Posted by Michael Wonder on 02 Dec 2020
International reference pricing: a lazy, misguided, bi-partisan plan to lower US drug prices
2 December 2020 - Pharmaceutical pricing is a perpetually contentious policy issue. Branded drug list prices grew annually by 9.1% over the last decade.
The growth rate in net prices (reflecting discounts and rebates) was lower, at around 4.5%, but still much higher than gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Patients’ out-of-pocket costs for specialty drugs also have increased faster than GDP growth over the same period (2.8% versus 2.3%).
