Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Perspectives: That Government Can't Regulate Vaccine Price Is Lie Americans Have Been Living With For Decades
When I was diagnosed at age 32 with ALS, a debilitating disease that would give me a life expectancy of three to four years, my ability to access medicine became a matter of life and death. That's true for millions of Americans who rely on one or more drugs to stay alive. But something unusual is happening in our medical system today. Right now, there is one prescription drug that every single American needs urgently: a vaccine for the coronavirus. It's rare that the need for one drug can be so universal鈥攕o crucial to the health of everyone in the country, the health of the economy and the very stability of our society. (Ady Barkan, 5/7)
The quest for vaccines and therapeutic treatments against Covid-19 shouldn鈥檛 be complicated or delayed by charged debates over patent rights, the respective public and private roles in biopharmaceutical innovation, and whether the U.S. government should use its legal powers to 鈥渂reak鈥 patents in order to promote access to medicines. But it may be. Gilead鈥檚 antiviral drug remdesivir, for which the FDA recently granted emergency use authorization for Covid-19, is currently caught in the crosshairs of the debate. We suggest a path forward that could be useful in the remdesivir case and in others. (Justin Hughes and Ati K. Rai, 5/8)
You may not agree with Gov. Larry Hogan on business shut-downs and phased opening plans, but he has been calm and effective. He has demonstrated real concern for the health of Marylanders. Social distancing and other policies have helped Maryland avert a disaster similar to New York鈥檚. Regardless, daily counts of new cases and deaths fluctuate, numbers were higher again last week after three days of decreasing numbers. It is alarming to see that Maryland just misses being in the top 10 states for total number of cases and is 10th聽in the number of deaths. (Janet Holbrook, 5/12)
US聽pharmaceutical spending聽during the year 2020, is expected to top $400 billion. Americans spend about聽$1,200 on prescription聽drugs per year, the highest in the developed world. Generics are a critical cost reduction component of pharma spending; saving a whopping $2 trillion in the past ten years. 90% of the prescriptions are dispensed with generics, yet they account for only 26% of the聽drug spending. Without generic drugs, most private and public health programs would be cost-prohibitive.聽(Roomy Khan, 5/7)
