Author: Pacific Research Institute

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January 16, 2026 Briefs, Resources

SACRAMENTO – California-based free market think tank the Pacific Research Institute announced today that it has filed an amicus curiae brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear two cases challenging the federal government’s new prescription drug pricing program enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act. The cases, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and Bristol Myers Squibb Co. v. Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, involve the...

November 7, 2024 Innovation

The Pacific Research Institutehas filed an amicus curiae brief in a case before the California Supreme Court that has the potential to devastate innovation in future life-saving medications. The Gilead Tenofovir Cases surround questions of the liability of pharmaceutical companies over their decisions on drug development timelines. In the case, the plaintiffs filed cases against the Gilead pharmaceutical company over the company’s failure to bring an alternative medication used to treat AIDS, hepatitis, and other diseases to the marketplace called TAF under...

October 9, 2024 Innovation, Multimedia, Policy Proposals, Price and Costs

Low-cost biosimilars generated $19 billion in savings value in today’s dollars in 2023. But obstacles in the current drug pricing system meant that billions of dollars in potential savings were left unrealized. Join the Pacific Research Institute’s Center for Medical Economics and Innovation and panel of experts for a brief, informative webinar discussing how potential reforms can improve competition, generate more savings, and better serve patients and taxpayers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m7lNXr_dAw...

July 26, 2024 Issues, Price and Costs

By Anthony M. DiGiorgio, DO, MHA and Wayne Winegarden, PhD Enacted by the US Congress in 1992 to help entities serving lower-income and uninsured patients stretch their resources, the 340B Drug Pricing Program mandated drug companies give large discounts to covered entities (CEs). Judging the program on its outcomes, not its intentions, there is growing evidence that the 340B program fails to achieve its primary goal. Giving discounts to entities, rather than to patients, primarily shifts resources from payers and drug companies to...

May 8, 2024 Briefs

SACRAMENTO – A new brief released today by the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute analyzes a Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study cited by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) to justify drug price controls, finding it was deeply flawed and would put patients at risk of losing access to cutting-edge medications if implemented. Click to download “Sen. Sanders uses a flawed analysis to promote price controls on innovative drugs, which would  jeopardize the health...

March 28, 2024 Issues, Policy Proposals

By Sally Pipes & Wayne Winegarden  Question: What’s worse than government bureaucrats in Washington declaring the value of your medicine? Answer: Bureaucrats from Boston, London, Ottawa and Diemen establishing that value. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. It is the direction that the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review is pushing our healthcare system. ICER is a Boston-based private organization that has granted itself the right to declare how much a new medicine is worth to you. This is as troubling as it...

February 9, 2024 Issues, Price and Costs

By Sally Pipes & Wayne Winegarden There they go again. Free-market advocates are jeopardizing pro-market healthcare reforms based on an inability to recognize how cronyism tars the current industry dynamics. That distinction between companies operating in a free market and companies using cronyism to flourish in a government-dominated market is the key. At question are the operations of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). PBMs serve large insurers, employer-sponsored health plans, and government health plans. The three largest PBMs control nearly 80% of the...

October 18, 2023 Price and Costs

The pharmaceutical supply chain is rife with misaligned incentives. Due to these disincentives, policies that make sense under most market conditions create problems that harm patients. Coupling the fees of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to the discounts they negotiate exemplifies this problem. Read the full article by Sally Pipes and Wayne Winegarden at Forbes.com...

September 21, 2023 Issues, Price and Costs

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are examining how industry middlemen known as Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) are driving up healthcare costs. Rightly so. PBMs have been manipulating the complex and opaque drug pricing system at the expense of patients for far too long and Congress must act. Read the full article by Sally Pipes and Wayne Winegarden at RealClearHealth...

August 28, 2023 Multimedia, Studies

Watch as the Professor buys a bike for Penny to show how the broken health care payment system hurts Medicare patients. They explore that by creating a support program based on income, we can help Medicare patients buy private insurance instead of being stuck with poor government care. READ THE STUDY   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvlwyvVGcNY...

August 4, 2023 Briefs, Multimedia, Studies

Watch as Penny is unhappy that she has to enter the geography bee instead of the science fair due to bureaucratic rules at school. The Professor explores how, much in the same way, eliminating unnecessary barriers can produce a more efficient and productive health care system. To learn more, read the Coverage Denied series at www.medecon.org   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmLoJWQ935M...

January 26, 2023 Issues, Policy Proposals, Price and Costs

A group of 25 senators, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), requested that HHS Sec. Xavier Becerra exercise march-in rights for Xtandi (enzalutamide), a prostate cancer therapeutic. March-in rights give the government the right to take a license for itself if it helped to fund the product owner's research . . . “Net prices, which take into account discounts and rebates, have been going down for several years,” Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D., senior fellow, business and economics, Pacific Research Institute, told BioSpace. “Gross...

August 9, 2022 Issues, Policy Proposals

By Henry Miller & Stanley Young Are you confused about conflicting “research” findings on certain foods’ effects on our health? It would hardly be surprising. First, butter is the enemy; then, it’s solid margarine. Is caffeine good or bad for your heart? For a time, beta-carotene supplements are thought to prevent cancer — until they are found to increase the risk of lung cancer in smokers. And finally, does a woman’s diet at conception determine the sex of her fetus? When you do a...

August 2, 2022 Coronavirus, Issues

By Henry Miller and Josh Bloom President Biden’s bout with COVID-19 is illustrative of the debate currently raging about “Paxlovid rebound” — the recurrence of symptoms and of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 after a seemingly successful five-day treatment course of Paxlovid. This phenomenon is not unusual, and it suggests that regulators should modify the terms of the drug’s Emergency Use Authorization. When he headed the Food & Drug Administration, Dr. Frank Young used to admonish his minions that sometimes regulations need to...

June 14, 2022 Coronavirus, Issues

By Henry I. Miller and Josh Bloom Decades ago, a case report (relating the experience with a single patient) was published which described how a person’s flu symptoms improved after a bowl of chicken soup, but then reappeared. The article was meant as a kind of parody of the old maxim that chicken soup is the best cure for a cold. Pediatricians occasionally see a similar phenomenon when children are treated with an antibiotic for an ear infection; they may then...