this is the title of my new Health matters at the forefront Today’s excerpt with Lou Garrison and Richard Zee. Below is an excerpt from the article:
United States policymakers are increasingly arguing that Americans pay too much for prescription drugs. recently reportMinority staffers on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee argued that executive branch efforts have failed to curb drug prices, which are “skyrocketing.” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) champion law Tying US prices to foreign benchmarks. Whereas pharmaceutical companies are alert European governments recognize that their prices are too low and are considering Recalling your product From low cost markets. The question remains what the “right” price would be. unresolved.
In addition to the proposed legislation, a series of initiatives by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – including the Most Favored Nation (MFN) global benchmark for efficient drug pricing (globe) Proposal for Medicare Part B, guarding US Medicare against rising drug costs (guard) proposal, and generating cost reductions for US Medicaid (Generous) model – seeks to circumvent this debate by tying US prices directly to negotiations in other rich countries. A recent council of economic advisers report It is claimed that MFN will save billions. The appeal is obvious: If Germany, France and the United Kingdom pay less, why shouldn’t Medicare?
But this framework obscures an important economic point. These policies do not simply import imports at low prices; They import the valuations produced by those systems – including their explicit or implicit willingness-to-pay (WTP) range for health benefits. As a result, MFN-style policies risk shifting valuation levels that may not align with U.S. economic conditions or policy objectives.
Since foreign reference pricing actually imports foreign pricing and evaluation frameworks, this article examines five key differences in how the US and other countries have historically valued medical innovation, specifically:
- Level of willingness to pay for health benefits,
- The value of early access to new treatments,
- Scope of treatment value – overall patient outcomes versus health benefits alone,
- Prioritizing treatment of serious and rare diseases, and
- Including treatment options as providing added value
You can read the full article here which outlines these five key differences and also proposes alternative solutions for reference pricing.
