Cost Curve News

Bernie Sanders Wants to Talk to CEOs About US vs ROW Pricing. Bring It On, I Say.

I love Thanksgiving for a number of reasons, the two biggest of which are 1) pie and 2) the explicit focus on gratitude. This year, I’ve been especially fortunate. As I’ve launched Reid Strategic, I’ve been lucky to have been able to plug into a network of consultants who have been generous with their time and their wisdom. 

And though I’m probably forgetting some names (oversights that I’ll correct in future editions), I want to extend explicit thanks to these professionals. And if you need thoughtful counsel in their areas of expertise, please, please reach out so I can make introductions: 

That’s only a subset of those who made a huge impact on me this year. Everyone who opens one of these newsletters, too, has given me the gift of your attention. I can’t adequately express my gratitude, but I hope you all get that last piece of pie.

THE ARC

So Bernie Sanders and the Democrats on the Senate HELP committee have mounted a public pressure campaign to get three pharma CEOs to a Jan. 25 hearing: Merck’s Rob Davis; BMS’s new leader, Chris Boerner; and JNJ leader Joaquin Duato. 

The hearing is titled “Why Does the United States Pay, By Far, The Highest Prices In The World For Prescription Drugs?” so you have a sense of where they’re going with the hearing. 

There’s no question that these kinds of events are basically traps, show trials that allow members from both sides of the aisles to generate social-media pwns of big pharma. 

On the flip side, there are some easy, if uncomfortable, answers to the basic question being posed that would be good to air out. Those answers come down to the basic economic reality that the less you pay for something, the less you get of it. 

That means the rest of the world is paying less for innovation, and they’re getting less innovation. On average, European nations have access to less than half of the medicines approved by the EU.

So here’s a fun challenge to pose to Bernie: “Here’s a list of 200 medicines approved over the past four years or so. Cross out 100, and explain to patients why you think they shouldn’t have access.”

(I know that Senate hearings are not set up to be snarky and disrespectful to Senators, but if we’re going to talk about international pricing disparities, I would love to have a discussion about tradeoffs at the same time.)

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