Posted by Michael Wonder on 14 Jul 2016
Determining value and price in health care
13 July 2016 - Paying for value is all the rage in health care, and recently the spotlight has been brightest on prescription drugs.
It’s hard to argue with the notion that how much we pay for a drug should be related to the value it provides. Hard to argue, that is, until you try to pin down whose value counts, what value means, or how much to pay for it.
Expressions of a drug’s value are implicit in current norms and policies. For example, insurers cover some drugs more generously than others. Many patients prefer to switch from a less-covered brand-name drug to a more fully covered generic version. This also communicates the drug’s value to the insurer in terms its manufacturer can well understand: “Produce more and we will pay for it.”
