There was good news at the end of September, when Relyvrio was approved for use in the US. It was described as a long-sought victory for patients.
The price of the medicine was disclosed the next day. The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review had estimated the price to be between $9,100 and $30,700.
Americans likely weren't surprised. The cost of prescription drugs in the US is 2.5 times higher than in other countries, and a quarter of Americans can't afford them. Most new cancer drugs start at over $100,000 a year. The average price of a new drug is 20 percent higher every year.
The price of drugs in the US is a mystery. A high price is needed to make good on the money invested in research and development when rationalizing price tags.
Is that correct? Wouters is an assistant professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I wanted to get some data because I don't think it's true. I don't believe in it.
That's what Wouters did. He and his colleagues published a new paper in September of 2022. There was publicly available information about both R&D spending and pricing for 60 drugs that had been approved by the FDA over the course of a decade. They compared the figures. He says that it was like investigative journalism and that it was like checking all the receipts. It would be expected that there would be a high correlation between R&D spending and high drug prices. They couldn't find a correlation.
The sample size is small because pharmaceutical companies keep most of their financial data under lock and key. He says pharmaceutical companies need to make more data available if they want to refute the conclusion reached in his paper.
The paper's finding was well received by anyone in the field. Emanuel chairs the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. I want to know how far I can go. Is the market going to go down? Emanuel believes that it is important to have empirical data like this to refute the industry's claim.
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