The Medicare drug price negotiation program established by the Inflation Reduction Act could help move the US toward a framework for determining drug value and how much to pay for it, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services principal deputy administrator and chief operating officer Jonathan Blum.
ICER’s President Steve Pearson, MD, MSc was also quoted from a recent interview with Pink Sheet:
“Creation of the rules around how CMS will set prices will be challenging because the biopharma industry is poised for court challenges to block progress, [said] Institute for Clinical and Economic Review president Steve Pearson... ‘You could assume that might mean they will write their regulations in as algorithmic an approach as possible so it can’t look like they are factoring in things kind of helter-skelter’ and draw accusations of being arbitrary and capricious, he suggested.
‘On the other hand, everybody wants some nuance here, even in the things that are in the statute, like ‘unmet need,’ Pearson continued. ‘No one knows the dollar numbers you would put on’ how a drug fills an unmet need ‘but that would push you toward a higher price. So if we want nuance, then the tradeoff might, in some people’s minds, create a higher risk for lawsuits to find some success.’”
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