Wayne Winegarden on Latest Push for So-Called Drug Pricing Reform: “Our system is messed up”

Wayne Winegarden on Latest Push for So-Called Drug Pricing Reform: “Our system is messed up”

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 prices – what Sen. Warren (probably) is talking about – have been going up in order to get discounts into the system. Our system is messed up.”