Drug Pricing
Commentary
How socialist price controls will harm American patients
The Trump administration is planning to propose one of the biggest changes to Medicare in decades. The draft rule aims to reduce government spending by linking Medicare drug reimbursement rates to the rates in more than a dozen other Western countries that use price controls to hold down pharmaceutical spending. If implemented, ...
Sally C. Pipes
June 11, 2019
Commentary
Don’t Legislate Away Biopharmaceutical Innovation
The U.S. economy thrives on innovation. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, industries that intensively rely on intellectual property (IP) protections, which includes the biopharmaceutical industry, account for nearly 40 percent of the U.S. economy and are responsible for an outsized share of our overall economic growth. Beyond the ...
Wayne Winegarden
May 30, 2019
Commentary
The FDA’s Bad Medicine
Before leaving office, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told the Senate Appropriations Committee that Congress should create a new requirement for opioid approvals. New opioids should have to demonstrate superiority over those already on the market, he said. That would be a departure from the current statutory ...
Henry Miller, M.S., M.D.
May 22, 2019
Drug Importation
Sally Pipes in Healthline Story on Prescription Drugs and Canada
Why People with Diabetes Drive for Hours to Buy Insulin in Canada By Christopher Curley For Lija Greenseid, the math was simple. Drive a few hours to pay $56 for a box of Humalog insulin pens for her young daughter with type 1 diabetes or pay as much as $230 ...
Pacific Research Institute
May 15, 2019
Commentary
Price Controls by Another Name
The costs of medicines continue to dominate the headlines, attracting the attention of Congress and the Trump Administration. Reforms are necessary, but many of the reforms under consideration will make the situation worse. Indexing U.S. prices to the prices in other countries that use price controls, or using third-party arbitration ...
Wayne Winegarden
April 30, 2019
Commentary
Say No To Canadian Drug Imports
Lawmakers in the Sunshine State are looking to our northern neighbor to help them reduce drug prices. The Florida House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would allow the importation and sale of prescription drugs from Canada, where prices are generally lower because the government forcibly controls them. Florida isn’t the ...
Sally C. Pipes
April 29, 2019
Business & Economics
Price Controls Are Never The Answer
Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) has just doubled down on one of the Trump Administration’s unsound ideas. His proposal is disappointing for many reasons, particularly because Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services, has proposed an alternative reform that, if Congress implemented, would meaningfully improve the affordability of prescription drugs ...
Wayne Winegarden
April 1, 2019
Commentary
The FDA has problems — Here are the qualities the next commissioner must have to fix them
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the nation’s most ubiquitous regulatory agency. It oversees a vast array of medical and food products that account for 25 cents of every consumer dollar, with a value of over a trillion dollars annually. And the agency has problems. It’s too risk-averse, bureaucratically ...
Henry Miller, M.S., M.D.
March 10, 2019
Commentary
Governor’s health care proposal puts politics before patients
In California, politics is taking precedence over patients. That’s the only conclusion to draw from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recently released health care plan. He’s looking to impose price controls on prescription drugs. He’d like to expand Medicaid to undocumented immigrants up to the age of 26. He’s called for re-imposing ...
Sally C. Pipes
February 20, 2019
Commentary
Drug price controls will stifle innovation: Pharmaceutical industry R&D is saving lives
This year, 1.7 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer. For over 600,000 of them, that diagnosis will prove fatal. But there’s hope on the horizon. More Americans are surviving cancer each year, according to a new study from the American Cancer Society. The cancer death rate declined precipitously between ...
Sally C. Pipes
February 20, 2019
How socialist price controls will harm American patients
The Trump administration is planning to propose one of the biggest changes to Medicare in decades. The draft rule aims to reduce government spending by linking Medicare drug reimbursement rates to the rates in more than a dozen other Western countries that use price controls to hold down pharmaceutical spending. If implemented, ...
Don’t Legislate Away Biopharmaceutical Innovation
The U.S. economy thrives on innovation. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, industries that intensively rely on intellectual property (IP) protections, which includes the biopharmaceutical industry, account for nearly 40 percent of the U.S. economy and are responsible for an outsized share of our overall economic growth. Beyond the ...
The FDA’s Bad Medicine
Before leaving office, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told the Senate Appropriations Committee that Congress should create a new requirement for opioid approvals. New opioids should have to demonstrate superiority over those already on the market, he said. That would be a departure from the current statutory ...
Sally Pipes in Healthline Story on Prescription Drugs and Canada
Why People with Diabetes Drive for Hours to Buy Insulin in Canada By Christopher Curley For Lija Greenseid, the math was simple. Drive a few hours to pay $56 for a box of Humalog insulin pens for her young daughter with type 1 diabetes or pay as much as $230 ...
Price Controls by Another Name
The costs of medicines continue to dominate the headlines, attracting the attention of Congress and the Trump Administration. Reforms are necessary, but many of the reforms under consideration will make the situation worse. Indexing U.S. prices to the prices in other countries that use price controls, or using third-party arbitration ...
Say No To Canadian Drug Imports
Lawmakers in the Sunshine State are looking to our northern neighbor to help them reduce drug prices. The Florida House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would allow the importation and sale of prescription drugs from Canada, where prices are generally lower because the government forcibly controls them. Florida isn’t the ...
Price Controls Are Never The Answer
Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) has just doubled down on one of the Trump Administration’s unsound ideas. His proposal is disappointing for many reasons, particularly because Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services, has proposed an alternative reform that, if Congress implemented, would meaningfully improve the affordability of prescription drugs ...
The FDA has problems — Here are the qualities the next commissioner must have to fix them
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the nation’s most ubiquitous regulatory agency. It oversees a vast array of medical and food products that account for 25 cents of every consumer dollar, with a value of over a trillion dollars annually. And the agency has problems. It’s too risk-averse, bureaucratically ...
Governor’s health care proposal puts politics before patients
In California, politics is taking precedence over patients. That’s the only conclusion to draw from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recently released health care plan. He’s looking to impose price controls on prescription drugs. He’d like to expand Medicaid to undocumented immigrants up to the age of 26. He’s called for re-imposing ...
Drug price controls will stifle innovation: Pharmaceutical industry R&D is saving lives
This year, 1.7 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer. For over 600,000 of them, that diagnosis will prove fatal. But there’s hope on the horizon. More Americans are surviving cancer each year, according to a new study from the American Cancer Society. The cancer death rate declined precipitously between ...