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December 24, 2025 Blog, 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][vc_column_text css=""]Recently, PRI President, CEO and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy Sally C. Pipes was in Fort Worth, TX at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) 2025 States and Nation Policy Summit for a discussion about the push for drug price controls and themes of her recent book The World’s Medicine Chest (Encounter Books).  The title of her talk was, “Balancing Access, Affordability and Innovation: The Hidden Costs of Drug Price Controls.” ...

December 17, 2025 Blog, 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][vc_column_text css=""]Recently, PRI President, CEO and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy Sally C. Pipes was in Fort Worth, TX at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) 2025 States and Nation Policy Summit for a discussion about the push for drug price controls and themes of her recent book The World’s Medicine Chest (Encounter Books).  The title of her talk was, “Balancing Access, Affordability and Innovation: The Hidden Costs of Drug Price Controls.” ...

December 10, 2025 Blog, 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][vc_column_text css=""]Recently, PRI President, CEO and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy Sally C. Pipes was in Fort Worth, TX at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) 2025 States and Nation Policy Summit for a discussion about the push for drug price controls and themes of her recent book The World’s Medicine Chest (Encounter Books). The title of her talk was, “Balancing Access, Affordability and Innovation: The Hidden Costs of Drug...

October 8, 2025 Blog, Policy Proposals, 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][vc_column_text css=""]Sen. Sanders and President Trump are reading from the same playbook. They are trying to address a real problem – the U.S. spends way too much on healthcare – but their playbook misdiagnoses the causes. Consequently, their cures will only worsen the problem. Whether it is Sanders vilifying pharmaceutical companies or Trump’s emphasis on imposing price controls, they both allege that drug spending is a primary driver of the nation’s rising healthcare costs....

July 25, 2025 Blog, Briefs, Studies

SACRAMENTO – The Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute – a nonpartisan, California-based, free market think tank – today released a new issue brief warning that efforts by the Trump administration and some Republicans in Congress to embrace and expand the government price controls on prescription drugs – first introduced under the Inflation Reduction Act and signed into law by President Biden in August 2022 – would deal a major blow to American pharmaceutical innovation...

June 16, 2025 Blog

International drug price comparisons aren’t just like comparing apples and oranges, they’re like comparing apples and iPhones. That’s because half of brand drug spending in the U.S. goes to PBMs, 340B hospitals and other middlemen, a dynamic that doesn’t exist in other countries. In some instances, the revenues of some U.S. middlemen exceed the total cost of medicines in other countries by as much as 700 percent. I previously highlighted how estimated rebates and fees PBMs receive for 10 commonly used...

May 22, 2025 Blog, Price and Costs

To Improve Drug Affordability Congress Should Fix the Payment System President Trump has issued an Executive Order (EO) demanding that drug prices in the U.S. equal the lowest price among comparable industrialized countries. This EO fails to understand the complex drug payment system and threatens to harm patients. Demanding that drug prices in the U.S. equal overseas prices is akin to demanding that the price of all expensive handbags should equal the prices for the knockoffs that people purchase from street vendors. Of...

May 20, 2025 Blog, Price and Costs

President Trump and former President Biden don't agree on much. But they appear to have found common cause in calling for government price controls on prescription drugs. Patients will pay dearly, as Michael Baker and Douglas Holtz-Eakin explain in two recent pieces for the American Action Forum's "Reality Check-Up: The Truth About Single-Payer Systems. Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in 2022. It directs the feds to "negotiate" prices for a steadily increasing number of prescription drugs through Medicare. But...

March 24, 2025 Blog, Innovation, Price and Costs

An analysis by the American First Policy Institute released today correctly notes that the drug price controls most OECD countries impose on innovative medicines jeopardize future innovations. Yet, while correctly diagnosing their high cost, the authors still recommend that price controls should be imposed on U.S. patients. Adopting such a policy will worsen health outcomes while potentially raising overall healthcare spending even more. The cost of capital for developing a new drug is $2.9 billion, including post approval research and development costs. Meanwhile, the...

January 17, 2025 Blog, Briefs, Issues, Price and Costs

PRI’s scholars responded to today’s action by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) announcing 15 additional drugs under Medicare Part D that will be subject to government price setting effective January 1, 2027.  The action was authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act signed by President Biden in August 2022. According to Sally C. Pipes, PRI President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy and author of the soon-to-be published book The World’s Medicine Chest: How America Achieved...

August 15, 2024 Blog, Innovation, Policy Proposals, Price and Costs

The federal government has announced the long-awaited results from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) drug price negotiations.[1] The Biden Administration has been crowing that they have achieved “a historic moment that will help lower prescription drug prices for millions of people across America.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The Biden Administration has sold out patients and the hope for future cures to achieve results that pale in comparison to the benefits enabled by efficient market competition. According to...

March 1, 2022 Blog

By Henry Miller and Melissa Hart We're learning more every day about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but it will likely present surprises. The best strategy is still to prevent new infections. Donald Rumsfeld, the two-time secretary of defense (Gerald Ford and George W. Bush administrations), is perhaps best remembered for a response he gave to a question during a 2002 news conference: As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is...

February 28, 2022 Blog

To say that Americans are anxiously awaiting the end of the COVID-19 pandemic would be an understatement. But for patients who have enjoyed the ease of attending doctor's appointments virtually, a return to the way things were pre-pandemic might be bittersweet. That's because onerous restrictions on telemedicine, which lawmakers relaxed when COVID-19 hit, could be reinstated once officials declare the public health emergency over. Fortunately, Congress may not let that happen. Several pieces of legislation are pending that would permanently loosen restrictions on telehealth...

February 22, 2022 Blog, Policy Proposals

It’s budget season in Sacramento. Governor Gavin Newsom’s spending proposal is the largest in the Golden State’s history. There’s no shortage of expensive and misguided policies in his budget. Chief among them is his push to expand Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, to cover all undocumented immigrants. Doing so would make Medi-Cal worse for its legacy beneficiaries and nudge the state closer to the government-run, single-payer system that is the long-term goal of Newsom and his progressive allies. The governor proposes spending...

February 14, 2022 Blog

When President Joe Biden nominated former Obama-era Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf to return to his old post, he made what was widely seen as a safe, if uninspired, choice. He easily sailed through a Dec. 14 Senate committee hearing to vet him. "[Califf] gushed about his love of high-quality data, skillfully navigated questions on hot-button topics like abortion and drug pricing, and even had personal anecdotes about COVID-19 testing and opioid prescribing at the ready," according to Stat. Since then,...

February 9, 2022 Blog

Imagine a visit to the local farmer’s market. When you’re about to pay the farmer for some fruit, a man in a suit and sunglasses interrupts the exchange and offers to negotiate a discount with the farmer. Cool, right? Not so fast. The man in the suit didn’t tell you who the discount was for. He gets the fruit for less, to be sure, but sells it on to you for the original price. He keeps the difference between his purchase price...

February 7, 2022 Blog

With pandemic fatigue becoming ever more intense, there is increasing speculation about when the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, might become “endemic” – a time when outbreaks will be more modest and manageable and we can “coexist” with the virus. That juncture has been described as when the virus has become “annoying but rarely deadly or disruptive.” Unfortunately, there are no quantitative milestones that tell us when we’ve arrived. It’s really a judgment by individuals and society, and prematurely concluding that we’ve...

February 7, 2022 Blog, Industry Trends

Upon facing declining revenue prospects, physicians are shuttering their private, independent practices to partner up with larger hospitals that have near-monopolies on care in the regions they serve. This trend is depressing news for most Americans. Further concentration of market power in these health systems ultimately results in less personalized care and higher overall costs for patients. The effect of the decrease in independent medical practice Medicare physician’s pay has increased by 11% over the past 20 years. The overhead costs of operating an independent medical...

January 31, 2022 Blog

Improving vulnerable populations’ access to medicines is clearly important. But something is amiss when a program that is supposed to improve access to healthcare has turned into a cash cow for hospitals. Yet, that is what has happened to the obscure 340B drug discount program. Too many hospitals across Massachusetts and the US are qualifying for large 340B financial subsidies while not providing greater access to care for the intended population. In Massachusetts, 340B hospitals include some large institutions such as...

January 10, 2022 Blog

By Henry I. Miller and Drew L. Kershen It's no secret that Congress sometimes does things – including creating laws – that make little sense and that are contrary to the public interest. One of the most egregious of those laws has just taken effect. The subject – labeling of foods that have been "genetically modified," or "bioengineered" — is somewhat obscure, but the measure, in the form of a Department of Agriculture regulation that was mandated by the law — affects...