U.S. News & World Report: We Can Make Medicine Affordable
Commonsense fixes to Medicare and FDA drug approval can lower the cost of lifesaving drugs.
Whenever I am outside, I carry two EpiPens. If a bee stings me, the pens could save my life. I was recently stung, but not by a bee. The sting came from Mylan pharmaceuticals when it raised the retail price of a two pack of EpiPens from about $100 to more than $600 dollars over nine years. According to Money magazine, each EpiPen costs about $30 to produce.
I am lucky because my health insurance pays most of the cost of my EpiPens. But millions of Americans, both young and old, cannot benefit from this drug or others when the initial price or rapid price increase make them unaffordable. Even those with insurance coverage who do not use costly drugs still pay for them through rising premiums and co-pays.
List prices for all medicines are subject to various discounts and rebates often negotiated by insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers, and the actual cost can be lower. But a study by Bloomberg found that even after discounts, we pay more in the U.S. for common medicines like Crestor (high cholesterol), Lantus (insulin), Advair (asthma), Januvia (diabetes), Humira (rheumatoid arthritis) and Herceptin (breast cancer) than in most other countries in the study, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia, China, Brazil, India, Russia, Morocco and several European countries.
Faculty Referenced by this Article
Professor of Community Health Sciences & Health Policy and Management, and Associate Dean for Research
EMPH Academic Program Director with expertise in healthcare marketing, finance, and reproductive health policy, teaching in the EMPH, MPH, MHA program
Nationally recognized health services researcher and sociomedical scientist with 25+ years' experience in effectiveness and implementation research.
Dr. Ron Andersen is the Wasserman Professor Emeritus in the UCLA Departments of Health Policy and Management.
Dr. Michelle S. Keller is a health services researcher whose research focuses on the use and prescribing of high-risk medications.
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