21 May 2019 - Western countries, as well as poor ones, are demanding transparency in the cost of drugs.

These days it is hard to find a government that is not struggling with the high price of medicines. In England, the government is fighting Vertex, a drug company, over the cost of a drug for cystic fibrosis, Orkambi. 

In America, diabetics have died because of the high cost of insulin. In the Netherlands, the government for a time stopped buying the immuno-oncology drug, Keytruda, because it was too expensive—even though it had helped to develop it. 

The list price of Orkambi is about $23,000 a month in America, and Keytruda is about $13,600 month (for as long as treatment continues). It has taken such rich-world dramas to force the unaffordability of medicines to the top of the global health agenda, even though poorer countries have complained about it for decades.

Read The Economist article