19 July 2016 - It’s no secret that prescription drug prices are the fastest rising part of our health care system.

That’s especially true in the cases of specialty and life-saving medications used to treat cancer, hepatitis C, and other rare diseases and ailments. But price increases are also prevalent among more common prescription medicines used by millions of Americans. The totality of these unsustainable, across-the-board price increases is impacting patients and those seeking access to such medications; it is also weighing down our health care system and the U.S. economy.

A recent Morning Consult opinion piece appears to miss this point, and moreover includes several citations that merit further clarification.

For example, the author cited a controversial figure that pegs the average cost of developing a new prescription drug at $2.6 billion. But that number is far from accepted within the medical community. When the figure was initially floated in 2014, the director of policy and analysis for Doctors Without Borders put it plainly, “If you believe that, you probably also believe the earth is flat.”

Transparency about what is spent and how prices are set would improve the quality of the debate over drug pricing and actual value.

Read Morning Consult article