Prescription Drug Cost Conversation About to Get Louder

Last month I wrote a blog post about MS prescription drug patient assistance programs and how I find them to be a Band-Aid — and “a dirty, infected Band-Aid at that.” Well, that post got a bit of attention in the social media realm, and it got the attention of the traditional media as well, including USA Today, which has a story on drug maker-funded coupons and patient assistance programs in today’s online edition. (Scroll down to see a mention of yours truly.) More Patients and Professionals Speaking Up As you’ll see from the USA Today article, I’m not the only one speaking up about this topic. At a recent conference held by the Association of Health Care Journalists in Orlando, Florida, panelists Peter Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City; Mark McClellan, director of the Margolis Center for Health Policy at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina; and David Mitchell, founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs, presented their views on the problem of high drug costs, barriers to bringing down prices, and where they see hope for changing the current drug pricing system. While they all agreed that the current system isn’t working — and noted that drug coupons hide actual prices of drugs — they differed on potential solutions. Bach and McClellan favored “value-based pricing,” in which drugs are priced based on outcomes for the patient. Mitchell argued that drug prices shou...
Source: Life with MS - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: multiple sclerosis awareness MS in the news trevis gleason Source Type: blogs