No one knows how many drugs $500 billion buys
There’s a bill in the House that would rein in the cost of drugs, which would in turn cut into pharmaceutical revenues and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, result in between eight and 15 fewer new treatments over the course of a decade.
Or maybe it’s 56 fewer treatments over a decade. That was the conclusion of a study, sponsored by PhRMA and BIO, released last month. But maybe instead it’s 100 new treatments, as the White House Council of Economic Advisers said yesterday. That analysis claims that the federal savings brought from cheaper medicines might actually be negated by the cost of sick people not getting novel therapies.
It’s worth noting that, of the three analyses, only the CBO’s is nonpartisan and not funded by the drug industry. But the roughly tenfold discrepancy in predicting the effects of pricing controls underlines a longstanding problem in this debate: No one can agree on the premise, let alone the conclusion.
Or maybe it’s 56 fewer treatments over a decade. That was the conclusion of a study, sponsored by PhRMA and BIO, released last month. But maybe instead it’s 100 new treatments, as the White House Council of Economic Advisers said yesterday. That analysis claims that the federal savings brought from cheaper medicines might actually be negated by the cost of sick people not getting novel therapies.
It’s worth noting that, of the three analyses, only the CBO’s is nonpartisan and not funded by the drug industry. But the roughly tenfold discrepancy in predicting the effects of pricing controls underlines a longstanding problem in this debate: No one can agree on the premise, let alone the conclusion.
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