Yes, price matters

Two articles in the NY Times Health section today reinforce a major message from a recent Annals On Call: Oral Pharmacologic Therapy in Type 2 Diabetes: Choosing Therapy Wisely (Podcast with Dr. Mike Barry) – price matters. The first article – Amgen Slashes the Price of a Promising Cholesterol Drug refers to their PCSK9 inhibitor. For years, the drug maker Amgen has struggled to sell its new anti-cholesterol drug, Repatha after insurers balked over the list price of about $14,000 a year. On Wednesday, Amgen took a new approach: It said it would slash the list price to $5,850 a year in hopes of increasing sales, especially among Medicare beneficiaries who are particularly vulnerable to a drug’s list price. Yesterday President Trump proposed an interesting strategy to decrease the prices that Medicare pays to pharmaceutical companies – Trump Proposes to Lower Drug Prices by Basing Them on Other Countries’ Costs  Mr. Trump’s announcement came a few hours after his administration released a government study that said Medicare was paying 80 percent more than other advanced industrial countries for some of the most costly physician-administered medicines. “The current international drug-pricing system has put America in last place,” Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, said in unveiling the report. Mr. Trump cited the government’s international drug-pricing report in his speech on Thursday, saying he was taking aim at “globa...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs