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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....

October 1, 2025 Briefs, Policy Proposals, Price and Costs, Studies

SACRAMENTO – As California prepares to restrict access to proven private health insurers for dual eligible Medicare and Medi-Cal patients, the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute – the nonpartisan, California-based, free market think tank – today released a new brief showing that expanding competition—not imposing new government restrictions—is the best way to lower costs, expand access, and improve patient outcomes. Download the new brief at www.medecon.org “California mistakenly believes that reducing health care choices will save...

August 4, 2025 Briefs, Industry Trends, Studies

SACRAMENTO – A new issue brief released today by the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute calls for reforms to expand the reach of the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), a joint Medicare and Medicaid program that delivers comprehensive medical and social care services to lower-income seniors eligible for nursing home-level care so they can live safely at home. Click here to download the brief Expanding PACE’s reach by supporting additional for-profit providers participating...

July 30, 2025 Innovation, Price and Costs

The flaws driving up costs across the broader health care landscape are also driving up the costs for innovative drugs. After all, pharmaceuticals are an integral component used in combination with the broader healthcare system. As a result, spending on medicines both influences and is influenced by the spending on all other healthcare services. Evaluating the total amount of spending on drugs as a share of total healthcare spending provides important perspective, consequently. As Drug Channels notes, “total net drug spending...

July 23, 2025 Price and Costs

The government explicitly grants innovators temporary market exclusivity to provide an opportunity for groundbreaking pharmaceutical companies to recover the costs of capital associated with developing novel treatments. This was one of the express purposes of past federal reform legislation, such as the Hatch-Waxman Act signed in 1984 and the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 (BPCIA). The reality that, since 2000 alone, 750 new medicines have been developed, demonstrating that these acts are achieving their stated purpose. The pharmaceutical...

July 16, 2025 Price and Costs

Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held its first of three listening sessions on the pharmaceutical market. The goal was to discuss reforms that will improve drug affordability by increasing “generic and biosimilar availability” and promoting “competition”. Achieving these goals is essential. The flaw of the first listening session is its focus on the ill-founded claims of “anticompetitive practices” by incumbent manufacturers. This focus demonstrates an inherent misunderstanding of the strengths and flaws of the current pharmaceutical market. Consequently, it will...

May 27, 2025 Price and Costs

A recent executive order from the Trump administration directs the government to implement policies that will lead to U.S. drug prices being pegged to the lower drug prices available in other developed countries. It's hard to imagine a more destructive plan. Importing foreign price controls on prescription drugs would reduce access to existing treatments for everything from rare diseases to cancer. To understand why, consider two recent pieces by Michael Baker for the American Action Forum's "Reality Check-Up: The Truth About...

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...

May 7, 2025 Innovation, Issues, Price and Costs

Read comments submitted to the U.S. Department of Commerce by Sally C. Pipes, PRI President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy, arguing against the imposition of tariffs on pharmaceuticals as part of the Department's examination of pharmaceutical imports and their relevance to U.S. national security interests. Click here to download a copy of Pipes' comments Thank you for inviting public input on the Department's Section 232 examination of pharmaceutical imports and their relevance to U.S. national security interests. As...

April 24, 2025 Issues, Price and Costs

In an interview this month, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., appeared open to the idea of Medicare covering drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy for beneficiaries with obesity. "Ideally, over the long term, we’d like to see . . . those drugs available for people after they try other interventions," he said. Delaying coverage of these breakthrough weight-loss medications is not the right approach. Read the entire op-ed here....

April 23, 2025 Issues, Price and Costs

At the top of the new executive order’s priorities for pharma is the pill penalty, which Trump said threatens innovation and favors biologics. Currently, small molecule drugs are eligible for price negotiations sooner than biologics — nine years versus 13 years — and critics have said the law disincentivizes small molecule R&D. The order asks Kennedy to work with Congress to end “the distortion that undermines relative investment in small molecule prescription drugs.” “We’re already seeing it where research is being skewed...

April 22, 2025 Issues, Price and Costs

More than 4 in 5 Americans blame the pharmaceutical industry’s profits for the high prices of prescription drugs. It’s little wonder, then, that roughly the same share supports placing price controls on prescription drugs through Medicare. The logic is straight out of Robin Hood. Our leaders should take from the “rich” drug companies and give to the “poor” patients. Read the op-ed here....

April 20, 2025 Innovation, Issues

Surveys confirm that most Americans recognize the value of prescription drugs. But the same surveys also show that Americans are worried that they will be unable to afford needed medicines. These conflicting feelings exemplify the inherent tension when it comes to prescription drugs – how do we incentivize innovation to help patients who lack efficacious treatments while also promoting greater affordability for medicines today? Too often, proposals get this balance between innovation and affordability wrong. Read the entire op-ed. ...

April 7, 2025 Innovation, Issues

Rising demand for long-term care is inevitable as more and more baby boomers retire. Meeting this demand will be a challenge. Recent evidence from the PACE program demonstrates that for-profit care providers can help meet this growing demand, but only if the regulatory environment allows it. Read the entire op-ed here....

April 3, 2025 Issues, Policy Proposals

President Donald Trump’s executive order on global tariffs have pushed downward the stocks of biopharma and med-tech companies, even though the impacts of his 10% baseline tariff – which excludes pharmaceuticals – and his reciprocal tariffs affecting about 60 countries across the globe, are still unclear. “The story for the day is there’s still a lot of uncertainties in terms of pharmaceuticals,” said Wayne Winegarden, senior fellow and director of the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research...