without patent protection. This brief surveys the two principal types of pharmaceutical competition—inter-brand and brand/generic—and examines the reasons they may fail to produce lower prices for patients, including the absence of information on comparative efficacy, lack of federal agency authority to consider drugs’ value, narrow drug substitution laws, and laws that prohibit formulary exclusion. The brief then reviews the policy interventions that could help address these shortcomings. Such proposals include increasing the efficiency of generic drug approval, allowing temporary importation of drugs during domestic shortages or price fluctuations, and discouraging the improper use of patent exclusivities.
- An Imperfect Market
- Inter-Brand Competition
- Price As A Signal
- Imperfect Information
- Legal Mandates On Purchasers
- Brand/Generic Competition
- Exclusivities
- Effective Inter-Brand Competition
- Competition Policy Options
- Stalemate Over Exclusivity Duration
- More Efficient Generic Entry
- Medicaid’s warning on government healthcare (washingtonexaminer.com)
One reason why Medicaid isn't so good is that many doctors won't actually accept Medicaid patients...If you rely upon the health insurance system for the poor, you'll likely not be able to get medical treatment in many places. Seeing as medical coverage is designed to provide access to treatment when needed, the system doesn't seem to work all that well. This is not a good thing. After all, a bit of bad luck, and one of us could be relying on Medicaid...READ MORE
- Former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb says some claims about health benefits of CBD are ‘pretty hokey’ (cnbc.com)
Scott Gottlieb (Former FDA Commissioner) warns that health benefit claims about CBD have gotten well ahead of what science actually knows about the substance...“The idea that you can put it in dog food and it’s going to calm your dog ... I think that’s pretty hokey,” he says...CBD is not a “benign compound,” and regulations will be needed to protect people from possible unknown side effects, Gottlieb said...READ MORE
- FDA’s continuing use of ‘black box’ for antidepressants ignores the harms of this warning (statnews.com)
The Food and Drug Administration’s “black box” warnings and advisories give important safety information about drugs. But they can sometimes go too far and harm more people than they help...Take the FDA’s highly publicized warnings that taking antidepressants increases the risk of suicidality...among children, adolescents, and young adults. We have evidence, as do many others, that these warnings have decreased youths’ access to mental health care and increased suicide attempts...In October 2004, the FDA required a so-called “black box warning” of this risk to be printed on the labels of all antidepressant drugs. It was implemented in January 2005. Two years later, the FDA extended the same warning to include young adults, again based on industry studies...There’s no question that antidepressants can cause harm if used inappropriately. But the FDA failed to recognize — and still won’t acknowledge — that the harms of its public advisories and black box warning on antidepressants for young people more than outweigh the benefits...
- NACDS challenges WSJ on pharmacy value (chaindrugreview.com)Letting the Docs Dispense - Should patients have to make a trip to the drugstore to fill a prescription? (pay wall) (wsj.com)
In a letter-to-the-editor, National Association of Chain Drug Stores President and CEO Steven Anderson took extremely strong issue with a recent Wall Street Journal editorial that ignored the unique role of pharmacies and pharmacists in patient health, medication safety, healthcare cost reduction and crisis response...The newspaper referred to the pharmacy as a “needless middleman” – a point that Anderson confronted vigorously by detailing the trusted value that pharmacies deliver in the face of extreme barriers and often unfair and unsustainable reimbursement policies...READ MORE
- Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine (americanthinker.com)
Concern over China's territorial, military, and economic aggressiveness has been building over the past decade as the country is increasingly perceived as a threat to the United States, U.S. Asian allies, and the West. In China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America's Dependence on China for Medicine (Prometheus Books, 2018), authors Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh explore yet another peril: China as the largest global supplier of ingredients for many prescription drugs, over-the-counter products, and vitamins...China Rx is an important wake-up call for American citizens and government officials about the danger of our dependency on a hostile superpower and the need to safeguard our drug supply, American jobs, and industries and national security.
- Policy Strategies For Aligning Price And Value For Brand-Name Pharmaceuticals (healthaffairs.org)
Systemic factors in the US health care system lead to greater pricing power for drug manufacturers than is the case in other countries. The result is higher prices that are often poorly aligned with the degree of added benefit for patients and the health system. To achieve the difficult balance between necessary incentives for innovation and affordability, many economists favor “value-based” pricing, in which the price for a new drug reflects an assessment of the comparative effectiveness of the drug compared to other available treatments. In this brief we explore the different varieties of value-based pricing, and we outline several measures through which drug competition may be increased, supported by regulatory steps and payment mechanisms to bring drug prices into greater alignment with their underlying clinical value.
- Using Competition To Align Price With Value
- Accelerated Approval Of Competitors
- Contingent Exclusivity Periods
- Reimportation
- Using Comparative Effectiveness To Align Price With Value
- Negotiation And Value-Based Benchmarks
- Targeted, Value-Based Rebates
- Indication-Specific Pricing
- Outcomes-Based Agreements