Drug Pricing

Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held its first of three listening sessions on the pharmaceutical market. The goal was to discuss reforms that will improve drug affordability by increasing “generic and biosimilar availability” and promoting “competition”. Achieving these goals is essential. The flaw of the first listening session is ...

The Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice recently kicked off a series of listening sessions to examine barriers to competition in the drug industry. The title of the first session—”Anticompetitive Conduct by Pharmaceutical Companies”—made it seem that regulators would chiefly investigate biotech firms. Yet by the end, panelists ...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration just announced plans to help states and Indian tribes purchase certain prescription drugs from Canada, where brand-name medicines tend to be cheaper because the government caps their price. The new guidance is part of a larger Trump administration effort to cut drug prices for ...

The Trump administration has been mum in recent weeks on its “most favored nation” drug pricing plan, which broadly aims to link U.S. prices for medicines to the lowest prices in other developed countries. It’s unclear what those prices will be, how they’ll be determined, or how the administration will ...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a shot last month that effectively prevents HIV. At-risk people simply need to receive the injection every six months. The new drug, called lenacapavir, comes almost exactly 44 years after the first case of AIDS was reported by what’s now known as the ...

Just like the December 2024 continuing resolution, the current budget reconciliation bill fails to address the problem of Medicare reimbursing physicians at below market rates. Without a fix, the inevitable consequences will be worsening doctor shortages, declining healthcare quality, higher overall healthcare spending, and the accelerated loss of independent practices. ...

It’s a quintessential government outcome. A program intended to increase access to promising medical innovations is actually preventing Medicare beneficiaries from receiving FDA-approved treatments. Medicare’s “coverage with evidence development” (CED) was never authorized by Congress. Instead, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services created the program in 2005 by leveraging ...

Table 1: PBM Fees and Rebates Can Exceed International Prescription Medicine Prices by As Much As 900% I previously highlighted how estimated rebates and fees PBMs receive for 10 commonly used brand medicines far exceed the total prices of those medicines in eight OECD countries (see Table 1). For example, ...

President Trump announced his intention last month to peg U.S. drug prices to those that foreign governments have set within their borders. The very same day, federal officials said they’d reveal in February 2026 a list of 15 drugs subject to price controls through Medicare’s Part B outpatient benefit and ...