Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Drug Costs’
July 13th, 2018 at 9:37 am
The Price and Importance of Innovation

America’s pharmaceutical innovators lead the world, saving and improving people’s lives on a daily basis.  But relentless efforts to move toward a single-payer system and impose destructive price controls threaten our continuing progress.

Drug maker Biogen recently announced exciting results of a clinical trial for a new drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Yet, despite the promise that this could be a breakthrough that gets us closer to a cure, the medical community and families with loved ones suffering from the disease are holding their collective breath.

Why? Because we’ve been down this road before.

Alzheimer’s is one of the most complex and pernicious medical conditions that we face, with no known cure and an immense emotional and economic toll. Worse, the rate of diagnosis is increasing and estimates suggest the cost of the disease has already surpassed $259 billion.  According to one Alzheimer’s Association spokesperson, it will “bankrupt Medicare.” By 2050, the cost of care for Alzheimer’s patients could exceed $1 trillion annually.

That is a crisis medical professionals are rushing to solve, but progress has been slow. An estimated 99.6 percent of Alzheimer’s drug “candidates” (i.e. experimental drugs designed to treat Alzheimer’s) fail.

In 2018 alone, high profile failures in Phase 3 clinical trials from drug makers like Eli Lilly and Merck represent decades of work and hundreds of millions of dollars in research yielding little to no results. Even Biogen’s announcement, as promising as it is, has only a 50 percent chance of gaining FDA approval, according to analysts.

The issue of high drug prices is real, but too often the public doesn’t understand the immense risk – and cost pharmaceutical companies take on to research and develop new treatments for devastating diseases like Alzheimer’s. While everyone hopes Biogen’s new drug is a success, many drugs – including many recent potential treatments for Alzheimer’s – never make it through the clinical trials to market. What’s worse, the lack of transparency in our health care payment system drives costs up even further.

Drug makers invest hundreds of millions of dollars and more into developing new treatments and cures, with no guarantees their research and development will yield results.  That risk must be protected to ensure the continued motivation to strive for better treatments and new cures.

Efforts to cap prices and leverage government buying power via a single-payer system threaten to curtail research and delay or eliminate future cures. It’s a gamble that the United States cannot make, both for our own health and for future generations.

June 14th, 2018 at 3:33 pm
President Trump’s Prescription Drug Reforms Already Showing Progress
Posted by Print
It’s been just one month since President Trump unveiled his American Patients First plan to reduce drug prices and, despite the naysayers, we’re already seeing results.

This week, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee to provide detail on the progress that has already occurred.  His testimony extended over two hours, and Sec. Azar answered tough questions from both Democrats and Republicans, reiterating some key parts of the President’s plan.  Among other important testimony, he highlighted the transparency failures of Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) and stressed the need to increase competition throughout the market to bring prices down.

That stands to reason, since President Trump’s plan pays special attention to PBMs – “middlemen” that operate in the opaque prescription drug pipeline – who negotiate with insurers, drug manufacturers and pharmacists to bring drugs to market.  As Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) pointed out in the hearing, the way in which PBMs earn profits creates an “incentive for higher list prices,” further driving up the price of prescriptions throughout the industry.

Accordingly, President Trump’s plan deliberately opens up this opaque system, providing greater information to all parties to stop what Sec. Azar characterized as the “perverse” incentives in the system.  By removing the ability for PBMs to profit from price increases, the President’s plan allows the natural downward pressures of the market to take hold, eliminating another driver of cost that consumers feel at the pharmacy counter.  Secretary Azar described the blueprint as a “comprehensive tackling and restructuring of the drug channel, nothing short of that,” further evidence of the President’s bold commitment to this issue.

Senator Collins continued to highlight PBM abuses, explaining how PBMs often employ “gag clauses” that prevent pharmacists from helping consumers to find the best price for their medication.  Those clauses are widely used to help PBMs maximize their profits, but the Trump Administration has already taken action to ensure that contracts with CMS cannot employ gag clauses.

Secretary Azar also explained how the President’s plan will bring greater competition to Medicare Part B, modeled on the success of the Part D program.  Currently, the federal government purchases drugs for Part B at the list price, costing the program billions in extra costs.  In contrast, Medicare Part D allows private companies to negotiate and manage plans to keep costs low.

Secretary Azar further explained to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) that President Trump’s plan proposes greater negotiation between private-sector actors to help lower costs down across the program.  Nevertheless, Sec. Azar cautioned that, due to the size and complexity of the program, the President’s plan purposefully remains open on that issue, so that the Administration can work with Congress and other stakeholders to ensure that these competitive reforms are implemented without harming existing enrollees.

Those actions, along with an overall increase in transparency in the marketplace for all parties to bring more information and competition, are already at work.  President Trump’s plan works because it finally addresses the real drivers of cost, and removes the barriers that are stopping free market forces from bringing costs down.  On that basis, Sec. Azar’s testimony shows us that we are finally on the right path to bring prices down.

September 27th, 2016 at 1:11 pm
High Risk: The Debate Over the Price of Specialty Drugs and Zika Virus
Posted by Print

In an interview with CFIF, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, discusses the history and regulations surrounding drug prices, who should finance important medical advancements, and the continuing Zika threat.

Listen to the interview here.

December 21st, 2015 at 9:48 am
Before You Complain About Drug Costs…
Posted by Print

Maligning pharmaceutical enterprises is a curious perennial dance, one that becomes even more active during presidential campaign seasons.  That always struck me as odd, since it seems a sign of societal advance that we can complain about the price of something that saves lives and improves living conditions rather than lamenting its nonexistence.

Regardless, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) offers an instructive corrective entitled “4 Charts Explain the Economics of Drug Development.”  It is worth the brief examination and passing on to others, because it helps rebut many of the politicized myths that threaten the goose that lays the golden eggs:

“It’s not just the science that goes in to developing medicines that’s complicated.  The economics that drive the industry, allowing resources to be available so people can have access to beneficial new medicines is complicated, too.”

Each chart is worth 1,000 words, but the four broad takeaways are:  (1)  It takes ten years and $2.6 billion to bring a single drug to market;  (2)  In 2014, pharmaceutical companies spent $51.2 billion on research & development;  (3)  Only a few drugs, however, become commercial successes;  and (4)  The end result is that pharmaceuticals’ enormous investments result in people living longer and better lives.

Something to keep in mind as sometimes silly presidential campaigns get even sillier, at least in terms of maligning the innovative pharmaceutical industry.