Tag Archive for: drugs

Middlemen Pushing Up Retail Costs of Drugs

The reality is that non-price factors, including several players, are causing net prices to decline and retail prices to increase. Those players include employers, health plans, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), all of whom have continuously circumvented the system through loopholes and complicated systems of reimbursement that tend to hurt patients

‘High’ U.S. Drug Prices Mask Freeloading by Other Nations

The drug company’s choice is to walk away from millions in revenue from a given country and deny their people a lifesaving drug, or swallow hard and accept an unfair price that is nowhere near the drug’s value. For the sake of shareholders and patients, drug companies typically accept the unfair price and devote the revenue to offsetting their previous investments. In short, other nations are freeloading off of American R&D.

A nuclear winter is coming for biopharma

The life sciences sector in Massachusetts — which has been flying so high for so long — is about to experience a very hard landing. With the adoption of prescription drug price controls in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), drug research and development — the heart of the life sciences sector in Massachusetts — is about to experience a nuclear winter.

University Science Research Is Under Threat

The Biden administration's formation of a working group to “develop a framework for the implementation of the march-in provision of the Bayh-Dole Act" could have serious adverse consequences for university research and biopharmaceutical innovation. It represents a particularly dangerous threat to the thriving life sciences cluster in Greater Boston.

Lousy Healthcare for Thee but Not for Me

In recent years, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) have instituted programs to keep out-of-pocket drug costs high for patients. Why is the administration so eager to protect federal employees from high out-of-pocket costs but is perfectly happy for PBMs to enroll millions of other patients in these programs?

Sabotaging Strategic Success: How Price Controls Could Imperil U.S. Pharma Industry

Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s Director of Life Sciences Initiative Dr. Bill Smith about the policies that drove biopharmaceutical company from Europe to the U.S., and how proposed, similar price controls in President Biden’s Fair Prices Act could distort incentives away from innovation and threaten the success of a thriving and vital U.S. industry.

Senator Sanders’ Outdated Focus on List Prices of Prescription Drugs

Senator Bernie Sanders and his advisors have not caught onto the fact that the problem for consumers and patients is no longer the list prices of prescription drugs but skyrocketing out-of-pocket costs due to health insurance benefit design.

Baking Young Minds: Scientific Concerns for Cannabis on Kids

Joe Selvaggi talks with professor of psychiatry Dr. Ryan Sultan about the findings of his recently released study on the effects of cannabis on the mental health of American adolescents. Dr. Sultan’s work shows a substantial correlation between cannabis use and negative mental health outcomes.

Out-of-Pocket Pirates: Spotlight on Accumulator & Maximizer Programs

A new white paper, "Out-of-Pocket Pirates: Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) and the Confiscation of Copayment Assistance Programs," examines how the way these programs are implemented is having negative impacts on patients living with serious diseases.