Nobody puts drug pricing in a corner. Welcome to the Week In Review!
1. Don’t Squander Public Goodwill
- Pharma’s top brass have embarked on a feel-good press tour in an attempt to revive the industry’s heartless drug pricing image. Let’s remember what CEOs like J&J’s Alex Gorsky forget to mention: The large government contracts companies are receiving are a public investment. The people must have a say in the price of the drugs they bring to market. — (Kaiser Health News)
2. We’ll Have Lower Drug Prices, Fries, and a Coke
- President Trump restated his interest in signing into law legislation to lower drug prices after Senator Chuck Grassley asked at a lunch Tuesday if the president still wants the Senate to put a drug pricing bill on his desk. We agree with Senator Grassley, who is lead sponsor of the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act, and President Trump — Congress must take up the charge and move to pass meaningful drug pricing legislation. It’s more critical now than ever. — (The Hill)
3. Taxpayers Up COVID-19 Ante
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is sending up to $1.2 billion in taxpayer funds to AstraZeneca to support development and production of a COVID-19 vaccine. Taxpayers are vital business partners in accelerating the development of drugs for the novel coronavirus. In return, we need transparency into AstraZeneca’s spending, pricing, and profits. — (Reuters)
4. We’ve Got it Backwards
- Our drug pricing system is broken, with governments fueling and funding innovation and then relinquishing that knowledge and those funds to private hands behind closed doors. The system places profits and corporate intellectual property rights ahead of the public good and has left the world unprepared for this pandemic — or the next. — (STAT)
5. Affordability Always
- We don’t even know if Moderna’s vaccine candidate prevents COVID-19 in humans, but analysts are already talking about how the company could hike vaccine prices after the current pandemic subsides. Wall Street shouldn’t determine the price of a drug taxpayers are paying to create, and high drug prices will hurt Americans pandemic or no pandemic. We’ll be watching. — (Barron’s)