Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Perspectives On Drugs Costs: A Misunderstanding About 'Sunk Costs'; Insurers' Role In Pricing
Morning Consult: A Path Forward For Lowering Prescription Drug Prices
It’s no secret that prescription drug prices are the fastest rising part of our health care system. That’s especially true in the cases of specialty and life-saving medications used to treat cancer, hepatitis C, and other rare diseases and ailments. But price increases are also prevalent among more common prescription medicines used by millions of Americans. The totality of these unsustainable, across-the-board price increases is impacting patients and those seeking access to such medications; it is also weighing down our health care system and the U.S. economy. (Len Nichols, 7/19)
Health Affairs: Insurers Can Reduce Drug Prices, If Policymakers Let Them
hilst decrying rapid increases in drug spending and prices, elected officials have actually made it increasingly difficult for insurers to do anything about it. As payers, insurers are the only parties in the health care system who have both the means and the incentive to counter drug firms’ pricing power. For example, insurers have aggressively steered patients from branded to generic drugs, saving billions in the process. However, much of the growth in drug spending is attributable to new drugs that do not yet face generic competition. (David Howard, 7/14)
Fortune: Drug Companies Really Don’t Care About The Price Hike Backlash
Companies continued to raise prices significantly in Q1. Big pharma’s widespread habit of regularly raising the price of their medicines has galvanized public outrage and given 2016 political candidates a convenient piñata. But new data suggest that, so far, the outrage is still more bark than bite. (Sy Mukherjee, 7/14)
The News & Observer: Step Therapy Needed To Keep Drug Costs Down
Step therapy has been in place in this country for decades. It is a longtime approach to prescriptions intended to help make health care affordable. With drug prices skyrocketing, step therapy is a necessary tool to balance out the push for higher prices by drug companies. (Brian Caveney, 7/14)
Huffington Post: Gilead Sciences: Price Gouger, Tax Dodger
If you think the pharmaceutical industry has stolen all it can from the American people through its price gouging, think again. Even as they’re pricing medications as high as the market can bear and beyond, drug corporations are getting big taxpayer subsidies and then dodging taxes on the resulting huge profits. ... A recent report from Americans for Tax Fairness reveals a particularly blatant example of this triple theft. Gilead Sciences, maker of hepatitis drugs that debuted at a thousand dollars a pill - and partly discovered through federal research grants - has paid little in U.S. taxes as its profits have soared. (Frank Clemente, 7/18)
