Jennifer Bright, Executive Director, Innovation and Value Initiative, issued the following statement on Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats drug pricing proposals.
“While exercising government levers to address drug pricing and pricing transparency are needed, the current proposals miss the mark on real solutions to improve affordability and to understand whether healthcare spending actually delivers the greatest benefit to Medicare beneficiaries and patients overall. The Biden administration and congressional proposals clearly demonstrate awareness that we have to modernize the methods used to measure value – they move away from the use of QALYs as a metric of impact on patient health and quality of life. Yet, none of the proposals address the serious gaps in evidence that prevent us from understanding value from the patient and family perspective.”
“Without considering the goals, preferences, and concerns of patients and their families, policymakers risk substituting price as an inaccurate proxy for drugs’ and other health technologies’ value. This will only continue wasting millions of dollars on unnecessary, harmful, or inadequate care that exacerbates healthcare inequities without addressing the needs of diverse patient communities.”
“Systematic assessments of drugs’ value are needed. Rather than hardcoding just one way to assess value, however, policymakers would be wise to incorporate flexible and patient-centric approaches to examining value as part of health technology assessments. Doing so will improve both the appropriateness and affordability of care delivered to patients and paid for by employers, private payers, and the government.”
