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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...

September 24, 2024 Price and Costs

Last week, a House subcommittee held a hearing on pharmacy benefit managers and their impact on the prices patients pay for prescription drugs.The hearing speaks to voters' concerns. Republicans and Democrats alike have identified the cost of prescription drugs as their No. 2 health care concern, according to polling this month from KFF.And PBMs deserve congressional scrutiny. These middlemen have used their enormous influence in the drug market to make prescription medications unaffordable for a sizable share of patients. Read the...

September 18, 2024 Innovation, Price and Costs

In a patently politicized press release, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) who is  Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, claims that the U.S. price of Ozempic is too high. As evidence, he cites generic companies that claim they can sell Ozempic for less than $100 a month, an inherently flawed JAMA study that claims that these same diabetes drugs can be profitably produced for less than $5 a month, and inaccurate price comparisons with other countries. Debunking...

September 16, 2024 Price and Costs

It's easier to have a car or refrigerator shipped to your home these days than a prescription. To get even the most common prescription drug still requires a visit to the doctor, a trip to the pharmacy, and a convoluted series of negotiations between insurers, middlemen, and pharmaceutical companies. Fortunately, that's starting to change. In recent months, drug companies Pfizer and Eli Lilly have begun rolling out direct-to-consumer programs that let patients purchase basic prescriptions remotely. Read the full article at Forbes...

September 9, 2024 Policy Proposals, Price and Costs

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) effectively imposed price controls on a portion of the pharmaceutical market. Worse, by design, the reach of these price controls will expand every year. The intended consequence of the policy is to reduce overall spending on drugs, but all regulations have unintended consequences, too. While these consequences may be unintended, they need not be unexpected. In the case of the IRA, these unintended impacts now threaten to undermine the entire purpose of the policy. Read the full...

August 27, 2024 Price and Costs

Medicare this month announced the end of its first round of "negotiations" over the prices of 10 prescription drugs covered under the Part D benefit as authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act. The results the Biden administration has delivered are a lot less dramatic than they're letting on. According to the White House, the program will save the federal government an estimated $6 billion in 2026, the first year the new prices will be in effect, while reducing costs for seniors...

August 26, 2024 Innovation

The ill effects from abusive lawsuits are well documented and include higher costs for consumers, reduced economic output, and diminished innovation. The adverse impacts on innovation are particularly troubling. Not only is continued invention necessary for expanding our prosperity, but it is also key for mitigating problems such as global climate change or finding new technologies and treatments for troubling health conditions....

August 26, 2024 Price and Costs

Dozens of state and local governments are suing drug companies and pharmacy benefit managers, alleging that they're unfairly hiking the price of insulin. The plaintiffs say they're fighting for patients. They're less forthcoming about the fact that they've profited handsomely from the system they're now decrying. For years, these cities and states have insisted on a cut—if not all—of the rebates that these pharmacy benefit managers extract from drug makers when negotiating over whether and how to cover specific drugs.  ...

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...

August 12, 2024 Issues, Price and Costs

Any day now, the Biden administration will publish the prices it has set for ten drugs covered by Medicare's Part D prescription drug benefit. These price controls will provide "meaningful financial relief for millions of people with Medicare," administration officials say. Many seniors are about to see just how false that promise is. Millions of beneficiaries won't see a nickel in relief at the pharmacy counter. In fact, their costs will go up. Click to read the full article in Forbes. ...

August 5, 2024 Innovation, Issues

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held a hearing last month with the CEOs of the nation's three largest pharmacy benefit managers: CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx. The hearing coincided with a new report from the committee on the outsized role these prescription-drug middlemen play in determining what people pay for their medicines. Unsurprisingly, the CEO confab revealed little that lawmakers didn't already know. Click to read the full article in Newsmax. ...

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...

July 23, 2024 Coronavirus-Alternate2, Issues

"We have seen complete fabrications become some people's accepted reality," Dr. Anthony Fauci laments in his new memoir "On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service." Surely the good doctor means to speak about his ideological foes, who have long decried the heavy-handed response to COVID-19 that Dr. Fauci symbolizes. But today, more than four years after the world first met COVID-19, it's fair to wonder whether Dr. Fauci's depiction of reality is the one that's fabricated. Click to read the full article in Newsmax. ...

July 22, 2024 Issues, Price and Costs

Earlier this month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved donanemab, a novel treatment for Alzheimer's disease that Eli Lilly will sell under the brand name Kisunla. The drug targets amyloid, a type of protein that builds up in the brains of people with the disease. It was shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer's by 35% over 18 months compared to a placebo. Donanemab's approval comes about a year after the agency gave the green light to lecanemab, another monoclonal antibody proven to slow...

June 27, 2024 Issues, Price and Costs

House lawmakers recently introduced legislation that would at last repair a program meant to provide low-income Americans with affordable medicine. In theory, the federal 340B Program, named after the section of the 1992 law establishing it, allows hospitals serving underprivileged groups to buy medications at steep discounts. The idea was to improve access to drugs in areas where price was a barrier. The problem is that the law has a loophole big enough to drive an ambulance through. Hospitals have exploited it,...

June 25, 2024 Issues, Price and Costs

The Biden administration proposed a rule this month that would remove medical debt from credit reports. It's sure to be popular, if for no other reason than that it's expected to boost credit scores for the more than 15 million people with such debt by an average of 20 points. But as with so many of President Joe Biden's signature health reforms, his latest ploy fails even the most basic cost-benefit analysis. Implicit in the proposal are two assumptions. Click to read the...

June 25, 2024 Issues, Price and Costs

There's never been a better time to get lung cancer in the United States. That may sound morbid. But this deadliest of cancers appears to be losing a bit of its punch. The combination of smoking reduction, increased screening, and pharmaceutical advancements has caused the lung cancer death rate to drop 20% over the past five years, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal earlier this month. The last leg of that three-legged stool is the most impressive. The Journal highlighted a suite of new treatments...

June 11, 2024 Briefs, Innovation, Resources, Studies

A new brief released today by the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute provides the latest evidence that biosimilar competition is saving patients billions – and additional competition would increase savings even more. Click to download the brief From 2019-2023, patients saved $15 billion from biosimilar competition.  Had there been competition during the same period for two other biologics, Humira and Enbrel, patients would have saved another $13 billion, for a total of $28 billion. “The growing...