It’s been a tough stretch for Big Pharma, which is getting a pricing beating from cheaper generic alternatives. Merck is offering big discounts on AIDS drug Efavirenz in Thailand, as Thailand considers producing generic versions of the patented medicine via Compulsory Licensing. Pfizer announced that it is cutting over 2000 sales jobs in the wake [...]
The Kaiser Network sponsored a webinar today called Ask the Experts, Price Transparency, about the drive to make the price of medical care more transparent to consumers. It’s an interesting discussion about something that is vitally important to our lives, consumes a huge chunk of the economy, and almost no one truly understands from a [...]
If there are any CFOs out there who don’t care about pricing, HealthSouth is another example of a major company whose results are very sensitive to pricing. Yes, they need to fix substantial operational issues, but they can probably figure out how to do that. Can they figure out their pricing problems, especially in an [...]
Forbes has a couple of interesting pieces on drug pricing. A Primer on Drug Pricing discusses the inherent inefficiencies of an industry driven by huge R&D costs but low marginal costs. The basic point is that the price that maximizes profit leaves a huge dead weight loss. Reference Pricing For Drugs briefly examines one of [...]
In a small move that could have big consequences for healthcare pricing, South Dakota passed a law requiring hospitals to post pricing for their 25 most common procedures to a state website. The hospital must perform at least 10 of the procedures for it to qualify. The law only specifies a spring-time deadline, leaving some [...]
