Excerpts:
......The high prices of prescription drugs have become an issue of paramount concern to Americans. This concern has now found its way into policy proposals from presidential candidates and is preoccupying state and federal lawmakers.....
...... Congressional investigations are examining the way in which drug companies set prices, and proposals for making drug pricing more transparent are pending in seven state legislatures.....
..... Lawmakers and others have identified multiple possible reforms to address the affordability of prescription drugs......
...... Direct negotiation of prescription-drug prices by the federal government, however, is a solution for which there may be little congressional appetite.....
....... Patient-advocacy groups and pharmaceutical companies are united in their concern that with substantially increased government involvement come the risks of reduced access of patients to new drugs and reduced company investment in innovation. They point to the virtual absence of a market for innovation in vaccines and antibiotics, therapeutic classes for which the federal government is the monopsony purchaser......
....... The prospect of losing ground on innovation and diminishing their own credibility with industry partners has chilled lawmakers’ previous resolve to enact direct regulation of pharmaceutical prices......
....... Public outrage over recent high-profile cases of extreme pricing in the U.S. pharmaceutical market suggest that our laissez-faire system may not be achieving the balance of affordability and incentives for innovation that Americans want.....
....... Realistically, the best options for meaningful reform of prescription-drug policy to improve this balance focus on increasing value-based competition......
........ However, market-driven policies are not a panacea. They do not resolve the dilemma of extremely high launch prices for arguably high-value new products without close competitors.....
....... To preserve incentives for welfare-increasing innovation, the rewards for developing such products must be substantial, but if prices are the only mechanism through which returns on research flow, affordability will be compromised.....
........ Evidently, there is no single, easy answer to high and escalating drug prices in the United States.......
CoI: multiple