The Latest Research, Commentary, And News From Health Affairs
Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Dear John,
Two articles in the June issue discuss drug pricing.
Drug Prices & Medicare Spending
During a recent Health Affairs Policy Spotlight, Elizabeth "Liz" Fowler, the new deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services and director of its Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, said, "Lowering prescription drug prices is a big priority for the Biden administration," but that "it is one of the most difficult things to tackle."
Two papers in the June issue of Health Affairs discuss drug pricing.
Biosimilars, drugs with essentially the same molecular composition and comparable clinical effects as a reference product, have only briefly been part of
the US market but have potential to lower prescription drug pricing and health care spending.
In a new paper, Ariel Dora Stern and coauthors investigated
biosimilars on the market and found that lower biosimilar product prices help offset increases in average annual reference-product prices.
In another article, So-Yeon Kang and colleagues examined trends associated with high-price drugs and found a very high concentration of Medicare Part D spending on an increasing number of these expensive drugs. In 2012, high-price drugs only accounted for 1.5 percent of Medicare Part D spending on brand-name drugs, but by 2018, that percentage was 19.3 percent.
For additional articles, blog posts, podcasts, and more on drug prices and health care spending, check out our Considering Health Spending initiative.
Today on Health Affairs Blog, Katie Keith discusses the latest developments in Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollment. Regina Herzlinger and Barak Richman propose expanding a little-known rule that allows using health reimbursement accounts to purchase insurance.
Elevating Voices: Pride Month: Kevin Nguyen and colleagues wrote in their 2018 Health Affairs paper that although disparities in access to care between lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) and straight adults narrowed in the post-ACA era, LGB adults still reported having significantly more bad mental health days relative to their straight peers.
Listen to Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil interview Ariel Dora Stern from Harvard Business School on what biosimilars are and how the pharmaceutical market is evolving in
response to their market entry.
Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewedjournalat the intersection of health, health care, and policy.
Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.
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