Drug Pricing

New research appears to have found the proverbial “free lunch” economists have long been searching for. States that grant nurse practitioners “full practice authority” — that authorize them to provide care independently, without the supervision of a physician or other provider — reduce total healthcare costs for people with diabetes ...

Any day now, the Biden administration will publish the prices it has set for ten drugs covered by Medicare’s Part D prescription drug benefit. These price controls will provide “meaningful financial relief for millions of people with Medicare,” administration officials say. Many seniors are about to see just how false that ...

Astonishing drug innovations are improving the lives of patients including those living with cancer and autoimmune disorders. These innovations also expose the payment system’s fundamental flaws. The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) recently released interim report on pharmacy middlemen demonstrates that these flaws impose a high cost on patients and neighborhood pharmacies. These ...

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held a hearing last month with the CEOs of the nation’s three largest pharmacy benefit managers: CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx. The hearing coincided with a new report from the committee on the outsized role these prescription-drug middlemen play in determining what people pay for ...

By Anthony M. DiGiorgio, DO, MHA and Wayne Winegarden, PhD Enacted by the US Congress in 1992 to help entities serving lower-income and uninsured patients stretch their resources, the 340B Drug Pricing Program mandated drug companies give large discounts to covered entities (CEs). Judging the program on its outcomes, not its intentions, ...

Earlier this month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved donanemab, a novel treatment for Alzheimer’s disease that Eli Lilly will sell under the brand name Kisunla. The drug targets amyloid, a type of protein that builds up in the brains of people with the disease. It was shown to slow the ...

House lawmakers recently introduced legislation that would at last repair a program meant to provide low-income Americans with affordable medicine. In theory, the federal 340B Program, named after the section of the 1992 law establishing it, allows hospitals serving underprivileged groups to buy medications at steep discounts. The idea was ...

There’s never been a better time to get lung cancer in the United States. That may sound morbid. But this deadliest of cancers appears to be losing a bit of its punch. The combination of smoking reduction, increased screening, and pharmaceutical advancements has caused the lung cancer death rate to drop 20% over ...

Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to pay for the things we want? That’s the long and short of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ latest harebrained scheme to cut drug prices. In the Vermont independent’s capacity as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Sanders sent ...

Every day, nearly 10,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with skin cancer. The good news is that applying sunscreen can substantially reduce a person’s risk of getting skin cancer. The bad news is that the federal government is doing its best to keep effective sunscreens out of the hands of ...