Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Perspectives: The Obvious Solution For Cutting Drug Prices Could Squeeze Out Innovation
The New York Times: High Drug Prices Are Bad. Cutting Them Could Be Worse.
It’s easy to be outraged by high drug prices. Yet under current circumstances, simply slashing them could make matters worse.That may be hard to see at first. After all, the case against soaring drug prices is being widely and persuasively made. Even the prestigious biology journal Cell recently published a commentary with the provocative title “How Much Longer Will We Put Up With $100,000 Cancer Drugs?” Donald J. Trump once railed that drug companies are “getting away with murder.” (Sendhil Mullainathan, 6/30)
The Washington Post: Martin Shkreli’s Trial Shows Just How Angry People Are About Drug Prices
Martin Shkreli isn't actually on trial for buying an obscure antiparasitic drug used by AIDS patients and jacking up the price astronomically, but he might as well be. Three days into Shkreli's trial for alleged securities fraud -- for an issue unrelated to his notorious pharmaceutical price-hike --potential jurors kept circling back to his infamous decision to buy a little-known, little-used drug that was invented before he was born and raise the price overnight, from $13.50 to $750 a pill. (Carolyn Johnson, 6/29)
Morning Consult: The Truth Behind Drug Prices And Innovation
Virtually all consumers want the most innovative products and services as inexpensively as possible. Nowhere is this more acute than the health care sector, where quality of life — and life itself — is at stake. The news cycle is replete with shock-value stories of prices for medicine, from Martin Shkreli to the EpiPen. While these flashpoint events have already been addressed through public pressure and investigations. They fuel a larger narrative that drug costs are rising too fast. (Steven Tepp, 7/5)
Bloomberg Businessweek: The Crazy Math Behind Drug Prices
David Hernandez, a 44-year-old restaurant worker and Type 1 diabetic, didn’t have insurance from 2011 through 2014 and often couldn’t afford insulin—a workhorse drug whose list price has risen more than 270 percent over the past decade. As a result of his skimping on dosages, Hernandez in 2011 suffered permanent blindness in his left eye, and three years later he experienced kidney failure. He’s since received a lifesaving kidney transplant covered by Medicare and has drug coverage under a New Jersey program for the disabled. But Hernandez’s eligibility expires next January, at which time he’ll have to pay about $300 a month out of pocket for insulin. “I don’t really have that kind of money,” he says. (Paul Barrett and Robert Langreth, 6/29)
Des Moines Register: Blaming Sick People Does Not Lower Drug Prices
A Des Moines Register editorial last week reported on two Washington lawmakers, a Democrat and a Republican, who each have children with Type 1 diabetes. They are calling on the health industry to explain why insulin is so expensive. The price of insulin has tripled in recent years, even for older forms of the drug. One costing $21 a vial two decades ago has increased to $255. The retail price for many is frequently about $300 per vial, and diabetics commonly use two to six vials per month. (7/4)
Fortune: Why Drug Price Hikes Are Still The Norm
Having now decamped to their home sanctuaries for the Fourth of July weekend, Senate Republicans may get a momentary break from the pressure to have to vote on a Trumpcare bill their leadership wants, the President sort-of seems to want—and four-fifths of Americans appear to detest. (Clifton Leaf, 6/30)
