Forget the International Pricing Index. Try cost-effectiveness

Donald Trump calls it “foreign freeloading.” Biopharma R&D costs a lot, and Americans pay for it when they buy their prescription drugs, or indirectly when Medicare does. Why, the reasoning goes, should U.S. consumers pony up more than people in other wealthy countries?

Putting aside the fact that said other countries by and large provide health care under a single-payer system, the administration has floated another plan: Pin the price of certain expensive drugs to an index averaging how much they cost overseas. But as Ed Silverman points out, the U.S. would be freeloading, too, latching onto those countries’ metrics for prices. Unlike Americans, Europeans have cost-effectiveness bodies saying how much a drug is worth.

What if the U.S. created a homegrown cost-effectiveness think tank? Or heeded the one it already has? Looking at you, ICER.

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