This is a really tough problem for the simple reason that if another country is getting a free ride, it’s very hard to convince them to end it. For a long time, people in the US, especially people left of center, just said let’s pay European prices. Instead of the rest of the world getting a free ride, there’s nothing to ride on. There’s no incentive for investment for developing new cures and new treatments…
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Drugmakers are moving to sell their medicines directly to patients, abandoning the middlemen they have long relied on. The shift is a huge departure from how pharmaceutical companies including Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Pfizer have sold drugs for decades and threatens the multibillion-dollar business of firms that have traditionally filled prescriptions. It is saving some patients hundreds of dollars off the cost of prescriptions because companies have been lowering the prices for drugs sold directly.
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President Trump struck a deal on Monday with the U.K.’s Labour government that will raise drug prices on the other side of the pond in return for a tariff reprieve. At last a good drug deal: Both sides can claim a victory while mitigating self-inflicted damage to their countries. The President has long complained, with some justification, that other developed countries free-ride on U.S. innovation and consumers by requiring manufacturers to sell drugs to government-run…
Learn MoreDemocrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act wasn’t designed to kill cancer innovation, but new evidence reveals that’s what it’s doing. The law strongly discourages drug companies from performing the “follow-on” research after initial discoveries that accounts for a disproportionate share of progress in the fight against cancer. The crux of the problem is that the IRA imposes price caps that shorten the effective life of a patent and applies those price controls even to later-approved uses.…
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Thanks to decades of bad policy – and four years of Bidenomics – America is facing an affordability crisis. The news media tends to focus on the cost of groceries as the heart of the problem. But high grocery bills are a symptom, not the cause. The greatest long-term cause of the affordability problem is the cost of health insurance. The Democrats say they want to lower health insurance costs – and they think extending…
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We’ve reported over the past few weeks about actions being taken by UnitedHealth Group, Cigna and Elevance, three of the giants in the for-profit health insurance business, that undoubtedly will push independent physician practices to the brink of bankruptcy and closure – or force them to sell out to either an insurance conglomerate or big hospital system – and severely restrict Americans’ access to the doctors and hospitals of their choice. Other Big Insurance companies undoubtedly will…
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Americans have delivered the same message in the last two elections: make life affordable again. They are tired of working harder for less, while the cost of everything — from housing to education to insurance — keeps rising. The affordability crisis touches every household, and its biggest driver is the one Washington refuses to tackle seriously: healthcare. Healthcare now consumes nearly one-fifth of our economy. It is the largest single cost for employers, the fastest-growing…
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Are you ready for this? Health insurers have announced that the monthly premiums for medical coverage will rise anywhere between 12 and 25% next year. It’s infuriating as the health care tab grows ever more unaffordable. Polls continually show that the number one healthcare concern among voters is ever-increasing insurer costs – premiums, deductibles, copays, middlemen fees, etc. – all of which have spiked astronomically since Obamacare was first implemented and later expanded by President Joe Biden. That’s…
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