CER Daily Newsfeed

Drugmakers Fight Trump Price Plan Said to Cost Them $1 Trillion

(5/7, Rachel Cohrs Zhang, Bloomberg) reports “...‘Government price setting in any form is bad for American patients. Imposing foreign reference pricing in Medicaid does not save money for patients and could actually cost them more,’ PhRMA spokesperson Alex Schriver said in a written statement. Most patient costs for drugs in Medicaid are low, fixed-dollar amounts. Chief executives of pharmaceutical companies are making calls on Capitol Hill and requesting in-person meetings, these lobbyists and consultants said. One Republican congressional aide who was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue said they heard from seven pharmaceutical companies, consultants and industry groups over the span of day and a half.” Subscription Required

Peek Behind the Paper: Analyzing the Investment Impact of the Inflation Reduction Act

(5/7, The Evidence Base) reports “...[Richard Z Xie, Senior Health Economist, RA Capital Management:] Here we calculated the NPV of a project at each major development milestone – seeding, preclinical, Phase 1, Phase 2, and up. We did so by first calculating the NPV at product launch, and then back-calculated the NPV at earlier decision points. This is how potential investment programs are being evaluated at RA Capital. Doing it this way shows us where the IRA lowers NPV to uninvestable levels with the introduction of the IRA. So, although in our model the NPV dropped by 40% at launch, and at that point you’d still launch the drug, at earlier stages the NPV dropped more than 100%, so investors would just walk away from that project...I was excited to see some empirical work done by researchers from the National Pharmaceutical Council that showed the early signs of this.” Subscription Required

A Supposedly ‘Free’ Federal Drug Program Costs Taxpayers Tens of Billions of Dollars

(5/6, Dan Crippen, The Washington Times) comments “...In 2023 alone, drug manufacturers were forced to provide an estimated $70 billion in 340B discounts. An average corporate tax rate of 15% to 20% represents up to $14 billion in lost federal tax revenue annually. Factoring in state and local taxes, the total hit to government budgets could surpass $17 billion annually, potentially adding up to $200 billion in lost tax revenue over the next decade as 340B expands. Beyond the loss in potential government revenue it creates, 340B raises health care costs, driving up Medicare spending.” Full

England: HTA Sandbox Helping To Assess ‘Challenging’ Drugs & Indications

(5/7, Eliza Slawther, Pink Sheet) reports “...England’s health technology assessment institute explains how its sandbox environment is helping to test new evaluation methods for drugs or indications with which it does not have experience, such as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.” Subscription Required