Drug Innovation
Commentary
Cashing In On University Patents Means Giving Up On Our Innovation Future
Washington is addicted to taxing success. Now, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is floating a plan to skim half the patent earnings from inventions developed at universities with federal funding. It’s being sold as a way to shore up programs like Social Security. In reality, it’s a raid on American innovation ...
Commentary
How innovation saves lives: What America’s pharmaceutical ecosystem gets right
When a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States today, her chances of surviving are much greater than in decades past — thanks to U.S. innovation. The incidence of breast cancer has increased by more than 200% globally in the past 40 years. But the U.S. mortality ...
Blog
Pulling mRNA Research Funding Undermines Future Innovations
Pulling mRNA Research Funding Undermines Future Innovations by Wayne Winegarden | August 15, 2025 The U.S. is a global leader in the innovative pharmaceutical industry, in part, because the public and private sectors effectively fulfill their complimentary roles. The federal government funds basic research that expands our knowledge base; the ...
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 ...
Drug Innovation
New PRI Brief Warns Trump Drug Price Control Policies Would Lead U.S. Down the Path to European-Style Socialism
SACRAMENTO – The Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute – a nonpartisan, California-based, free market think tank – today released a new issue brief warning that efforts by the Trump administration and some Republicans in Congress to embrace and expand the government price controls on ...
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
Trump Must Shut Down Counterfeit Weight-Loss Drugs
Americans looking to lose weight are increasingly turning to the internet. And they’re being duped. Telehealth startups and fly-by-night pharmacies are peddling what look like cheap, convenient versions of blockbuster drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. But many of these offerings are neither authentic nor safe. They’re “compounded” copies — knockoffs ...
Commentary
Private Efforts Not Public Committees Will Generate Healthcare Savings
Passed as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) was allocated $10 billion in 2011 for the first decade of its existence. It has been allocated hundreds of millions more since. The purpose of the program is to create payment models that ...
Commentary
A Real and Present Threat to Alzheimer’s Patients
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 ...
Blog
The 340B Discounts Hospitals Receive Will Often Exceed Total Drug Prices in Europe
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, ...
Cashing In On University Patents Means Giving Up On Our Innovation Future
Washington is addicted to taxing success. Now, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is floating a plan to skim half the patent earnings from inventions developed at universities with federal funding. It’s being sold as a way to shore up programs like Social Security. In reality, it’s a raid on American innovation ...
How innovation saves lives: What America’s pharmaceutical ecosystem gets right
When a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States today, her chances of surviving are much greater than in decades past — thanks to U.S. innovation. The incidence of breast cancer has increased by more than 200% globally in the past 40 years. But the U.S. mortality ...
Pulling mRNA Research Funding Undermines Future Innovations
Pulling mRNA Research Funding Undermines Future Innovations by Wayne Winegarden | August 15, 2025 The U.S. is a global leader in the innovative pharmaceutical industry, in part, because the public and private sectors effectively fulfill their complimentary roles. The federal government funds basic research that expands our knowledge base; the ...
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 ...
New PRI Brief Warns Trump Drug Price Control Policies Would Lead U.S. Down the Path to European-Style Socialism
SACRAMENTO – The Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute – a nonpartisan, California-based, free market think tank – today released a new issue brief warning that efforts by the Trump administration and some Republicans in Congress to embrace and expand the government price controls on ...
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 ...
Trump Must Shut Down Counterfeit Weight-Loss Drugs
Americans looking to lose weight are increasingly turning to the internet. And they’re being duped. Telehealth startups and fly-by-night pharmacies are peddling what look like cheap, convenient versions of blockbuster drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. But many of these offerings are neither authentic nor safe. They’re “compounded” copies — knockoffs ...
Private Efforts Not Public Committees Will Generate Healthcare Savings
Passed as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) was allocated $10 billion in 2011 for the first decade of its existence. It has been allocated hundreds of millions more since. The purpose of the program is to create payment models that ...
A Real and Present Threat to Alzheimer’s Patients
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 ...
The 340B Discounts Hospitals Receive Will Often Exceed Total Drug Prices in Europe
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, ...
