Drug Pricing
Commentary
Drug Tariffs Cure Nothing and Are a Tax Increase
President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire for sweeping tariffs on pharmaceuticals. Last month, the president threatened tariffs as high as 200% on imported drugs. The trade deal with the European Union (EU) finalized July 27 includes a 15% levy on medicines imported from the continent. Drug ...
Commentary
We don’t need socialism to cut drug prices. Americans get a good deal
Nearly nine in every 10 Americans say that prescription drug prices are too high. Yet the average prescription costs less in the U.S. than in other developed countries, according to a new study from professor Tomas Phillipson, the former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. That finding ...
Blog
Read part 3 of a series on drug pricing
Regulations, Not Anticompetitive Actions, Are Obstructing Drug Competition
The flaws driving up costs across the broader health care landscape are also driving up the costs for innovative drugs. After all, pharmaceuticals are an integral component used in combination with the broader healthcare system. As a result, spending on medicines both influences and is influenced by the spending on ...
Commentary
How Price Controls Make a Healthy Drug Market Sick
The unspoken assumption behind the prescription drug price controls at the heart of the Democrats’ August 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is that the pharmaceutical market is broken. According to this view, drugmakers have the power to charge whatever they want. Only a sweeping system of government price-setting can put ...
Blog
The U.S. Drug System Strikes a Reasonable Balance Between Incentivizing Innovation and Promoting Competition
The government explicitly grants innovators temporary market exclusivity to provide an opportunity for groundbreaking pharmaceutical companies to recover the costs of capital associated with developing novel treatments. This was one of the express purposes of past federal reform legislation, such as the Hatch-Waxman Act signed in 1984 and the Biologics ...
Commentary
Greater Price Transparency Will Improve Affordability
Inefficiencies plague our current healthcare system. Politicians are quick to blame these problems on the market and subsequently advocate for ever greater government control. But government programs, which are already major players in the healthcare market, provide lousy insurance for patients and undermine the viability of doctors and hospitals. Expanding ...
Commentary
The Big Beautiful Bill Fixes One Drug Problem—But Highlights An Even Bigger One
Buried within the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law July 4, is a provision that could improve or even save the lives of the 30 million Americans suffering from rare diseases. That provision is the Orphan Cures Act, which exempts certain drugs that treat ...
Blog
Read part 1 of a 3 part series on drug pricing
Conspiracies Aside, Drug Company Profits Are Average
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 ...
Commentary
The Culprit Impeding Drug Competition Is Not Who The Feds Expected
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 ...
Commentary
Cheap Drugs from Canada Can’t Make America Healthy
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 ...
Drug Tariffs Cure Nothing and Are a Tax Increase
President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire for sweeping tariffs on pharmaceuticals. Last month, the president threatened tariffs as high as 200% on imported drugs. The trade deal with the European Union (EU) finalized July 27 includes a 15% levy on medicines imported from the continent. Drug ...
We don’t need socialism to cut drug prices. Americans get a good deal
Nearly nine in every 10 Americans say that prescription drug prices are too high. Yet the average prescription costs less in the U.S. than in other developed countries, according to a new study from professor Tomas Phillipson, the former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. That finding ...
Read part 3 of a series on drug pricing
Regulations, Not Anticompetitive Actions, Are Obstructing Drug Competition
The flaws driving up costs across the broader health care landscape are also driving up the costs for innovative drugs. After all, pharmaceuticals are an integral component used in combination with the broader healthcare system. As a result, spending on medicines both influences and is influenced by the spending on ...
How Price Controls Make a Healthy Drug Market Sick
The unspoken assumption behind the prescription drug price controls at the heart of the Democrats’ August 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is that the pharmaceutical market is broken. According to this view, drugmakers have the power to charge whatever they want. Only a sweeping system of government price-setting can put ...
The U.S. Drug System Strikes a Reasonable Balance Between Incentivizing Innovation and Promoting Competition
The government explicitly grants innovators temporary market exclusivity to provide an opportunity for groundbreaking pharmaceutical companies to recover the costs of capital associated with developing novel treatments. This was one of the express purposes of past federal reform legislation, such as the Hatch-Waxman Act signed in 1984 and the Biologics ...
Greater Price Transparency Will Improve Affordability
Inefficiencies plague our current healthcare system. Politicians are quick to blame these problems on the market and subsequently advocate for ever greater government control. But government programs, which are already major players in the healthcare market, provide lousy insurance for patients and undermine the viability of doctors and hospitals. Expanding ...
The Big Beautiful Bill Fixes One Drug Problem—But Highlights An Even Bigger One
Buried within the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law July 4, is a provision that could improve or even save the lives of the 30 million Americans suffering from rare diseases. That provision is the Orphan Cures Act, which exempts certain drugs that treat ...
Read part 1 of a 3 part series on drug pricing
Conspiracies Aside, Drug Company Profits Are Average
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 Culprit Impeding Drug Competition Is Not Who The Feds Expected
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 ...
Cheap Drugs from Canada Can’t Make America Healthy
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 ...
