Author: Wayne Winegarden

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May 18, 2021 Price and Costs

Proponents from states such as California, Oregon, and Connecticut all claim that “pay for delay” legislation is necessary to rein in the pharmaceutical industry’s anti-competitive practices. If implemented, the bills will impose a high cost on patients by raising the costs of medicines and delaying generic entry into the market. Pay for delay tactics refers to the practice of patented drug manufacturers paying off generic manufacturers for the sole purpose of delaying the launch of competitive products. When successful, such tactics...

May 16, 2021 Innovation, Issues, Price and Costs

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1621192674245{padding-right: 40px !important;}"]DOWNLOAD THE PDF In October 2019, the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute released its second study documenting the savings potential enabled by biosimilars. Biosimilars are medicines manufactured in, or derived from, biological sources that are developed to be similar to FDA-approved reference products. Biosimilars are approved to compete in nine biologic drug classes in the U.S., and are available in seven of these drug...

April 26, 2021 Blog, Policy Proposals

The U.S. House of Representatives is once again considering “The Lower Drug Costs Now Act”. It was a bad idea in the last Congress, and it is still bad policy today. If it becomes law, this Act (H.R. 3) empowers the federal government to negotiate prices on select drugs for the entire country. By statute, the government will base the negotiations on the prices charged in other nations. Since these nations impose stringent price controls on drugs, H.R. 3 is a...

April 14, 2021 Issues, Policy Proposals

Policymakers across the globe are attempting to vilify the same private companies that have been invaluable partners in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. If these efforts are successful, it will be patients who are harmed the most. Globally, the World Trade Organization (WTO) wants to waive the patent rights for the companies that developed effective COVID-19 vaccines in record breaking time. Here in the U.S., states as diverse as Arkansas, California, and Texas are considering policies that use the pandemic as an...

March 31, 2021 Blog, Policy Proposals, Value

Despite the constant stream of dour news about drug prices, actions by employer-sponsored plans are providing reasons for hope. Instead of accepting the high-cost of originator biologics, companies as diverse as Disney, Costco, and CalPERS are “asserting their own desire to see biosimilars implemented among their employees.” Capturing these savings during the pandemic only increases their importance. Biologic medicines are high valued drugs that have meaningfully improved patient health, particularly for people living with cancer and auto-immune diseases. These medicines are also...

March 17, 2021 Briefs, Price and Costs, Studies

A commonly-used analysis to determine a medicine’s value is based on flawed methodologies that would diminish innovation and access, finds a new report released today by the nonpartisan Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute. “Cost effectiveness reports may provide precise estimates, but there is no reason to believe that these estimates accurately reflect the value of medicines,” said Dr. Wayne Winegarden, the brief’s author.  “The documented biases in their value assessments should raise serious concerns that...

March 4, 2021 Blog, Industry Trends

Patent trolls have been a plague on innovators for too long. Patent trolls are entities that obtain patents (sometimes obscure patents) for the sole purpose of threatening or filing lawsuits in court and then using the prospect of costly litigation to extort unwarranted payouts from an innovative company. The risks and costs created by these entities are a clear and present danger to entrepreneurship and innovation. A goal of public policy should be to make it more costly for frivolous patent...

February 9, 2021 CoronaVirusSlide3

Title: Prescription Drug Prices in the U.S. Are Twice as High: Here’s Why By Christopher Curley Most people in the United States know that prescription drugs can be expensive. How expensive? Prescription drugs in the United States on average cost around 2.5 times more than those same drugs do in other Western countries, according to a new report from the nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, RAND Corporation. . . . . . “Since gross prices have been growing much faster than net prices — in fact, over...

December 9, 2020 Briefs, Price and Costs

Tearing down drug “rebate walls” that increase patient costs and block access to cheaper and often more effective medications would increase competition, lower out-of-pocket costs, and improve health outcomes, finds a new brief released today by the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute. Click to download the brief “America’s patients are harmed because they do not benefit from large, fast-growing rebates when purchasing their medicines,” writes the brief’s author, Dr. Wayne Winegarden, director of PRI’s Center...

September 29, 2020 Briefs, Price and Costs

A new brief released today by the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute found that reforms mandating drug rebates benefit patients rather than payers would lower overall health care costs and help patients with expensive out-of-pocket drug costs. Click here to download the brief “Ironically, the current drug concession system is raising patient costs,” write the briefs authors, Wayne Winegarden and Robert Popovian. “Mandating that all drug concessions must benefit the patients purchasing the medicines is a...

September 28, 2020 Blog, Coronavirus-Alternate2

Politicians continue perpetuating the myth that drug price controls are the necessary cure for the country’s healthcare affordability problems. Whether it is Speaker Pelosi’s “The Lower Drug Costs Now Act”, or President Trump’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) and Drug Importation Executive Orders, these policies are destined to fail. Undoubtedly, there are problems with the drug pricing system that harms patients, and reforms that fix these problems are urgently needed. But, adopting the ill-fated price controls that are implemented in other industrialized countries will create new...

September 15, 2020 Policy Proposals

President Trump and senior advisor Jared Kushner claim that the most favored nation executive order signed by the President over the weekend is necessary for drug pricing because “the U.S. shouldn’t pay more than other European countries for the same treatments.” This policy will make things worse, not better. If the president and his son-in-law applied their flawed logic consistently, then there is an even greater economic disparity that requires fixing. People living in Manhattan or San Francisco are paying more than other...

September 15, 2020 Industry Trends

Pacific Research Institute senior fellow and economist Dr. Wayne Winegarden talks free market energy, California rolling power blackouts, and optimistic solutions to energy policy on The Roth Effect with Carol Roth. Winegarden also discusses his recent studies that challenge green energy, fracking, electric vehicles, and more. [embed]https://mp3.ricochet.com/2020/09/Roth_Effect_66.mp3[/embed]...

September 3, 2020 Price and Costs

Title: AB 72 brief analyzes impact of medical billing reform law that's had bad consequences for patients and practitioners By Sarah Downey, Northern California Record A new policy brief about the impact of California AB 72 finds that the law – designed to alleviate surprise medical billing – while well-intentioned also has unintended consequences that have increased medical costs and affected quality of care. The Pacific Research Institute (PRI) brief, “The Menace of Medical Rate Setting: The Case of California’s AB 72,” is...

August 19, 2020 Briefs, Price and Costs

SAN FRANCISCO – California’s surprise medical billing law (Assembly Bill 72) – which imposes price controls on the rates out-of-network physicians can charge at in-network facilities – is hurting patients with lower quality care, reduced access, and higher health care system costs, finds a new brief released today by the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute. Click here to download the brief “California’s surprise medical billing law has created unintended consequences that are increasing healthcare costs and...

August 18, 2020 Coronavirus

PRI's Dr. Wayne Winegarden joins the Pegasus Institute to discuss the danger of price controls in health care including hurting rural health care providers and threatening the already thin margins many hospitals operate on. Winegarden also talks about the impact of the coronavirus and COVID-19. Pegasus Institute · The Problem With Price Controls in Healthcare with Wayne Winegarden of Pacific Research Institute...

August 14, 2020 Coronavirus

The value of innovative medicines has absolutely nothing to do with its cost of production. Yet, not only does this myth persist, it appears to be growing. In the latest example, an article in the Journal of Virus Eradication claims that drugs being repurposed in the hopes they might be effective treatments for Covid-19, such as remdesivir and sofosbuvir, could be profitable at very low costs. How do the authors come up with this conclusion? They claim that the costs of production range between...

July 31, 2020 Issues, Price and Costs

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1596236774320{padding-right: 40px !important;}"]DOWNLOAD THE PDF In October 2019, the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute, under the direction of Dr. Wayne Winegarden, released its second study documenting the savings potential enabled by biosimilars. Biosimilars are medicines manufactured in, or derived from, biological sources that are developed to be similar to FDA-approved reference products. Biosimilars are only approved to compete in nine biologic drug classes in the U.S.,...

July 24, 2020 Issues, Policy Proposals, Price and Costs

President Reagan famously said, “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government and I’m here to help”. It is time for President Trump to learn this wisdom. Along with Speaker Pelosi, Senator Sanders, and Representative Ocasio-Cortez, President Trump seems to believe that giving the government the authority to impose price controls on medicines will help patients. And, following the signing ceremony on Friday, he is now officially trying to make government price controls a reality. Of...