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As Congress debates how to lower prescription drug costs, a large majority of Americans want the federal government to negotiate with drug makers to reduce prices paid by Medicare, according to a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Specifically, 88% of those queried support negotiations to lower Medicare Part D costs, and 85% believe this approach should be pursued for both Medicare and private insurers. (Silverman, 10/15)

In the eyes of progressive lawmakers, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s drug pricing legislation is less a finished masterpiece than a rough sketch. For the past two weeks, left-wing legislators have plotted a top-to-bottom overhaul of the legislation, aided by outside advocacy groups who have compiled lists of a half-dozen or more changes to the sweeping Lower Drug Costs Now Act, Democrats’ signature drug pricing bill. (Facher and Florko, 10/15)

Democrats are betting their legislation to lower drug prices will be a political winner — but some patients learning the details are skeptical it will help them. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said in late September that her signature drug pricing bill (HR 3) received "rave reviews from everyone but the pharmaceutical industry." And lawmakers tried to tout the bill during the October recess. Two House committees, Energy and Commerce and Education and Labor, will markup the measure on Thursday. (Kopp and Siddons, 10/16)

The centerpiece of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plan to lower prescription drug prices — more direct Medicare negotiations with drug makers, with a hard cap on prices as a backstop — would save the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars, but fewer new drugs would come onto the market, according to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO report makes clear the tradeoff for more government intervention in the drug market: Cost savings for the government would equal less spending on research and development by drug companies, which will mean fewer new treatments. What we don’t know is how harmful, if at all, that would actually be. (Scott, 10/14)

Democrats are betting their legislation to lower drug prices will be a political winner — but some patients learning the details are skeptical it will help them. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said in late September that her signature drug pricing bill received “rave reviews from everyone but the pharmaceutical industry.” And lawmakers tried to tout the bill during the October recess. Two House committees will markup the measure on Thursday. (Kopp and Siddons, 10/16)

Amid ongoing controversy over a federal drug discount program for safety-net hospitals, a new survey finds a dozen state Medicaid programs rely on an arguably inadequate method to avoid receiving duplicate rebates, which could provide a boost for taxpayers but hurt the pharmaceutical industry’s bottom line. At issue is the interplay between Medicaid and the so-called 340B program, which was created in 1992 and requires drug makers to offer discounts of up to 50% on all outpatient drugs — for everything from AIDS to diabetes — to hospitals and clinics that serve indigent populations. (Silverman, 10/15)

When a pharmaceutical company raised the price of an essential medicine to unacceptable levels, there was only one thing for pharmacist Marleen Kemper to do: start making it herself. When Kemper was in primary school, she had watched two of her classmates get ill. One had a brain tumour, the other contracted an infection in his gut. Both of them died. Kemper was about 10 at the time, and knew she did not want to see another friend perish. She told her parents she wanted to do something that would prevent others dying. She wanted to be a doctor. (Stokel-Walker, 10/15)

Transparency in drug pricing sounds like a great idea, but a new study from the University of Southern California (USC) found almost none of the laws passed in an attempt to force transparency will do much good. In fact, fewer than 5% of the drug pricing laws passed by states in the past few years would result in new information about drug pricing, according to the study by Neeraj Sood and Martha Ryan at USC’s Shaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, published in JAMA. (Bulik, 10/15)

Drugmakers fought hard against California’s groundbreaking drug price transparency law, passed in 2017. Now, state health officials have released their first report on the price hikes those drug companies sought to shield. Pharmaceutical companies raised the “wholesale acquisition cost” of their drugs — the list price for wholesalers without discounts or rebates — by a median of 25.8% from 2017 through the first quarter of 2019, according to the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. (Feder Ostrov and Rowan, 10/11)

Doctors Without Borders is calling on Johnson & Johnson to halve the price of a lifesaving tuberculosis drug, called bedaquline, to make it more accessible to patients around the world. Currently, a six-month supply of the drug for a single person costs $400 in countries around the world that participate in the Global Drug Facility, a United Nations-linked organization that is the world's largest provider of tuberculosis medication. A 20-month supply is slightly cheaper at $1,200, or $2 a day, though the drug is pricier in more developed countries. (Cerullo, 10/14)

At the same time, Doctors Without Borders wants Otsuka Pharmaceutical to slash the $1,700 price tag for Deltyba, which Mylan also licensed and now sells for $940 in South Africa. The nonprofit cited estimates from University of Liverpool researchers who calculated the drug could be made and sold at a profit for $5 to $16 a month if enough countries are able to purchase large quantities. (Silverman, 10/10)

Drug prices are rising far faster than inflation, causing financial pain for many Americans. Even worse, some of those prices may not be justified by clinical improvements to the drugs themselves, a new report claims. A watchdog group says the prices for seven widely used medications — including Humira, Cialis and Lyrica — rose at more than twice the medical consumer price index from the start of 2017 through the end of 2018, yet failed "to support a claim of additional clinical benefit." (Picchi, 10/9)

Biopharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences Inc. selected an internal candidate to become its next finance chief, filling a key position on its leadership team as the company looks to further expand its portfolio beyond its core HIV treatments. The Foster City, Calif.-based company Tuesday said it appointed Andrew Dickinson as chief financial officer, effective Nov. 1. Mr. Dickinson, currently executive vice president for corporate development and strategy, joined Gilead in 2016 following a nine-year tenure in investment banking. He will succeed Robin Washington, who is set to retire from the CFO role but will remain in an advisory capacity until early next year. Ms. Washington’s planned retirement was announced in April. (Trentmann, 10/15)