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CNEhealth.org
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DTC Perspectives
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05/03/2016 04:43 PM | Robert Goldberg
Francis Bacon was perhaps the first scholar to note that we are all guilty of confirmation bias. He observed that “the human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.”
Confirmation bias explains the synergistic relationship between so-called studies that look at drug pricing, the media attention paid to these articles and the virtual absence of reporting on studies looking at the ecosystem for treating cancer.
Two articles on the price of oral cancer drugs – one in JAMA and the other in Health Affairs are examples of this disease.
The articles look only at the list price of cancer drugs over 10 years.
They could have looked at the increase in the list price of non-drug cancer care (which has increased as well) but they didn’t.
Nor will you find any discussion of the fact the over the time periods studied, increased use of oral cancer drugs was associated with a decline in hospitalization and outpatient spending associated with increased use in oral oncology.
There are hundreds of articles reporting on these studies that with rare exception (Ed Silverman at STAT) note that the ‘studies’ do consider drug prices in context. In particular, confirmation bias has lead researchers and reporters alike to ignore other economic and clinical factors impacting the cost – and – value of cancer drugs:
A recent IMS Oncology report – largely ignored by the same journalists writing about the two articles -- found that utilization, not price, was the main driver of spending on cancer drugs with longevity of patients a key driver of use.
Targeted therapies (not including rebates, patient assistance support, etc. ) now account for almost 50% of total spending and they have been growing at a compound average growth rate of 14.6% over the past five years
Overall therapy treatment costs per month have increased 39% over the past ten years in in inflation- adjusted terms, similar to the 42% increase in overall response rates and 45% increase in months that patients are on therapy, which also contribute to higher overall spending levels associated with improved survival rates. http://www.imshealth.com/imshealth-web-aux/controller/getReport
2. The increase in use of targeted therapies w diagnostics are associated with an increase in duration of response and survival. In fact, the use of oral cancer drugs is associated with a 150 percent increase in treatment duration.
3. Neither article accounts for the fact that newest oral cancer drugs are targeting smaller groups of patients based on tumor subtype and mutational status.
4. Neither article noted that over the same period they were obsessing about drug prices, cancer costs increased at the same rate as overall health spending. Another well-ignored Milliman study found
Over the entire 2004 to 2014 study period, the average annual increase in cost was essentially the same in the actively treated cancer population and the non-cancer population.
Cancer prevalence increased from 2004 to 2014 more than the contribution of cancer patients’ cost to the total population spend.
For patients being actively treated, the portion of spending for cancer-directed pharmaceuticals increased from 2004 to 2014 while the portion of spending for inpatient care declined.
Finally, the articles ignored yet another study showing the increase in rebates as a percent of price increases. The chart below shows the rebates as a percent of gross sales for Bristol Myers as it introduced immunotherapies for cancer.
“As people's opportunities to succumb to confirmation bias increases online - only seeking out information that confirms their prejudices - ignorance, extremism and close-mindedness have continued to rise unabated.” Maajid Nawaz
Read More & Comment...
04/29/2016 07:40 AM | Peter Pitts
I’ve just returned from a cold, blustery and wet London where I attended the annual Pharma Access Leaders Forum.
But the meeting was hot.
In fact, piping hot when you consider the tectonic changes being felt in the world of healthcare technology assessment (HTA) and their implications on both patient access and innovation. And the linkages couldn’t be more profound.
Wither HTA in the EU? A key red thread through a series of potent discussions was real world evidence (aka, “outcomes data”). Head honcho HTA officials from across Europe (including England and Scotland – both still in Europe as of last report) returned again and again to the value of outcomes not just for the evolving world of Risk Sharing Agreements, but for the acceleration of reimbursement science.
Reimbursement science? In July 2012, when Sir Michael Rawlins was chairman of NICE, he told the House of Commons that value, “is based on the collective judgment of the health economists we have approached across the country. “It is,” Sir Michael said, elusive.”
When it comes to HTA – the times they are a-changin'.
One key insight came from Finn Børlum Kristensen, Chairman of the Executive Committee, European Network for HTA (EUnetHTA), who reminded the conference of JM Eisenberg’s advice, “Globalize the evidence, localize the decision.”
Just as we’ve finally come to realize the urgency of regulatory science (adaptive clinical pathways, imaging, bioinformatics, biomarker validation, 21st century bioequivalence, etc.) to the future of healthcare, so too must we understand and encourage the development of reimbursement science. And high up on the list of items to consider is the validity and utility of outcomes data. We’ve come a long way from the 2007 NICE/Velcade risk-sharing arrangement. Today the stakes are higher and the battle has ratcheted up to a higher level.
When it comes to reimbursement science, we are still in early days. For example, while many HTA bodies in Europe have moved beyond accepting evidence exclusively “the old fashioned way” (via the traditional RCT “gold standard”), there are exceptions – such as Germany. As Detlef Parow (Head of Care Management at DAK-Gesundheit) pointed out, IQWiG will only look at outcomes data “only in exceptional cases.” (This is in keeping with the IQWiG “Principle of Prohibition,” where “Everything is forbidden if it is not expressly permitted.”)
The always-insightful Francois Meyer (Advisor to the President, Director of International Affairs for HAS -- France’s Haute Autorité de Santé) wisely suggested more formal early dialogues on scientific advice – similar to the regulatory science initiatives that drive the conversations between FDA and innovators. This would give HTA bodies the opportunity to identify key issues and receive draft company positions, discuss divergent views and try to reach consensus before any final submissions or decisions are made. Sometimes the most common-sense recommendations are the toughest to implement.
But, as with FDA and the advancement of regulatory science, much depends on willingness and ability to implement based on infrastructure, capabilities, and trust. The end goal is the same for all stakeholders -- ensuring optimal use of resources for healthcare systems; improving access to value-adding medicines for patients; and appropriate reward for innovation.
In a 2009 white paper, I wrote, “We need to develop proposals that modernize the information used in the evaluation of the value of treatments. Just as the key scientific insights guiding the FDA Critical Path program are genetic variations and biomedical informatics that predict and inform individual responses to treatment, we must establish a science-based process that incorporates the knowledge and tools of personalized medicine in reimbursement decisions: true evidence-based, patient-centric medicine.”
Today, right now, we need a Critical Path for Healthcare Technology Assessment to begin the process of developing a similar list of ways new discoveries and tools (such as electronic patient records) can be used to improve the predictive and prospective nature of clinical outcomes. In an era of personalized medicine, one-size-fits-all treatments and reimbursement strategies are dangerously outdated. Accepting real world evidence does not mean discarding the randomized “gold standard” – it means augmenting it.
It’s a complicated proposition—but such a goal is as simple as it is essential -- cost must never be allowed to trump care, and short-term savings must not be allowed to trump long-term outcomes. Just as we need new and better tools for drug development, so too do we need them for HTA.
A health technology assessment model for the 21st Century should reflect and measure individual response to treatment based on the combination of genetic, clinical, and demographic factors that indicate what keep people healthy, improve their health, and prevent disease. A rapidly aging society demands a new healthcare paradigm capable of providing for its needs in the 21st Century. Equality of care must be matched with quality of care.
Read More & Comment...
But the meeting was hot.
In fact, piping hot when you consider the tectonic changes being felt in the world of healthcare technology assessment (HTA) and their implications on both patient access and innovation. And the linkages couldn’t be more profound.
Wither HTA in the EU? A key red thread through a series of potent discussions was real world evidence (aka, “outcomes data”). Head honcho HTA officials from across Europe (including England and Scotland – both still in Europe as of last report) returned again and again to the value of outcomes not just for the evolving world of Risk Sharing Agreements, but for the acceleration of reimbursement science.
Reimbursement science? In July 2012, when Sir Michael Rawlins was chairman of NICE, he told the House of Commons that value, “is based on the collective judgment of the health economists we have approached across the country. “It is,” Sir Michael said, elusive.”
When it comes to HTA – the times they are a-changin'.
One key insight came from Finn Børlum Kristensen, Chairman of the Executive Committee, European Network for HTA (EUnetHTA), who reminded the conference of JM Eisenberg’s advice, “Globalize the evidence, localize the decision.”
Just as we’ve finally come to realize the urgency of regulatory science (adaptive clinical pathways, imaging, bioinformatics, biomarker validation, 21st century bioequivalence, etc.) to the future of healthcare, so too must we understand and encourage the development of reimbursement science. And high up on the list of items to consider is the validity and utility of outcomes data. We’ve come a long way from the 2007 NICE/Velcade risk-sharing arrangement. Today the stakes are higher and the battle has ratcheted up to a higher level.
When it comes to reimbursement science, we are still in early days. For example, while many HTA bodies in Europe have moved beyond accepting evidence exclusively “the old fashioned way” (via the traditional RCT “gold standard”), there are exceptions – such as Germany. As Detlef Parow (Head of Care Management at DAK-Gesundheit) pointed out, IQWiG will only look at outcomes data “only in exceptional cases.” (This is in keeping with the IQWiG “Principle of Prohibition,” where “Everything is forbidden if it is not expressly permitted.”)
The always-insightful Francois Meyer (Advisor to the President, Director of International Affairs for HAS -- France’s Haute Autorité de Santé) wisely suggested more formal early dialogues on scientific advice – similar to the regulatory science initiatives that drive the conversations between FDA and innovators. This would give HTA bodies the opportunity to identify key issues and receive draft company positions, discuss divergent views and try to reach consensus before any final submissions or decisions are made. Sometimes the most common-sense recommendations are the toughest to implement.
But, as with FDA and the advancement of regulatory science, much depends on willingness and ability to implement based on infrastructure, capabilities, and trust. The end goal is the same for all stakeholders -- ensuring optimal use of resources for healthcare systems; improving access to value-adding medicines for patients; and appropriate reward for innovation.
In a 2009 white paper, I wrote, “We need to develop proposals that modernize the information used in the evaluation of the value of treatments. Just as the key scientific insights guiding the FDA Critical Path program are genetic variations and biomedical informatics that predict and inform individual responses to treatment, we must establish a science-based process that incorporates the knowledge and tools of personalized medicine in reimbursement decisions: true evidence-based, patient-centric medicine.”
Today, right now, we need a Critical Path for Healthcare Technology Assessment to begin the process of developing a similar list of ways new discoveries and tools (such as electronic patient records) can be used to improve the predictive and prospective nature of clinical outcomes. In an era of personalized medicine, one-size-fits-all treatments and reimbursement strategies are dangerously outdated. Accepting real world evidence does not mean discarding the randomized “gold standard” – it means augmenting it.
It’s a complicated proposition—but such a goal is as simple as it is essential -- cost must never be allowed to trump care, and short-term savings must not be allowed to trump long-term outcomes. Just as we need new and better tools for drug development, so too do we need them for HTA.
A health technology assessment model for the 21st Century should reflect and measure individual response to treatment based on the combination of genetic, clinical, and demographic factors that indicate what keep people healthy, improve their health, and prevent disease. A rapidly aging society demands a new healthcare paradigm capable of providing for its needs in the 21st Century. Equality of care must be matched with quality of care.
Read More & Comment...
04/28/2016 09:50 AM | Peter Pitts
From the pages of the Buffalo News:
Insurers have incentive to keep plans affordable
A recent editorial called the provision that prohibits the government from negotiating Medicare Part D drug prices “a ruinously bad decision.” (“Panel offers a blueprint for dealing with ruinous cost of prescription drugs,” April 22 News.)
Yet keeping the feds out of price negotiations between private insurers and drug companies has worked wonders. Surveys indicate nine out of 10 seniors are satisfied with their Part D coverage; 96 percent report that their coverage works well. And because insurers have a financial incentive to attract enrollees by keeping plans affordable, the program cost $349 billion less than initially projected during its first decade.
With satisfaction and savings like that, it’s a shame the government doesn’t make “ruinously bad decisions” more often.
Peter J. Pitts
President, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest; Former Associate Commissioner, FDA Read More & Comment...
Insurers have incentive to keep plans affordable
A recent editorial called the provision that prohibits the government from negotiating Medicare Part D drug prices “a ruinously bad decision.” (“Panel offers a blueprint for dealing with ruinous cost of prescription drugs,” April 22 News.)
Yet keeping the feds out of price negotiations between private insurers and drug companies has worked wonders. Surveys indicate nine out of 10 seniors are satisfied with their Part D coverage; 96 percent report that their coverage works well. And because insurers have a financial incentive to attract enrollees by keeping plans affordable, the program cost $349 billion less than initially projected during its first decade.
With satisfaction and savings like that, it’s a shame the government doesn’t make “ruinously bad decisions” more often.
Peter J. Pitts
President, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest; Former Associate Commissioner, FDA Read More & Comment...
04/25/2016 09:39 AM | Robert Goldberg
If you’re interested in pocketing billions more in drug price rebates what do you do? Fund a front group that claims to make prescription drug prices affordable and propose policies that would give a cartel of PBMs, health plans and unions control over the development, pricing and access of new medicines. Call for transparency but then refuse to share how those rebates are generated and distributed and how they fatten your profit margins.
The Coalition for Sustainable Drug Pricing -- an offshoot of the National Healthcare Coalition -- will once again propose 'market-based' solutions to reduce drug prices. These proposals are actually slightly reworked versions of proposals made by the Center for American Progress, as well as Bernie Sanders.
The Coalition is once again waving the red herring of speciality drug costs. It's expert panel is silent about all the rebates being pocketed by their institutions.
The Coalition is actually a front group for health plans, PBMs and the Washington offices of many liberal interest groups who are all interested in reducing pharmaceutical and biotech profits. The proposals would do that by transferring even bigger rebates to the aforementioned insurers and PBMs and giving these groups more control over access to new medicines, which in turn would increase their short term profit margins.
Here's what the Coalition is calling for today:
• It would force drug companies to a minimum percentage of their revenue in R&D. Companies failing to do so would be subject to fines and possible federal prosecution
• A price that exceeds a price set by federal advisory committee by more than 20 percent would be presumed to be unreasonable and to harm public health. Under current law, designating something or someone a public health threat the government has the power to immediately seize products, patents, set prices and throw people in prison for price gouging, just like in Venezuela.
• It would allow government health plans, private insurers, hospitals, union health programs and prescription drug benefit companies like CVS to form a cartel set ‘fair’ prices and decide which patients get what medicines based on how much the ‘private’ panel decided how much our lives are worth and how much more should be spent on drugs each year. Drug companies that fail to comply with the prices would be prohibited from sell all of it’s products to any government program.
• It allows the same cartel to keep $100 billion in rebates that are supposed to go to patients but instead are pocketed by these special interests
It also wants to weaken and eliminate FDA regulations established to protect patients against serious and life threatening adverse events from the use of new medicines.
The Coalition also claims that their policies will actually increase innovation by forcing companies to only invest in truly innovative drugs. Instead is asserts that R and D is an essential expense for a drug company, not an optional investment, if at some point it doesn’t invest in research and development, it won’t be a drug company anymore.
That’s like saying health insurers will have to stay in business even if they can’t raise premiums because otherwise it wouldn't be a health plan anymore. Ask United Healthcare how that business model would work.
Nobody's going to offer health insurance if they'll lose money selling it. The same goes for life saving medicines.
There are better ways to make medicines more valuable by making them more affordable. The first is to use rebate money to reduce out of pocket cost sharing of actual patients.
The second is to cut the time, cost and risk of bringing new medicines to market. We can do that by building on proposals included in the 21st Cures Act and on efforts developed by the FDA and groups such as Friends of Cancer Research. Bringing more medicines to patients more quickly at lower cost will increase competition and encourage innovators to shift investment into more discovery.
We should all be on the same side in fighting against disease. Stoking populist anger in order to fatten short term profits doesn't advance that alliance.
Read More & Comment...
The Coalition for Sustainable Drug Pricing -- an offshoot of the National Healthcare Coalition -- will once again propose 'market-based' solutions to reduce drug prices. These proposals are actually slightly reworked versions of proposals made by the Center for American Progress, as well as Bernie Sanders.
The Coalition is once again waving the red herring of speciality drug costs. It's expert panel is silent about all the rebates being pocketed by their institutions.
The Coalition is actually a front group for health plans, PBMs and the Washington offices of many liberal interest groups who are all interested in reducing pharmaceutical and biotech profits. The proposals would do that by transferring even bigger rebates to the aforementioned insurers and PBMs and giving these groups more control over access to new medicines, which in turn would increase their short term profit margins.
Here's what the Coalition is calling for today:
• It would force drug companies to a minimum percentage of their revenue in R&D. Companies failing to do so would be subject to fines and possible federal prosecution
• A price that exceeds a price set by federal advisory committee by more than 20 percent would be presumed to be unreasonable and to harm public health. Under current law, designating something or someone a public health threat the government has the power to immediately seize products, patents, set prices and throw people in prison for price gouging, just like in Venezuela.
• It would allow government health plans, private insurers, hospitals, union health programs and prescription drug benefit companies like CVS to form a cartel set ‘fair’ prices and decide which patients get what medicines based on how much the ‘private’ panel decided how much our lives are worth and how much more should be spent on drugs each year. Drug companies that fail to comply with the prices would be prohibited from sell all of it’s products to any government program.
• It allows the same cartel to keep $100 billion in rebates that are supposed to go to patients but instead are pocketed by these special interests
It also wants to weaken and eliminate FDA regulations established to protect patients against serious and life threatening adverse events from the use of new medicines.
The Coalition also claims that their policies will actually increase innovation by forcing companies to only invest in truly innovative drugs. Instead is asserts that R and D is an essential expense for a drug company, not an optional investment, if at some point it doesn’t invest in research and development, it won’t be a drug company anymore.
That’s like saying health insurers will have to stay in business even if they can’t raise premiums because otherwise it wouldn't be a health plan anymore. Ask United Healthcare how that business model would work.
Nobody's going to offer health insurance if they'll lose money selling it. The same goes for life saving medicines.
There are better ways to make medicines more valuable by making them more affordable. The first is to use rebate money to reduce out of pocket cost sharing of actual patients.
The second is to cut the time, cost and risk of bringing new medicines to market. We can do that by building on proposals included in the 21st Cures Act and on efforts developed by the FDA and groups such as Friends of Cancer Research. Bringing more medicines to patients more quickly at lower cost will increase competition and encourage innovators to shift investment into more discovery.
We should all be on the same side in fighting against disease. Stoking populist anger in order to fatten short term profits doesn't advance that alliance.
Read More & Comment...
04/20/2016 02:52 PM | Robert Goldberg
Is telling just some of the facts to make a point contradicted by all of the facts good journalism? Is it honest?
Here's the headline from TheStreet.com Adam Feurstein:
Ignoring Criticism, Drug Companies Still Raising Prices, Making More Money
"Everyone is screaming about drug prices. They're too damn high! Drug spending is going to bankrupt the health care system. Raising the price of drugs multiple times per year is unconscionable and unsustainable.
How are biotech and pharmaceutical companies responding to all the criticism? They're raising drug prices even more.
And increasingly, nearly all of the surplus revenue generated from those price hikes is staying with the drug companies instead of being extracted by insurers and pharmacy benefits managers in the form of higher rebates, said Leerink Partners analyst Geoff Porges.
"The price increases for established brands across our coverage have been substantial indeed. To the surprise of many investors, it now appears these price increases are likely to flow through to actual sales growth, with such growth more than offsetting any volume weakness in 1Q, and resulting in significant positive revenue surprises for these companies when they report 1Q results," Porges wrote in a research note Wednesday.
In other words: Take that, Hillary Clinton!
Porges analyzed J&J's first-quarter sales results, particularly for its specialty pharmaceutical drugs Simponi, Stelara and Remicade, and found 70%-90% of list price increases taken over the past year are flowing through to reported sales. In some cases, J&J captured 100% of the price increase as sales.
In other words, efforts by insurers and PBMs to negotiate higher discounts or rebates on specialty pharmaceutical products isn't keeping pace with the price increases pushed through by drug and biotech companies. Likewise, politicians ranting about outrageously high drug prices aren't having a moderating effect on industry practices -- at least not yet.
The net result should be better-than-expected sales, Porges said...."
Here's the rest of the story.
If Remicade is reporting 70 percent sales, that's a 30 percent rebate. Pretty, pretty good considering the drug didn't face biosimilar competition until this year. Neat trick to turn the percentages around but still 30 percent is a lot.
Oops.
Then there is the Remicade rebate picture
On top of that, as my last blog demonstrated industry-wide a big chunk of revenues -- $100 billion or so -- goes to PBMs, insurers, hospitals, employers. Everyone but patients.
There's a reason for the phrase, "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." You see, telling the truth, but not the whole truth and nothing but is considered lying.
Read More & Comment...
Here's the headline from TheStreet.com Adam Feurstein:
Ignoring Criticism, Drug Companies Still Raising Prices, Making More Money
"Everyone is screaming about drug prices. They're too damn high! Drug spending is going to bankrupt the health care system. Raising the price of drugs multiple times per year is unconscionable and unsustainable.
How are biotech and pharmaceutical companies responding to all the criticism? They're raising drug prices even more.
And increasingly, nearly all of the surplus revenue generated from those price hikes is staying with the drug companies instead of being extracted by insurers and pharmacy benefits managers in the form of higher rebates, said Leerink Partners analyst Geoff Porges.
"The price increases for established brands across our coverage have been substantial indeed. To the surprise of many investors, it now appears these price increases are likely to flow through to actual sales growth, with such growth more than offsetting any volume weakness in 1Q, and resulting in significant positive revenue surprises for these companies when they report 1Q results," Porges wrote in a research note Wednesday.
In other words: Take that, Hillary Clinton!
Porges analyzed J&J's first-quarter sales results, particularly for its specialty pharmaceutical drugs Simponi, Stelara and Remicade, and found 70%-90% of list price increases taken over the past year are flowing through to reported sales. In some cases, J&J captured 100% of the price increase as sales.
In other words, efforts by insurers and PBMs to negotiate higher discounts or rebates on specialty pharmaceutical products isn't keeping pace with the price increases pushed through by drug and biotech companies. Likewise, politicians ranting about outrageously high drug prices aren't having a moderating effect on industry practices -- at least not yet.
The net result should be better-than-expected sales, Porges said...."
Here's the rest of the story.
If Remicade is reporting 70 percent sales, that's a 30 percent rebate. Pretty, pretty good considering the drug didn't face biosimilar competition until this year. Neat trick to turn the percentages around but still 30 percent is a lot.
Oops.
Then there is the Remicade rebate picture
On top of that, as my last blog demonstrated industry-wide a big chunk of revenues -- $100 billion or so -- goes to PBMs, insurers, hospitals, employers. Everyone but patients.
There's a reason for the phrase, "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." You see, telling the truth, but not the whole truth and nothing but is considered lying.
Read More & Comment...
04/17/2016 06:24 PM | Peter Pitts
When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice. -- Otto von Bismarck
Is the cure worse than the disease?
A thoughtful and comprehensive overview in BioCentury (by one of our favorite industry cognoscenti, Steve Usdin), Can “Cures” be Cured, presents a blunt appraisal for either measured optimism or realpolitk pessimism.
Some tantalizing snippets:
After almost two years of effort, it is still not clear whether a path can be cleared to put a 21st Century Cures bill on President Obama’s desk, or what measures would be included if and when legislation is turned into law.
It is certain that anything that could get through Congress would not come close to matching promises made by the legislation’s sponsors to radically transform the way medicines are discovered and to dramatically accelerate the creation of cures.
According to Usdin, Cures legislation, would be a disappointment to anyone hoping Congress will attempt to squeeze more science from the tens of billions taxpayers provide to NIH, or for fundamental changes in the kinds of science NIH supports and conducts.
The Cures bills do not address concerns about the effectiveness of NIH’s translational research, perceptions that NIH’s peer-review process rewards consensus science rather than innovation, or the inefficiency of allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be siphoned off research grants for “indirect” costs such as administrative support and facilities.
The White House Statement of Administration Policy released in July noted the “new responsibilities for FDA outlined in H.R. 6 exceed the resources provided in the bill and the President’s FY 2016 Budget and as such, FDA will be unable to fully implement the programs established in the bill, while maintaining its current performance levels.”
FDA also thinks H.R. 6 would unleash a flood of applications for qualification of biomarkers and other drug development tools, and it estimates that reviewing these applications would cost $940 million over five years.
In the absence of a substantial increase in FDA funding, the administration, congressional Democrats and regulated industries are likely to push to have many of the FDA provisions stripped from the 21st Century Cures Act.
As the window for passing a bill in the Senate and negotiating a final version narrows, pharmaceutical industry lobbyists who worked hard to shape H.R. 6 and Senate Cures legislation are now sitting on the sidelines.
Pharma companies are unwilling to push for legislation they feel does little to benefit their companies, and they are cautious about supporting a political process that could exacerbate battles over pricing. At the same time, the industry doesn’t want to be seen throwing sand in the gears. Public opposition to Cures legislation would antagonize powerful members of Congress, along with influential patient advocates who have invested immense amounts of time in the Cures process.
Industry and FDA will call for a “clean” reauthorization of PDUFA, but Congress is unlikely to resist the temptation to attach legislation to PDUFA VI. If Cures legislation is enacted this year, any FDA elements that were considered but didn’t make the final cut will be in play as a PDUFA companion bill is drafted.
If Cures doesn’t pass, there will be strong political pressure to include the measures that would have made it into a final bill, along with some of those that were discarded, plus mandatory funding for NIH and FDA.
Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets. Read More & Comment...
Is the cure worse than the disease?
A thoughtful and comprehensive overview in BioCentury (by one of our favorite industry cognoscenti, Steve Usdin), Can “Cures” be Cured, presents a blunt appraisal for either measured optimism or realpolitk pessimism.
Some tantalizing snippets:
After almost two years of effort, it is still not clear whether a path can be cleared to put a 21st Century Cures bill on President Obama’s desk, or what measures would be included if and when legislation is turned into law.
It is certain that anything that could get through Congress would not come close to matching promises made by the legislation’s sponsors to radically transform the way medicines are discovered and to dramatically accelerate the creation of cures.
According to Usdin, Cures legislation, would be a disappointment to anyone hoping Congress will attempt to squeeze more science from the tens of billions taxpayers provide to NIH, or for fundamental changes in the kinds of science NIH supports and conducts.
The Cures bills do not address concerns about the effectiveness of NIH’s translational research, perceptions that NIH’s peer-review process rewards consensus science rather than innovation, or the inefficiency of allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be siphoned off research grants for “indirect” costs such as administrative support and facilities.
The White House Statement of Administration Policy released in July noted the “new responsibilities for FDA outlined in H.R. 6 exceed the resources provided in the bill and the President’s FY 2016 Budget and as such, FDA will be unable to fully implement the programs established in the bill, while maintaining its current performance levels.”
FDA also thinks H.R. 6 would unleash a flood of applications for qualification of biomarkers and other drug development tools, and it estimates that reviewing these applications would cost $940 million over five years.
In the absence of a substantial increase in FDA funding, the administration, congressional Democrats and regulated industries are likely to push to have many of the FDA provisions stripped from the 21st Century Cures Act.
As the window for passing a bill in the Senate and negotiating a final version narrows, pharmaceutical industry lobbyists who worked hard to shape H.R. 6 and Senate Cures legislation are now sitting on the sidelines.
Pharma companies are unwilling to push for legislation they feel does little to benefit their companies, and they are cautious about supporting a political process that could exacerbate battles over pricing. At the same time, the industry doesn’t want to be seen throwing sand in the gears. Public opposition to Cures legislation would antagonize powerful members of Congress, along with influential patient advocates who have invested immense amounts of time in the Cures process.
Industry and FDA will call for a “clean” reauthorization of PDUFA, but Congress is unlikely to resist the temptation to attach legislation to PDUFA VI. If Cures legislation is enacted this year, any FDA elements that were considered but didn’t make the final cut will be in play as a PDUFA companion bill is drafted.
If Cures doesn’t pass, there will be strong political pressure to include the measures that would have made it into a final bill, along with some of those that were discarded, plus mandatory funding for NIH and FDA.
Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets. Read More & Comment...
04/15/2016 01:32 PM | Robert Goldberg
Most of the Increase in Drug Spending Pocketed By PBMs and Insurers:
What the Media Missed in Covering The IMS Drug Cost Study
By Robert Goldberg, PhD
Media coverage of the The IMS Institute for Health Informatics study: “Medicines Use and Spending in the U.S. – A Review of 2015 and Outlook to 2020” focused mainly at the change in top-line drug spending from 2014-2015. That approach, as I have suggested in the past, is uniquely unrevealing.
Spending on drugs in the outpatient, hospital and nursing homes was $425 billion. However, the drug and biotech companies made $310 billion of that total. Where did the other $125 billion go? The vast majority of articles don’t tell.
In fact, that spread – which has gotten larger in both total dollars and as a percentage of the increase in drug spending flows directly to insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, hospitals and other large customers, not the patient.
Follow the Money and the Prices
To find out why such rebates aren’t going directly to the consumer, you have to follow the money and the difference in prices net of rebates and the invoice or retail price. The amount of prescription drug revenue pouring into such ‘stakeholders’ has increased since Obamacare began taking effect. Net price increases have actually dropped by half since 2011. As the IMS study observes: “The average net price for brands already in the market is estimated to have increased by 2.8% in 2015, down from 5.1% in 2014 and significantly lower than seen in prior years.”
Meanwhile, the increase in rebates as a share of price growth surged. As the charts above and below reveal, rebates as percent of total price growth increased ten fold since 2011.
Further analysis shows that rebates were $10.8 billion (40 %) of the total increase in specialty drug spending between 2014-15. As a percent of all brand medicine spending, rebates were 71 percent of the total increase from 2014-2015. This means much of the price increase imposed on patients reflects the cost of rebates that PBMs and other claim make medicines ‘affordable’.
Patient Cost Sharing Increases as Rebate Revenue Soars
Even as the share of drug spending as a percent of rebates has soared and the contribution of net price increases to spending has declined, PBMs and insurers have increased cost sharing by more than 25% since 2010.
Patient cost sharing is a percent of the ‘invoice’ or retail price, not the net or rebated price. This suggests that rebate dollars are not passed through directly to patients.
As IMS points out…”in response to this rising level of patient cost exposure, brand manufacturers are steadily increasing their use of “buy-downs” through patient savings programs such as coupons or vouchers, to help patients offset these costs.
Even after coupons are applied, patients with pharmacy deductible plans are still facing high cost exposure.”
Even worse, the percent of patients facing cost sharing of up to 40 percent of a retail price has soared even as rebate revenue increased. And the number of drugs with the highest cost sharing amount also generate the most rebates.
A recent Avalere study found that many insurers – with help from the PBMs that design drug formularies and cost sharing “….placed all drugs in a class on the specialty tier. Specifically, in the Protease Inhibitor and Multiple Sclerosis Agents classes, 29 and 51 percent of plans respectively place all drugs, including available generics, on the highest tier. There are no generics in the other three classes of drugs listed below.”
Specifically, in 8 of the 10 classes, 2015 exchange plans were more likely than 2014 plans to assign all single-source branded drugs to the highest cost sharing tier. A single-source branded medication is a brand name drug without a generic equivalent. The practice was most common for some cancer drugs and drugs used to treat multiple sclerosis. Roughly 30 percent of plans also place all single-source drugs for HIV/AIDS on the specialty tier.
Conclusion: The Real Source of High Drug Costs
The real story about drug pricing is how PBMs like Express Scripts and health plans are pocketing about a bigger and bigger share of drug revenues while increasing what patients – especially those with the greatest need for the newest drugs generating the biggest rebates – are seeing their share of the invoice price of a medicine surge.
The outrage about high drug prices is directed at biopharmaceutical firms. But the IMS study suggests that the $100 billion in rebates and discounts that could reduce the out of pocket cost of consumers is taken by $100 PBMs, insurers and hospitals. And to add insult to injury, these organizations turn around and charge consumers retail price and require them to pay an increasingly greater share of that cost.
The fact that such practices not only increase PBM, insurer, etc. revenues but deny people access to new medicines – that in turn increase the risk of staying sicker or getting sicker -- should be a big story. Why aren’t media outlets and policymakers focusing on the real source of high drug costs?
Read More & Comment...
What the Media Missed in Covering The IMS Drug Cost Study
By Robert Goldberg, PhD
Media coverage of the The IMS Institute for Health Informatics study: “Medicines Use and Spending in the U.S. – A Review of 2015 and Outlook to 2020” focused mainly at the change in top-line drug spending from 2014-2015. That approach, as I have suggested in the past, is uniquely unrevealing.
Spending on drugs in the outpatient, hospital and nursing homes was $425 billion. However, the drug and biotech companies made $310 billion of that total. Where did the other $125 billion go? The vast majority of articles don’t tell.
In fact, that spread – which has gotten larger in both total dollars and as a percentage of the increase in drug spending flows directly to insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, hospitals and other large customers, not the patient.
Follow the Money and the Prices
To find out why such rebates aren’t going directly to the consumer, you have to follow the money and the difference in prices net of rebates and the invoice or retail price. The amount of prescription drug revenue pouring into such ‘stakeholders’ has increased since Obamacare began taking effect. Net price increases have actually dropped by half since 2011. As the IMS study observes: “The average net price for brands already in the market is estimated to have increased by 2.8% in 2015, down from 5.1% in 2014 and significantly lower than seen in prior years.”
Meanwhile, the increase in rebates as a share of price growth surged. As the charts above and below reveal, rebates as percent of total price growth increased ten fold since 2011.
Further analysis shows that rebates were $10.8 billion (40 %) of the total increase in specialty drug spending between 2014-15. As a percent of all brand medicine spending, rebates were 71 percent of the total increase from 2014-2015. This means much of the price increase imposed on patients reflects the cost of rebates that PBMs and other claim make medicines ‘affordable’.
Patient Cost Sharing Increases as Rebate Revenue Soars
Even as the share of drug spending as a percent of rebates has soared and the contribution of net price increases to spending has declined, PBMs and insurers have increased cost sharing by more than 25% since 2010.
Patient cost sharing is a percent of the ‘invoice’ or retail price, not the net or rebated price. This suggests that rebate dollars are not passed through directly to patients.
As IMS points out…”in response to this rising level of patient cost exposure, brand manufacturers are steadily increasing their use of “buy-downs” through patient savings programs such as coupons or vouchers, to help patients offset these costs.
Even after coupons are applied, patients with pharmacy deductible plans are still facing high cost exposure.”
Even worse, the percent of patients facing cost sharing of up to 40 percent of a retail price has soared even as rebate revenue increased. And the number of drugs with the highest cost sharing amount also generate the most rebates.
A recent Avalere study found that many insurers – with help from the PBMs that design drug formularies and cost sharing “….placed all drugs in a class on the specialty tier. Specifically, in the Protease Inhibitor and Multiple Sclerosis Agents classes, 29 and 51 percent of plans respectively place all drugs, including available generics, on the highest tier. There are no generics in the other three classes of drugs listed below.”
Specifically, in 8 of the 10 classes, 2015 exchange plans were more likely than 2014 plans to assign all single-source branded drugs to the highest cost sharing tier. A single-source branded medication is a brand name drug without a generic equivalent. The practice was most common for some cancer drugs and drugs used to treat multiple sclerosis. Roughly 30 percent of plans also place all single-source drugs for HIV/AIDS on the specialty tier.
Conclusion: The Real Source of High Drug Costs
The real story about drug pricing is how PBMs like Express Scripts and health plans are pocketing about a bigger and bigger share of drug revenues while increasing what patients – especially those with the greatest need for the newest drugs generating the biggest rebates – are seeing their share of the invoice price of a medicine surge.
The outrage about high drug prices is directed at biopharmaceutical firms. But the IMS study suggests that the $100 billion in rebates and discounts that could reduce the out of pocket cost of consumers is taken by $100 PBMs, insurers and hospitals. And to add insult to injury, these organizations turn around and charge consumers retail price and require them to pay an increasingly greater share of that cost.
The fact that such practices not only increase PBM, insurer, etc. revenues but deny people access to new medicines – that in turn increase the risk of staying sicker or getting sicker -- should be a big story. Why aren’t media outlets and policymakers focusing on the real source of high drug costs?
Read More & Comment...
04/10/2016 07:25 PM | Peter Pitts
From the pages of the Deseret News ...
Transparency in medicine isn't a one-way street.
The transparent truth is that the prices patients actually pay aren't set by drug manufacturers — they're determined by pharmacy benefit managers, insurers, hospitals and pharmacies.
A majority of Americans believe increased health care transparency should be a top national priority. It's easy to understand why. Rising health care costs, coupled with high-profile stories of price-gouging at some small pharmaceutical companies, have left consumers feeling ripped off, especially when it comes to drug prices.
But most drug companies aren't whimsically increasing prices. In fact, if the health care industry was really transparent, people could see the truth: drug companies often aren't the culprits behind high costs. In fact, they're the best hope for dramatically lowering health care spending.
The transparent truth is that the prices patients actually pay aren't set by drug manufacturers — they're determined by pharmacy benefit managers, insurers, hospitals and pharmacies.
And these third parties frequently engage in … price-gouging.
Consider the "prescription price shell game" uncovered in Minneapolis, where a local CVS jacked up the price of a kidney medication to more than $6 per pill from 87 cents. Or the Levine Cancer Institute in North Carolina, which collected nearly $4,500 for a colon cancer drug that hospitals typically buy for $60.
Unfortunately, the media largely ignores such abuses, preferring to concentrate just on alleged misbehavior or greed by pharmaceutical companies. When one drug maker released a breakthrough Hepatitis C cure, headline after headline blasted the company for the drug's initial $84,000 price tag.
Few follow-up stories have noted that, because of competition from other drug makers, the manufacturer granted such big discounts — often in excess of 50 percent — that the medicine now costs less in the United States than in price-controlled Europe.
Even fewer stories put America's health care spending in perspective. Name-brand drugs accounted for just 7 percent of $100 billion increase in health care spending from 2013 to 2014.
That 7 percent accounts for some of the most promising advances in treatment in decades. By addressing once-untreatable symptoms and complications, these advances help patients avoid expensive surgeries and lengthy hospital stays — which account for a far larger share of health care spending than pharmaceuticals do.
Journalists crying page one crocodile tears over high drug costs aren't just ignoring hospitals' and insurers' roles in jacking up retail prices. They're ignoring the fact that massive decreases in health care spending will only come about due to pharmaceutical cures. Better MRI machines are not going to end the scourge of cancer. New drugs could — and do.
Of course, medicines aren't cheap to create. The average cost of developing an FDA-approved prescription medication is $2.6 billion, according to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. That represents a 145 percent increase over the past decade.
For every successful new compound, hundreds of others once deemed promising end up abandoned. Research chemists at pharmaceutical companies may spend an entire career in the lab without working on a single drug that gets to market.
Understandably, pharmaceutical companies don't love to publicize their frequent failures. As a result, everyday Americans only see the successful, profitable drugs — and the high price tags that stem from the cost of research plus the markups tacked on by third parties.
Consumers are justifiably mad about health care costs. But their anger is misdirected. If the health care industry was truly transparent, Americans would see who's really to blame for rising prices. With rare exception, it's not the companies creating lifesaving medicines.
Peter J. Pitts, a former FDA associate commissioner, is the president and co-founder of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. Read More & Comment...
Transparency in medicine isn't a one-way street.
The transparent truth is that the prices patients actually pay aren't set by drug manufacturers — they're determined by pharmacy benefit managers, insurers, hospitals and pharmacies.
A majority of Americans believe increased health care transparency should be a top national priority. It's easy to understand why. Rising health care costs, coupled with high-profile stories of price-gouging at some small pharmaceutical companies, have left consumers feeling ripped off, especially when it comes to drug prices.
But most drug companies aren't whimsically increasing prices. In fact, if the health care industry was really transparent, people could see the truth: drug companies often aren't the culprits behind high costs. In fact, they're the best hope for dramatically lowering health care spending.
The transparent truth is that the prices patients actually pay aren't set by drug manufacturers — they're determined by pharmacy benefit managers, insurers, hospitals and pharmacies.
And these third parties frequently engage in … price-gouging.
Consider the "prescription price shell game" uncovered in Minneapolis, where a local CVS jacked up the price of a kidney medication to more than $6 per pill from 87 cents. Or the Levine Cancer Institute in North Carolina, which collected nearly $4,500 for a colon cancer drug that hospitals typically buy for $60.
Unfortunately, the media largely ignores such abuses, preferring to concentrate just on alleged misbehavior or greed by pharmaceutical companies. When one drug maker released a breakthrough Hepatitis C cure, headline after headline blasted the company for the drug's initial $84,000 price tag.
Few follow-up stories have noted that, because of competition from other drug makers, the manufacturer granted such big discounts — often in excess of 50 percent — that the medicine now costs less in the United States than in price-controlled Europe.
Even fewer stories put America's health care spending in perspective. Name-brand drugs accounted for just 7 percent of $100 billion increase in health care spending from 2013 to 2014.
That 7 percent accounts for some of the most promising advances in treatment in decades. By addressing once-untreatable symptoms and complications, these advances help patients avoid expensive surgeries and lengthy hospital stays — which account for a far larger share of health care spending than pharmaceuticals do.
Journalists crying page one crocodile tears over high drug costs aren't just ignoring hospitals' and insurers' roles in jacking up retail prices. They're ignoring the fact that massive decreases in health care spending will only come about due to pharmaceutical cures. Better MRI machines are not going to end the scourge of cancer. New drugs could — and do.
Of course, medicines aren't cheap to create. The average cost of developing an FDA-approved prescription medication is $2.6 billion, according to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. That represents a 145 percent increase over the past decade.
For every successful new compound, hundreds of others once deemed promising end up abandoned. Research chemists at pharmaceutical companies may spend an entire career in the lab without working on a single drug that gets to market.
Understandably, pharmaceutical companies don't love to publicize their frequent failures. As a result, everyday Americans only see the successful, profitable drugs — and the high price tags that stem from the cost of research plus the markups tacked on by third parties.
Consumers are justifiably mad about health care costs. But their anger is misdirected. If the health care industry was truly transparent, Americans would see who's really to blame for rising prices. With rare exception, it's not the companies creating lifesaving medicines.
Peter J. Pitts, a former FDA associate commissioner, is the president and co-founder of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. Read More & Comment...
04/08/2016 10:36 AM | Peter Pitts
From the pages of the Detroit News:
Don’t burn drug execs at the stake
There’s a torch and pitchfork sale underway in the nation’s capital — or so it would seem from Congress’ recent witch hunt targeting the pharmaceutical industry.
The Senate Special Committee on Aging has called upon a long list of industry executives to explain their pricing practices. House Democrats recently launched a task force to investigate supposedly excessive drug prices and consider potential legislative remedies.
And a probe led by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, scoured 20,000 pages of emails from Gilead looking for evidence of wrongdoing.
The closest thing to a smoking gun was the senators’ meek conclusion that Gilead fulfilled its legal, fiduciary obligations to maximize shareholders’ returns. Oh, the horror!
But drug costs aren’t climbing faster than general health care inflation. In fact, robust market competition has helped drive down prices. Federal intervention is unnecessary and counterproductive to the goal of improving American health care.
Pharmaceuticals represent only about 10 percent of national health care spending — a share that’s remained remarkably stable since the 1960s.
That doesn’t mean medicines aren’t becoming more expensive. They are. But their prices aren’t increasing faster than health care services as a whole. Much media coverage has focused on last year’s 13 percent increase in the list price of brand-name drugs. Far fewer journalists and politicians bothered to mention that, factoring in rebates and discounts negotiated by insurers and pharmacy benefit managers, actual net drug spending has only increased 5.5 percent. That’s right in line with overall health care spending growth.
Sadly, Congress will probably ignore such facts. It’s much easier to score cheap political points by demonizing an entire industry based on isolated anecdotes. But even those misleading examples of bad behavior prove that government intervention isn’t needed.
Consider Turing Pharmaceutical’s recent price gouging on Daraprim, a seven-decade-old treatment that combats parasitic infections in people with weakened immune systems. Turing’s 5,500 percent price hike, from $13.50 to $750 per pill, prompted toothless outrage from the media and politicians — and a crippling response from a private sector competitor, Imprimis, which released a $1 per pill alternative.
Simply put, competition works.
New regulatory intrusions on drug pricing would undermine innovation. Firms would be less willing to risk billions creating new medicines.
And since medicines lower health care costs by improving patient health and warding off more serious complications, government interventions that discourage drug development will increase health care spending, not cut it.
For instance, anti-retroviral drugs have cut the HIV/AIDS death rate a stunning 85 percent since the mid-1990s. That didn’t just save tens of thousands of lives — it also saved the U.S. economy $615 billion by averting health care spending and increasing worker productivity.
Congress’ inquisition of the pharmaceutical industry is meant to justify government restrictions on drug pricing. If facts still matter, free-market competition will be exonerated and upheld as the best way to contain health care spending while delivering quality care. If they don’t matter, and legislators insist on imposing innovation-killing price controls, future health care savings will go up in smoke.
Peter Pitts is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. Read More & Comment...
Don’t burn drug execs at the stake
There’s a torch and pitchfork sale underway in the nation’s capital — or so it would seem from Congress’ recent witch hunt targeting the pharmaceutical industry.
The Senate Special Committee on Aging has called upon a long list of industry executives to explain their pricing practices. House Democrats recently launched a task force to investigate supposedly excessive drug prices and consider potential legislative remedies.
And a probe led by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, scoured 20,000 pages of emails from Gilead looking for evidence of wrongdoing.
The closest thing to a smoking gun was the senators’ meek conclusion that Gilead fulfilled its legal, fiduciary obligations to maximize shareholders’ returns. Oh, the horror!
But drug costs aren’t climbing faster than general health care inflation. In fact, robust market competition has helped drive down prices. Federal intervention is unnecessary and counterproductive to the goal of improving American health care.
Pharmaceuticals represent only about 10 percent of national health care spending — a share that’s remained remarkably stable since the 1960s.
That doesn’t mean medicines aren’t becoming more expensive. They are. But their prices aren’t increasing faster than health care services as a whole. Much media coverage has focused on last year’s 13 percent increase in the list price of brand-name drugs. Far fewer journalists and politicians bothered to mention that, factoring in rebates and discounts negotiated by insurers and pharmacy benefit managers, actual net drug spending has only increased 5.5 percent. That’s right in line with overall health care spending growth.
Sadly, Congress will probably ignore such facts. It’s much easier to score cheap political points by demonizing an entire industry based on isolated anecdotes. But even those misleading examples of bad behavior prove that government intervention isn’t needed.
Consider Turing Pharmaceutical’s recent price gouging on Daraprim, a seven-decade-old treatment that combats parasitic infections in people with weakened immune systems. Turing’s 5,500 percent price hike, from $13.50 to $750 per pill, prompted toothless outrage from the media and politicians — and a crippling response from a private sector competitor, Imprimis, which released a $1 per pill alternative.
Simply put, competition works.
New regulatory intrusions on drug pricing would undermine innovation. Firms would be less willing to risk billions creating new medicines.
And since medicines lower health care costs by improving patient health and warding off more serious complications, government interventions that discourage drug development will increase health care spending, not cut it.
For instance, anti-retroviral drugs have cut the HIV/AIDS death rate a stunning 85 percent since the mid-1990s. That didn’t just save tens of thousands of lives — it also saved the U.S. economy $615 billion by averting health care spending and increasing worker productivity.
Congress’ inquisition of the pharmaceutical industry is meant to justify government restrictions on drug pricing. If facts still matter, free-market competition will be exonerated and upheld as the best way to contain health care spending while delivering quality care. If they don’t matter, and legislators insist on imposing innovation-killing price controls, future health care savings will go up in smoke.
Peter Pitts is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. Read More & Comment...
04/08/2016 09:02 AM | Robert Goldberg
Last night the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) release its draft report “Treatment Options Relapsed or Refractory Multiple Myeloma: Effectiveness and Value.” The report can be accessed here. The draft voting questions can be found here.
The bottom line results and approach confirm the wisdom of ignoring anything ICER puts out as self-serving, voodoo economics. See Tom Philipson's excellent discussion of the shoddy short-sightedness of value frameworks here.
I also post a link to yesterday's blog with these updates:
ICER concludes that given that the QALY exceeds what they call the 'norm' of $150K only 1200 out of 32000 patients should be treated. That's rationing. And it has implications for any orphan disease (of which MM is one). That's because in the short term, the use of these new medicines in combination will increase medical costs, not reduce them.
Death and doing nothing is very cost effective.
Further, ICER is setting a trap on combination therapies. That is, it is attempting to send off alarms about how to pay for 2-3 medicines all priced at $150K, etc.
In my previous blog I estimated that ICER would treat only18000 patients, let 34000 people die. ICER's draft report assumes 320000 patients of whom only 1200 would get treatment each year.
As I predicted: ICER didn't even try to set a price for combo therapy:
Indeed, ICER -- unlike previous studies -- refused to set a drug price because it knows that it would be absurdly low to meet it's QALY standard and would be attacked from all sides. Read More & Comment...
The bottom line results and approach confirm the wisdom of ignoring anything ICER puts out as self-serving, voodoo economics. See Tom Philipson's excellent discussion of the shoddy short-sightedness of value frameworks here.
I also post a link to yesterday's blog with these updates:
ICER concludes that given that the QALY exceeds what they call the 'norm' of $150K only 1200 out of 32000 patients should be treated. That's rationing. And it has implications for any orphan disease (of which MM is one). That's because in the short term, the use of these new medicines in combination will increase medical costs, not reduce them.
Death and doing nothing is very cost effective.
Further, ICER is setting a trap on combination therapies. That is, it is attempting to send off alarms about how to pay for 2-3 medicines all priced at $150K, etc.
In my previous blog I estimated that ICER would treat only18000 patients, let 34000 people die. ICER's draft report assumes 320000 patients of whom only 1200 would get treatment each year.
As I predicted: ICER didn't even try to set a price for combo therapy:
Indeed, ICER -- unlike previous studies -- refused to set a drug price because it knows that it would be absurdly low to meet it's QALY standard and would be attacked from all sides. Read More & Comment...
04/07/2016 05:51 AM | Peter Pitts
According to a BioCentury report about yesterday’s Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) hearing on biomedical innovation legislation, Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN.) said he plans to bring companion legislation for the 21st Century Cures Act (H.R. 6) to the Senate floor if he can obtain bipartisan agreement on mandatory "surge" funding for NIH. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA.), the committee's ranking member, said Democratic support for innovation legislation is contingent on mandatory funding increases for both NIH and FDA.
The remarks came at the HELP Committee’s third and final markup of biomedical innovation legislation. The committee voted to pass five bills. The Promise for Antibiotics and Therapeutics for Health Act (S. 185) would create a new pathway for FDA to approve antibiotics for limited populations. The FDA and NIH Workforce Authorities Modernization Act (S. 2700) includes a proposal from Friends of Cancer Research to establish one or more “Intercenter Institutes” within FDA to coordinate activities among centers for drugs, biologics and devices to treat major diseases. It also would give NIH and FDA authority to pay salaries up to the level of the president.
The Promoting Biomedical Research and Public Health for Patients Act (S. 2742) would create five-year terms for NIH institute directors that are renewable at the NIH director's discretion, would remove restrictions on the National Center for Advancing Translational Science funding Phase III studies, and would reduce paperwork for NIH-funded researchers.
The Advancing Precision Medicine Act of 2016 (S. 2713) would authorize NIH to implement a precision medicine initiative. The Advancing NIH Strategic Planning and Representation in Medical Research Act (S. 2745) would require that NIH take steps to increase the numbers of women and ethnic minorities who participate in clinical research.
Alexander said the bills will be combined into a single bill with other biomedical innovation legislation HELP has passed. If agreement on NIH funding is reached and the HELP innovation bills reach the Senate floor, Alexander said several amendments will be offered on topics where the committee hasn’t reached a consensus. These include proposals to create a five-year conditional approval pathway for regenerative medicines and to regulate laboratory-developed tests.
Alexander also said the Senate would vote on an amendment based on the Orphan Product Extensions Now (OPEN) Act, which would grant six months of additional exclusivity to drugs that are repurposed for Orphan conditions. Read More & Comment...
The remarks came at the HELP Committee’s third and final markup of biomedical innovation legislation. The committee voted to pass five bills. The Promise for Antibiotics and Therapeutics for Health Act (S. 185) would create a new pathway for FDA to approve antibiotics for limited populations. The FDA and NIH Workforce Authorities Modernization Act (S. 2700) includes a proposal from Friends of Cancer Research to establish one or more “Intercenter Institutes” within FDA to coordinate activities among centers for drugs, biologics and devices to treat major diseases. It also would give NIH and FDA authority to pay salaries up to the level of the president.
The Promoting Biomedical Research and Public Health for Patients Act (S. 2742) would create five-year terms for NIH institute directors that are renewable at the NIH director's discretion, would remove restrictions on the National Center for Advancing Translational Science funding Phase III studies, and would reduce paperwork for NIH-funded researchers.
The Advancing Precision Medicine Act of 2016 (S. 2713) would authorize NIH to implement a precision medicine initiative. The Advancing NIH Strategic Planning and Representation in Medical Research Act (S. 2745) would require that NIH take steps to increase the numbers of women and ethnic minorities who participate in clinical research.
Alexander said the bills will be combined into a single bill with other biomedical innovation legislation HELP has passed. If agreement on NIH funding is reached and the HELP innovation bills reach the Senate floor, Alexander said several amendments will be offered on topics where the committee hasn’t reached a consensus. These include proposals to create a five-year conditional approval pathway for regenerative medicines and to regulate laboratory-developed tests.
Alexander also said the Senate would vote on an amendment based on the Orphan Product Extensions Now (OPEN) Act, which would grant six months of additional exclusivity to drugs that are repurposed for Orphan conditions. Read More & Comment...
04/06/2016 07:56 PM | Robert Goldberg
A lot of the health media was surprised that Amgen decided to criticize ICER before it released it's draft decision about the price and access to new medicines for multiple myeloma including Amgen's Kyprolis.
I wasn't. After all, Amgen had already dealt with ICER's 'methodology' when it recommended that Repatha be sold for $2600 a year and be limited to about 3 percent of patients with statin resistant LDL that could benefit.
The surprise is a function of the fact that the media is buying into to ICER's well-funded – and extremely effective -- attempt to establish itself as the de facto price setting group. It is not a function of the fact that ICER's findings were not pre-ordained.
Amgen believes ICER is "using opaque methods to combine multiple, disparate trials to arrive at different estimates of efficacy, or make assumptions to create unrealistic “worst-case” scenarios. Results produced by independent organizations should be informed by experts, made fully transparent and available, and undergo complete and independent peer-review."
The company is right. ICER defines value as whatever doesn't exceed an arbitrary cap on drug spending as set by PBMs and insurers. But it is clear that ICER is cooking the numbers ala Breaking Bad to get the desired outcome.
Like NICE, the rationing body in the UK, ICER cherry picks data to achieve its desire conclusion. If anyone needs an alternative to incarceration, they should flip through a NICE guidance to see how it picks and chooses what data to accept from companies and what data it uses to say yes or no. It accepts what it wants and rejects what it wants.
The sloppy, even sleazy, approach ICER takes is on full display in it's effort to compare newly approved drugs for multiple myeloma and compare them with the combinations of lenalidomide (Revlimid) plus dexamethasone (Rd) and bortezomib (Velcade) plus dexamethasone (Vd).
Let's set aside that there is no standard treatment for myeloma patients who relapse at ANY stage of their disease. In many cases the combination used is a function of what medicines were used before. Myeloma is incredibly heterogeneous. Yet ICER has no problem making comparisons and assuming every patient will respond the same. The Mayo Clinic's Dr. Rafael Fonseca, on the country's experts in treating MM notes: "The value of these interventions can vary significantly by the presence of this various risk factors. For instance a patient who requires stem cell transplant and is considering maintenance should discuss with the treating physician the various options for treatment based on genetic heterogeneity. Patients with standard genetic factors could very well be treated with lenalidomide versus patients who have high-risk disease where the use of proteasome inhibitors it is highly recommended."
Not only does ICER ignore these important variations, it uses a statistical magic trick – called network meta-analysis -- to turn highly different patients in different clinical trials into carbon copies of each other. ICER never tells anyone how or why it achieves this transformation. It never shares its methods or data and it never submits ANY of it's work to peer review. Instead, a group of 'experts' that also happen to be dues paying members of ICER pass judgment.
At least NICE has patients on their panels, ICER has none. NICE has people who actually use the medicines they are evaluating on their panel, ICER has none. ICER doesn't publish in academic journals: instead it issues it's 'findings' by sending around press releases which are then reported and repeated by medical journals and journalists.
I could go on. The number of scientific offenses that ICER commits could fill a book, a very boring book to be sure. The most important thing to keep in mind, is that for all the statistical mumbo-jumbo, ICER establishes prices and access based upon a GDP+1% cap on the total spending on drugs as a percent of total health spending. That cap, like ICER’s value measure, is arbitrary and set to, as ICER President Steve Pearson has observed, to “set off alarm bells” about drug prices. To that point, ICER will only look at single drugs because it's trying to set the price of each drug so it doesn’t add more than $900 million a year to health spending. Forget about what combination of treatments work best.
So let me save you the time and effort of reading another ICER report and show you how they crank out their pharmaco-economic fairy tales. (Trust me, my rough estimates follow the ICER formula without all the footnotes.)
Pick what you want to spend to extend someone's life from $50K-150K a year (ignoring consensus economics that it's more like $300K)
2. Multiply the list price of a drug by the number of patients that could benefit.
3. Divide that total by the amount you want to spend per QALY (always use $50K even though that number was pulled out of thin air in 1980 to establish the value of dialysis. If you haven't figured out by now, the cost and choice of a QALY cost is subjective. In the case of ICER and Peter Bach's rationing calculator, it assumes insurers and PBM -- and both fund ICER and Bach --will choose the QALY )
4. If your cost per QALY for all patients is above $900 million a year you either reduce the price to meet the cap or restrict access.
So with that in mind let's look at how ICER acts as judge and jury.
1. There are about 80000 people with MM. A recent study estimated that 65 percent of patients will relapse each year. That's 52000.
2. To spend $50k per each life of each of the 52000 would cost $2.6 billion.
3. Which means we need to cut spending by $1.7 billion one of two ways:
Spend only $17000 per patient. (By way of comparison, 20 mg Cialis has annual cost (at list price) of $16800.
Treat only 18000 patients, let 34000 people die.
I won't even discuss combination therapy because ICER won't, even though it's the best way to treat relapsed patients.
You can’t blame the media for not taking a closer look -- or at least the same close look they have applied to pharma -- at how ICER measures value. But that’s because the producers of medical innovation – pharma, biotech, medtech -- have failed to systematically explain the social, economic and medical consequences of the rationing ICER proposes.
So while I agree with Amgen and other companies that ICER (and Peter Bach) is shortchanging value, I can admire how well they have defined the conversation about drug price. ICER has done something pharma, biotech and medtech have the resources to do, but never done. It has effectively and properly defined it's audience as the media, Congress and consumers. It has been proactive and at least gives the appearance of being objective and ‘independent.’
The biotech and pharma industry should support a competitor to ICER, one that -- in concert with patients and providers – uses a long term measure of value that takes into account individual differences in needs and response and outcomes that matter, like productivity, quality of life, physical and emotional independence, time spent with loved ones, caregiver burden.
I hope the biopharma industry ceases fiddling and responds to ICER’s cherry picking of data and who lives and dies.
Read More & Comment...
I wasn't. After all, Amgen had already dealt with ICER's 'methodology' when it recommended that Repatha be sold for $2600 a year and be limited to about 3 percent of patients with statin resistant LDL that could benefit.
The surprise is a function of the fact that the media is buying into to ICER's well-funded – and extremely effective -- attempt to establish itself as the de facto price setting group. It is not a function of the fact that ICER's findings were not pre-ordained.
Amgen believes ICER is "using opaque methods to combine multiple, disparate trials to arrive at different estimates of efficacy, or make assumptions to create unrealistic “worst-case” scenarios. Results produced by independent organizations should be informed by experts, made fully transparent and available, and undergo complete and independent peer-review."
The company is right. ICER defines value as whatever doesn't exceed an arbitrary cap on drug spending as set by PBMs and insurers. But it is clear that ICER is cooking the numbers ala Breaking Bad to get the desired outcome.
Like NICE, the rationing body in the UK, ICER cherry picks data to achieve its desire conclusion. If anyone needs an alternative to incarceration, they should flip through a NICE guidance to see how it picks and chooses what data to accept from companies and what data it uses to say yes or no. It accepts what it wants and rejects what it wants.
The sloppy, even sleazy, approach ICER takes is on full display in it's effort to compare newly approved drugs for multiple myeloma and compare them with the combinations of lenalidomide (Revlimid) plus dexamethasone (Rd) and bortezomib (Velcade) plus dexamethasone (Vd).
Let's set aside that there is no standard treatment for myeloma patients who relapse at ANY stage of their disease. In many cases the combination used is a function of what medicines were used before. Myeloma is incredibly heterogeneous. Yet ICER has no problem making comparisons and assuming every patient will respond the same. The Mayo Clinic's Dr. Rafael Fonseca, on the country's experts in treating MM notes: "The value of these interventions can vary significantly by the presence of this various risk factors. For instance a patient who requires stem cell transplant and is considering maintenance should discuss with the treating physician the various options for treatment based on genetic heterogeneity. Patients with standard genetic factors could very well be treated with lenalidomide versus patients who have high-risk disease where the use of proteasome inhibitors it is highly recommended."
Not only does ICER ignore these important variations, it uses a statistical magic trick – called network meta-analysis -- to turn highly different patients in different clinical trials into carbon copies of each other. ICER never tells anyone how or why it achieves this transformation. It never shares its methods or data and it never submits ANY of it's work to peer review. Instead, a group of 'experts' that also happen to be dues paying members of ICER pass judgment.
At least NICE has patients on their panels, ICER has none. NICE has people who actually use the medicines they are evaluating on their panel, ICER has none. ICER doesn't publish in academic journals: instead it issues it's 'findings' by sending around press releases which are then reported and repeated by medical journals and journalists.
I could go on. The number of scientific offenses that ICER commits could fill a book, a very boring book to be sure. The most important thing to keep in mind, is that for all the statistical mumbo-jumbo, ICER establishes prices and access based upon a GDP+1% cap on the total spending on drugs as a percent of total health spending. That cap, like ICER’s value measure, is arbitrary and set to, as ICER President Steve Pearson has observed, to “set off alarm bells” about drug prices. To that point, ICER will only look at single drugs because it's trying to set the price of each drug so it doesn’t add more than $900 million a year to health spending. Forget about what combination of treatments work best.
So let me save you the time and effort of reading another ICER report and show you how they crank out their pharmaco-economic fairy tales. (Trust me, my rough estimates follow the ICER formula without all the footnotes.)
Pick what you want to spend to extend someone's life from $50K-150K a year (ignoring consensus economics that it's more like $300K)
2. Multiply the list price of a drug by the number of patients that could benefit.
3. Divide that total by the amount you want to spend per QALY (always use $50K even though that number was pulled out of thin air in 1980 to establish the value of dialysis. If you haven't figured out by now, the cost and choice of a QALY cost is subjective. In the case of ICER and Peter Bach's rationing calculator, it assumes insurers and PBM -- and both fund ICER and Bach --will choose the QALY )
4. If your cost per QALY for all patients is above $900 million a year you either reduce the price to meet the cap or restrict access.
So with that in mind let's look at how ICER acts as judge and jury.
1. There are about 80000 people with MM. A recent study estimated that 65 percent of patients will relapse each year. That's 52000.
2. To spend $50k per each life of each of the 52000 would cost $2.6 billion.
3. Which means we need to cut spending by $1.7 billion one of two ways:
Spend only $17000 per patient. (By way of comparison, 20 mg Cialis has annual cost (at list price) of $16800.
Treat only 18000 patients, let 34000 people die.
I won't even discuss combination therapy because ICER won't, even though it's the best way to treat relapsed patients.
You can’t blame the media for not taking a closer look -- or at least the same close look they have applied to pharma -- at how ICER measures value. But that’s because the producers of medical innovation – pharma, biotech, medtech -- have failed to systematically explain the social, economic and medical consequences of the rationing ICER proposes.
So while I agree with Amgen and other companies that ICER (and Peter Bach) is shortchanging value, I can admire how well they have defined the conversation about drug price. ICER has done something pharma, biotech and medtech have the resources to do, but never done. It has effectively and properly defined it's audience as the media, Congress and consumers. It has been proactive and at least gives the appearance of being objective and ‘independent.’
The biotech and pharma industry should support a competitor to ICER, one that -- in concert with patients and providers – uses a long term measure of value that takes into account individual differences in needs and response and outcomes that matter, like productivity, quality of life, physical and emotional independence, time spent with loved ones, caregiver burden.
I hope the biopharma industry ceases fiddling and responds to ICER’s cherry picking of data and who lives and dies.
Read More & Comment...
04/06/2016 04:11 PM | Robert Goldberg
The Alliance for the Adoption of Innovations in Medicine (Aimed Alliance), a not-for-profit organization seeking to improve healthcare in the US, released a report today that concluded many of the barriers to treatment that prevent patients from receiving quality care as prescribed by their physicians, may be discriminatory cost-saving measures proscribed by current law. These practices include:
•Fail first policies in which patients are required to fail on older, inferior treatment before getting the treatment their doctors prescribed;
•Adverse tiering in which most, if not all, medications, including generics, used to treat a condition, such as HIV or Hep C, are placed on the highest cost-sharing tier in which up to 50% of costs are passed on to the patient;
•Clinical pathways in which an insurer pays a practitioner to prescribe a cheaper medicine despite the patient’s needs;
•Prior Authorization in which practitioners can spend up to 20 hours a week on the phone with insurers trying to obtain approval for treatment they’ve prescribed for their patients; and
•Nonmedical switching in which insurers are forcing stable patients to switch to different cheaper medications without even informing the patients’ doctor.
Stacey Worthy, who directs the Alliance policy shop said, “These practices serve to financially exclude patients with a pre-existing condition, create a blatant conflict of interest for the physician, take up valuable physician time trying to obtain approval for the treatments, and in the end, just serve to save company money.”
I’d go a step farther and note that the discrimination is driven by profits. The claim that such restrictions have to apply most drastically to the sickest patients practices to keep costs down is the opposite of the truth.
We know that patients with HIV, Hep C, cancer, pulmonary disease, autoimmune disorders, comprise about 4 percent of everyone with health insurance. Health plans state that drugs for these disease now make up 25 percent of all spending on medicines and about 11 percent total health spending. So that means all the barriers to access described by the AIMED Alliance target 4 percent of patients who make up 11 percent of plan expenditures.
Why?
It’s not because the 4 percent are such a burden on our health system. Rather, the growing number of new medicines is a cash cow for pharmacy benefit management companies, insurers and other health institutions. And limiting access is a way to get biopharma companies to pay to play.
Many so-called experts, such as Peter Bach, claim that restricting access to extract discounts is just what we need to reduce drug prices (here he uses hep C drugs as an example):
Don’t believe me?
Read what Credit Suisse reported about the amount of rebate money being pocketed by insurers and PBMs:
“ For 2014, our 20 company universe has shown net US drug sales of $202bn and reported total rebates of $98bn. We conclude that in 2014 US rebates rose 24% against just a 7% increase in net sales, reflecting continued formulary pressures... US rebates rose 24% against just a 7% increase in net sales, reflecting continued formulary pressures.”
Rebates of $98 billion is 32 percent of total US drug sales (for that 20 company group).
That’s a lot of cash being divvied up by Dr. Bach’s noble warriors against drug pricing.
Read Anthem’s lawsuit against Express Scripts, the PBM Bach hails as a pricing savior. Anthem is suing the PBM for not sharing more than $13 billion in rebates over four-year period. The $13 billion is on top of rebates already being given to Anthem.
A good portion of those rebate dollars (I estimate nearly 40 percent) are extracted from the specialty drugs used by the 4 percent of all insured patients (about 11 million). So “by saying no” as Dr. Bach urges PBMs and insurers are able to share – or squabble over -- $40 billion.
That’s about $3600 per person that is going right to PBM, insurers, hospital systems, pharmacy chains.. everyone except the patient.
Peter Bach says that it sounds like the progress we need.
I believe discrimination is not progress, it's illegal and it begs for a legal remedy. Read More & Comment...
•Fail first policies in which patients are required to fail on older, inferior treatment before getting the treatment their doctors prescribed;
•Adverse tiering in which most, if not all, medications, including generics, used to treat a condition, such as HIV or Hep C, are placed on the highest cost-sharing tier in which up to 50% of costs are passed on to the patient;
•Clinical pathways in which an insurer pays a practitioner to prescribe a cheaper medicine despite the patient’s needs;
•Prior Authorization in which practitioners can spend up to 20 hours a week on the phone with insurers trying to obtain approval for treatment they’ve prescribed for their patients; and
•Nonmedical switching in which insurers are forcing stable patients to switch to different cheaper medications without even informing the patients’ doctor.
Stacey Worthy, who directs the Alliance policy shop said, “These practices serve to financially exclude patients with a pre-existing condition, create a blatant conflict of interest for the physician, take up valuable physician time trying to obtain approval for the treatments, and in the end, just serve to save company money.”
I’d go a step farther and note that the discrimination is driven by profits. The claim that such restrictions have to apply most drastically to the sickest patients practices to keep costs down is the opposite of the truth.
We know that patients with HIV, Hep C, cancer, pulmonary disease, autoimmune disorders, comprise about 4 percent of everyone with health insurance. Health plans state that drugs for these disease now make up 25 percent of all spending on medicines and about 11 percent total health spending. So that means all the barriers to access described by the AIMED Alliance target 4 percent of patients who make up 11 percent of plan expenditures.
Why?
It’s not because the 4 percent are such a burden on our health system. Rather, the growing number of new medicines is a cash cow for pharmacy benefit management companies, insurers and other health institutions. And limiting access is a way to get biopharma companies to pay to play.
Many so-called experts, such as Peter Bach, claim that restricting access to extract discounts is just what we need to reduce drug prices (here he uses hep C drugs as an example):
"Saying no, or even the threat, works to lower prices.. More recently, Express Scripts, a company that manages pharmacy benefits, showed that approval was no guarantee. It was therefore able to play two makers of treatments for hepatitis C off against each other.
Express Scripts, once it showed it could say no, got AbbVie to discount its product. It isn’t saying how much, but Steve Miller, a senior executive, said it had “significantly narrowed the gap between prices charged in the United States and Western Europe.” Sounds like the kind of progress we need."
Don’t believe me?
Read what Credit Suisse reported about the amount of rebate money being pocketed by insurers and PBMs:
“ For 2014, our 20 company universe has shown net US drug sales of $202bn and reported total rebates of $98bn. We conclude that in 2014 US rebates rose 24% against just a 7% increase in net sales, reflecting continued formulary pressures... US rebates rose 24% against just a 7% increase in net sales, reflecting continued formulary pressures.”
Rebates of $98 billion is 32 percent of total US drug sales (for that 20 company group).
That’s a lot of cash being divvied up by Dr. Bach’s noble warriors against drug pricing.
Read Anthem’s lawsuit against Express Scripts, the PBM Bach hails as a pricing savior. Anthem is suing the PBM for not sharing more than $13 billion in rebates over four-year period. The $13 billion is on top of rebates already being given to Anthem.
A good portion of those rebate dollars (I estimate nearly 40 percent) are extracted from the specialty drugs used by the 4 percent of all insured patients (about 11 million). So “by saying no” as Dr. Bach urges PBMs and insurers are able to share – or squabble over -- $40 billion.
That’s about $3600 per person that is going right to PBM, insurers, hospital systems, pharmacy chains.. everyone except the patient.
Peter Bach says that it sounds like the progress we need.
I believe discrimination is not progress, it's illegal and it begs for a legal remedy. Read More & Comment...
04/05/2016 04:05 PM | Robert Goldberg
Let’s compare the claims that cancer costs – and drug costs in particular – are unsustainable with the facts:
“One of the fastest growing components of US health care costs is cancer care, the cost of which is now estimated to increase from $125 billion in 2010 to $158 billion in 2020.1 Although cancer care represents a small fraction of overall health care costs, its contribution to health care cost escalation is increasing faster than those of most other areas.”
American Society of Clinical Oncology Statement: A Conceptual Framework to Assess the Value of Cancer Treatment Options
“The combination of increasingly unsustainable rises in the costs of cancer care, the accelerating pace of expensive innovations in oncology, and persistent hope for rescue in patients with life-threatening disease require solutions that incorporate and promote value.”
National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) Policy Summit: Value, Access, and Cost of Cancer Care
And now for the facts:
“The increase in people living with cancer and the introduction of new therapies are associated with a rise in cancer care costs. Cancer care costs in the U.S. were estimated to be $124.57 billion in 2010, and are projected to increase to $158 to $173 billion by 2020.
The objective of this analysis was to identify trends in the overall and component costs of cancer care from 2004 to 2014 and to create comparisons to cost trends in the non-cancer population.
We identified the following key dynamics:
1. The percent increase in per-patient cost from 2004 to 2014 for actively treated Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) and commercially insured cancer patients has been similar to the corresponding increase for the respective non-cancer populations.
2. The per-patient cost of chemotherapy drugs is increasing at a much higher rate than other cost components of actively treated cancer patients, driven largely by biologics, but the chemotherapy drug increase has been offset by slower growth in other components.
3. The site of service for chemotherapy infusion has dramatically shifted from lower-cost physician office to higher-cost hospital outpatient settings.
We have important observations on trends in prevalence, cost, and site of service, summarized below:
_Over the entire 2004 to 2014 study period, the average annual increase in cost was essentially the same in the actively treated cancer population and the non-cancer population.
_Cancer prevalence increased from 2004 to 2014 more than the contribution of cancer patients’ cost to the total population spend.
_For patients being actively treated, the portion of spending for cancer-directed pharmaceuticals increased from 2004 to 2014 while the portion of spending for inpatient care declined.
o In particular, the portion of spending for biologic chemotherapies increased from 3% to 9% in the Medicare population and from 2% to 7% in the commercial population.
_The portion of chemotherapy infusions being performed in generally more expensive hospital outpatient settings increased by at least 30%, from 2004 to 2014 with a corresponding reduction in the generally less expensive physician office settings.
_As explained in the body of the report, if the chemotherapy infusion site-of-service distribution in 2014 had been maintained at 2004 levels, the estimated Medicare FFS cost per infused chemotherapy patient in 2014 would have been approximately:
o $51,900 per actively treated Medicare FFS patient instead of the observed $56,100 (7.5% lower)
o $89,900 per commercial patient instead of the $95,400 observed (5.8% lower)
Cost Drivers of Cancer Care: A Retrospective Analysis of Medicare and Commercially Insured Population Claim Data 2004-2014 , Community Cancer Alliance
The ASCO and NCCN value frameworks are based on false assumptions and generated tremendous press and discussion.
My guess is that the Community Cancer Alliance study will be, like many stubborn facts that grate against the anti-pharma narrative, undervalued and ignored. Why let truth get in the way of what we want to believe?
Read More & Comment...
04/04/2016 11:23 AM | Peter Pitts
Interesting article via Bloomberg BNA’s Health Law Reporter, Health Law Experts Outline Best Practices For Staving Off Medical Malpractice Litigation. It’s not a new story – but certainly a timely one. Some snippets ...
Physicians can take a number of steps to avoid being sued for malpractice, including educating themselves about what contributes to claims, improving lines of communication and building solid patient relationships, according to health law specialists and recent research.
Peter J. Pitts, president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI) and a former Food and Drug Administration associate commissioner, told Bloomberg BNA the findings are ‘‘not surprising. When a physician is dealing with highly acute patients in a stressful environment, with limited resources and finite knowledge—and with lives literally on the line, mistakes in diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up are inevitable and the opportunity for post-treatment patient education and follow-up is limited,’’ Pitts told Bloomberg BNA March 8 in an e-mail. "Hospitals must be focused on both medical as well as systems solutions that may at first be viewed as ‘cost centers’ but will ultimately result in both better patient outcomes and fewer cases of medical malpractice.’’
Pitts added that regular and open communication is always a best practice when it comes to a mutually respectful physician-patient relationship. ‘‘It is also the best way to prepare a patient for the entire spectrum of potential side-effects and clinical outcomes they may experience over the course of treatment,’’ Pitts told Bloomberg BNA. "Silence and surprise are the enemy of mutual respect and understanding."
The complete article can be found here. Read More & Comment...
Physicians can take a number of steps to avoid being sued for malpractice, including educating themselves about what contributes to claims, improving lines of communication and building solid patient relationships, according to health law specialists and recent research.
Peter J. Pitts, president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI) and a former Food and Drug Administration associate commissioner, told Bloomberg BNA the findings are ‘‘not surprising. When a physician is dealing with highly acute patients in a stressful environment, with limited resources and finite knowledge—and with lives literally on the line, mistakes in diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up are inevitable and the opportunity for post-treatment patient education and follow-up is limited,’’ Pitts told Bloomberg BNA March 8 in an e-mail. "Hospitals must be focused on both medical as well as systems solutions that may at first be viewed as ‘cost centers’ but will ultimately result in both better patient outcomes and fewer cases of medical malpractice.’’
Pitts added that regular and open communication is always a best practice when it comes to a mutually respectful physician-patient relationship. ‘‘It is also the best way to prepare a patient for the entire spectrum of potential side-effects and clinical outcomes they may experience over the course of treatment,’’ Pitts told Bloomberg BNA. "Silence and surprise are the enemy of mutual respect and understanding."
The complete article can be found here. Read More & Comment...
04/01/2016 09:15 AM | Robert Goldberg
ICER Unveils New Value-Based Drug Pricing That Includes Additional Cost of Living Longer
Calculates How Drugs Increase Health Spending By Increasing Life Expectancy
Boston, Mass. April 1, 2016 – The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) has posted an updated version of its value based pricing benchmark that takes into account whether new medicines, by allowing people to live longer, contribute to health care spending growing faster than the overall economy.
Currently, ICER establishes a price range within which all patients could be treated with reasonable long-term care value without adding short-term costs to the health care system and increasing health spending more rapidly than growth in GDP.
The new ICER benchmark will include the price of drugs for cancer, HIV, rare childhood diseases and Alzheimer’s and any cost generated by increasing life expectancy.
“We need prices that make sense,” said ICER President Steven Pearson, MD. “Right now, it’s often a black box: we don’t know if we are getting good value with new drugs at these higher prices. A drug even one that saves money in the short term could, by keeping people alive longer, actually wind up costing us more. Our value benchmark currently looks only that whether or not drug spending exceeds an arbitrary cap that maximizes PBM and insurance profits. The new benchmark now measures the value of drugs in terms of how longer life eats into those profit margins.”
“ICER’s new program will make a huge difference by providing what is sorely needed: a source of information about how much rebate money we can pocket before people die,” stated Steve Miller, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Express Scripts, the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits manager. “We look forward to using it to help us improve the ability of patients to get access to new, innovative drugs that keep them alive as little as possible and at a price that maximizes our profits.”
ICER, funded by a $5.2 million grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF), ICER will produce public reports on new drugs that have the potential to significantly change patient care and health system budgets. As LJAF Vice President Kelli Rhee explained:
“Death is the most cost-effective way of lowering medical costs. If we can find drugs that are good at keep people alive for just a teeny, tiny bit – at least until they pay the next month’s insurance premium – we can make great progress to reining in unsustainable drug spending.”
The new benchmark will be used in developing reports that determine how to ration new drugs. Many of the reports produced will be discussed at the public meetings of ICER’s two core programs, the New England Comparative Effectiveness Public Advisory Council (CEPAC) and the California Technology Assessment Forum (CTAF). ICER tells the media that CEPAC and CTAF are independent, regional bodies of practicing physicians, methodological experts, and leaders in patient advocacy and engagement that provide objective, independent guidance on the application of medical evidence to clinical practice and payer policy decisions in New England and California. But that’s bullshit. They are no more independent of ICER than Crimea is independent of Russia.
In case you didn't know...The press release is an April Fools joke. Just one of many I have seen and received. April Fools’ Day 2016: Round-up of the best (and the worst) joke and prank headlines
Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2016/04/01/april-fools-day-2016-round-up-of-the-best-and-the-worst-5788075/#ixzz44axY1sL6
Read More & Comment...
Calculates How Drugs Increase Health Spending By Increasing Life Expectancy
Boston, Mass. April 1, 2016 – The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) has posted an updated version of its value based pricing benchmark that takes into account whether new medicines, by allowing people to live longer, contribute to health care spending growing faster than the overall economy.
Currently, ICER establishes a price range within which all patients could be treated with reasonable long-term care value without adding short-term costs to the health care system and increasing health spending more rapidly than growth in GDP.
The new ICER benchmark will include the price of drugs for cancer, HIV, rare childhood diseases and Alzheimer’s and any cost generated by increasing life expectancy.
“We need prices that make sense,” said ICER President Steven Pearson, MD. “Right now, it’s often a black box: we don’t know if we are getting good value with new drugs at these higher prices. A drug even one that saves money in the short term could, by keeping people alive longer, actually wind up costing us more. Our value benchmark currently looks only that whether or not drug spending exceeds an arbitrary cap that maximizes PBM and insurance profits. The new benchmark now measures the value of drugs in terms of how longer life eats into those profit margins.”
“ICER’s new program will make a huge difference by providing what is sorely needed: a source of information about how much rebate money we can pocket before people die,” stated Steve Miller, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Express Scripts, the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits manager. “We look forward to using it to help us improve the ability of patients to get access to new, innovative drugs that keep them alive as little as possible and at a price that maximizes our profits.”
ICER, funded by a $5.2 million grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF), ICER will produce public reports on new drugs that have the potential to significantly change patient care and health system budgets. As LJAF Vice President Kelli Rhee explained:
“Death is the most cost-effective way of lowering medical costs. If we can find drugs that are good at keep people alive for just a teeny, tiny bit – at least until they pay the next month’s insurance premium – we can make great progress to reining in unsustainable drug spending.”
The new benchmark will be used in developing reports that determine how to ration new drugs. Many of the reports produced will be discussed at the public meetings of ICER’s two core programs, the New England Comparative Effectiveness Public Advisory Council (CEPAC) and the California Technology Assessment Forum (CTAF). ICER tells the media that CEPAC and CTAF are independent, regional bodies of practicing physicians, methodological experts, and leaders in patient advocacy and engagement that provide objective, independent guidance on the application of medical evidence to clinical practice and payer policy decisions in New England and California. But that’s bullshit. They are no more independent of ICER than Crimea is independent of Russia.
In case you didn't know...The press release is an April Fools joke. Just one of many I have seen and received. April Fools’ Day 2016: Round-up of the best (and the worst) joke and prank headlines
Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2016/04/01/april-fools-day-2016-round-up-of-the-best-and-the-worst-5788075/#ixzz44axY1sL6
Read More & Comment...
03/31/2016 12:54 PM | Peter Pitts
After much anticipation the FDA has issued draft guidence on labeling for biosimilar products.
In two words, no surprises – which for some is better news than for others.
The top of Page 8 will get a lot of attention:
SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS ON CONTENT OF BIOSIMILAR PRODUCT LABELING
FDA recommends that biosimilar product labeling incorporate relevant data and information from the reference product labeling, with appropriate product-specific modifications. The relevant data and information from the reference product labeling that should be incorporated into the biosimilar product labeling will depend on whether the applicant is seeking approval for all conditions of use (e.g., indication(s), dosing regimen(s)) or fewer than all conditions of use of the reference product for the biosimilar product.
And further:
In sections of the biosimilar product labeling that are based on the reference product labeling, it is anticipated that the text will be similar. Text based on the reference product labeling need not be identical and should reflect currently available information necessary for the safe and effective use of the biosimilar product. Certain differences between the biosimilar and reference product labeling may be appropriate. For example, biosimilar product labeling conforming to PLR and/or PLLR may differ from reference product labeling because the reference product labeling may not be required to conform to those requirements at the time of licensure of the biosimilar product. In addition, biosimilar product labeling may include information specific to the biosimilar product necessary to inform safe and effective use of the product, which could include differences such as administration, preparation, storage, or safety information that do not otherwise preclude a demonstration of biosimilarity.
And, of course, in order to maintain maximum regulatory, um, flexibility --
FDA acknowledges that there will be variations on the general concepts outlined in this section because the approach to product identification will depend on the specific statements.
(Note – highlights are mine, not FDA’s.)
An update article in Modern Healthcare makes an interesting point, “Federal regulators are likely trying to simplify physicians' understanding of the products' efficacy and safety. By definition, a biosimilar product has no clinically meaningful difference in terms of safety, purity and potency.”
If what practicing physicians understand about biosimilars is anything akin to the knowledge scale of the FDA’s Arthritis Advisory Committee -- as demonstrated during the meeting that considered the biologics license application for a proposed biosimilar to Remicade (infliximab) – then the agency’s attempt at “simplification” may result in some very serious unintended consequences. From the very beginning of the adcomm, it was clear the expert members of the committee didn’t understand what biosimilars really are, nor the pathway the agency uses to review them. Not good.
Can you spell “immunogenicity?”
Per being upfront that the product is a biosimilar, the agency is unambiguous:
FDA recommends inclusion of a statement, on the line immediately beneath the initial U.S. approval date in Highlights, that the product is biosimilar to the reference product. It should read as follows:
[BIOSIMILAR PRODUCT’S PROPRIETARY NAME (biosimilar product’s proper name)] is biosimilar to[ REFERENCE PRODUCT’S PROPRIETARY NAME (reference product’s proper name)] for the indications listed.
Although the FDA notes that the labeling does not need to be identical to information based on the reference product, it’s a pretty safe bet that manufacturers of biologics will likely take issue with competitors using their data for a product that is not exactly the same.
Gentlemen, start your engines. Read More & Comment...
In two words, no surprises – which for some is better news than for others.
The top of Page 8 will get a lot of attention:
SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS ON CONTENT OF BIOSIMILAR PRODUCT LABELING
FDA recommends that biosimilar product labeling incorporate relevant data and information from the reference product labeling, with appropriate product-specific modifications. The relevant data and information from the reference product labeling that should be incorporated into the biosimilar product labeling will depend on whether the applicant is seeking approval for all conditions of use (e.g., indication(s), dosing regimen(s)) or fewer than all conditions of use of the reference product for the biosimilar product.
And further:
In sections of the biosimilar product labeling that are based on the reference product labeling, it is anticipated that the text will be similar. Text based on the reference product labeling need not be identical and should reflect currently available information necessary for the safe and effective use of the biosimilar product. Certain differences between the biosimilar and reference product labeling may be appropriate. For example, biosimilar product labeling conforming to PLR and/or PLLR may differ from reference product labeling because the reference product labeling may not be required to conform to those requirements at the time of licensure of the biosimilar product. In addition, biosimilar product labeling may include information specific to the biosimilar product necessary to inform safe and effective use of the product, which could include differences such as administration, preparation, storage, or safety information that do not otherwise preclude a demonstration of biosimilarity.
And, of course, in order to maintain maximum regulatory, um, flexibility --
FDA acknowledges that there will be variations on the general concepts outlined in this section because the approach to product identification will depend on the specific statements.
(Note – highlights are mine, not FDA’s.)
An update article in Modern Healthcare makes an interesting point, “Federal regulators are likely trying to simplify physicians' understanding of the products' efficacy and safety. By definition, a biosimilar product has no clinically meaningful difference in terms of safety, purity and potency.”
If what practicing physicians understand about biosimilars is anything akin to the knowledge scale of the FDA’s Arthritis Advisory Committee -- as demonstrated during the meeting that considered the biologics license application for a proposed biosimilar to Remicade (infliximab) – then the agency’s attempt at “simplification” may result in some very serious unintended consequences. From the very beginning of the adcomm, it was clear the expert members of the committee didn’t understand what biosimilars really are, nor the pathway the agency uses to review them. Not good.
Can you spell “immunogenicity?”
Per being upfront that the product is a biosimilar, the agency is unambiguous:
FDA recommends inclusion of a statement, on the line immediately beneath the initial U.S. approval date in Highlights, that the product is biosimilar to the reference product. It should read as follows:
[BIOSIMILAR PRODUCT’S PROPRIETARY NAME (biosimilar product’s proper name)] is biosimilar to[ REFERENCE PRODUCT’S PROPRIETARY NAME (reference product’s proper name)] for the indications listed.
Although the FDA notes that the labeling does not need to be identical to information based on the reference product, it’s a pretty safe bet that manufacturers of biologics will likely take issue with competitors using their data for a product that is not exactly the same.
Gentlemen, start your engines. Read More & Comment...
03/22/2016 09:18 AM | Peter Pitts
I've said it before and I'll say it again, addressing opioid abuse and addiction isn't just a formulation problem ... it's a systems problem.
Consider Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes' op-ed on opioid abuse (A smart way to counter prescription drug deaths). There are a few things that need to be added – and amended.
The vast majority of patients using non-abuse deterrent opioids do so safely and as directed. A subset, approximately four percent, abuse. And government statistics show that 78.5% of those who abuse prescription pain medication did not obtain the drugs from a physician in the first place.
Should non-abuse deterrent opioids ultimately disappear from the marketplace? Absolutely. But removing an entire category of generic products when there are no generic abuse deterrent alternatives not only does eradicate the abuse and addiction problem (since even abuse deterrent opioids can be abused) but punishes the millions of Americans who need opioids to address their chronic pain. Insurance companies are not ready to regularly reimburse for new, abuse deterrent formulations – despite steep discounting by manufacturers. The numbers are staggering -- 240,120,330 non-ADF generic opioids were prescribed in 2015 (nearly a quarter of a billion tablets) versus 5,068,398 branded opioids with ADF properties.
Further, payers often implement barriers to the use of branded, on-label non-opioid medicines, relegating these treatments to second line options. 52% of patients diagnosed with osteoarthritis receive an opioid pain medicine as first line treatment as do 43% of patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia and 42% of patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy even though there are FDA-approved, non-opioid medicines specifically designed and labeled to treat these conditions.
Payers should step up to the public health plate and do the right thing right now.
Should the FDA, as General Reyes suggests, “… commit to following recommendations made by its advisory committees?” No. That is not the role they play. FDA Advisory Committees advise. It is (and should remain) up to the experts at the FDA to make the final decision. Ultimate responsibility must always reside with the regulator. (The FDA advisory committee that reviewed the controversial opioid Zohydro voted 11-2 that there was no evidence to suggest it had greater abuse or addiction potential than any other opioid.)
Most importantly, a smart public health strategy would be a robust effort to better educate physicians on appropriate prescribing – something the FDA has been calling for regularly. Today the agency announced it will require short-acting opioid pain medications to carry a boxed warning about the serious risks of misuse, abuse, addiction, overdose and death. It’s a good next step.
Read More & Comment...
Consider Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes' op-ed on opioid abuse (A smart way to counter prescription drug deaths). There are a few things that need to be added – and amended.
The vast majority of patients using non-abuse deterrent opioids do so safely and as directed. A subset, approximately four percent, abuse. And government statistics show that 78.5% of those who abuse prescription pain medication did not obtain the drugs from a physician in the first place.
Should non-abuse deterrent opioids ultimately disappear from the marketplace? Absolutely. But removing an entire category of generic products when there are no generic abuse deterrent alternatives not only does eradicate the abuse and addiction problem (since even abuse deterrent opioids can be abused) but punishes the millions of Americans who need opioids to address their chronic pain. Insurance companies are not ready to regularly reimburse for new, abuse deterrent formulations – despite steep discounting by manufacturers. The numbers are staggering -- 240,120,330 non-ADF generic opioids were prescribed in 2015 (nearly a quarter of a billion tablets) versus 5,068,398 branded opioids with ADF properties.
Further, payers often implement barriers to the use of branded, on-label non-opioid medicines, relegating these treatments to second line options. 52% of patients diagnosed with osteoarthritis receive an opioid pain medicine as first line treatment as do 43% of patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia and 42% of patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy even though there are FDA-approved, non-opioid medicines specifically designed and labeled to treat these conditions.
Payers should step up to the public health plate and do the right thing right now.
Should the FDA, as General Reyes suggests, “… commit to following recommendations made by its advisory committees?” No. That is not the role they play. FDA Advisory Committees advise. It is (and should remain) up to the experts at the FDA to make the final decision. Ultimate responsibility must always reside with the regulator. (The FDA advisory committee that reviewed the controversial opioid Zohydro voted 11-2 that there was no evidence to suggest it had greater abuse or addiction potential than any other opioid.)
Most importantly, a smart public health strategy would be a robust effort to better educate physicians on appropriate prescribing – something the FDA has been calling for regularly. Today the agency announced it will require short-acting opioid pain medications to carry a boxed warning about the serious risks of misuse, abuse, addiction, overdose and death. It’s a good next step.
Read More & Comment...
03/21/2016 08:49 AM | Peter Pitts
From the pages of Mass General’s Proto Magazine …
Should Congress Pass the Cures Act?
Two experts face off on new legislation that aims to speed up the approval process for drugs and medical devices.
IN JULY 2015, the United States House of Representatives approved the 21st Century Cures Act with broad bipartisan support. The legislation, which aims to “save more lives and keep this country the leader in medical innovation,” provides $8.75 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health and accelerates approval processes for drugs and medical devices. But as the bill heads to the Senate for approval, critics argue that pharmaceutical and biotechnology interest groups will benefit at the expense of patient safety.
Yes. The act will allow the FDA to approve effective drugs and devices faster while maintaining high safety standards, says Peter Pitts, a former FDA associate commissioner and president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.
Where you stand depends on where you sit. If you’re a patient with a life-threatening disease, the FDA is often viewed as a roadblock to innovation. If you’ve suffered a serious side effect of an FDA-approved medicine or device, you may view the process as too swift and cavalier. Both positions fail to take into account a basic truth—there is no such thing as a drug or medical device that is 100% safe.
FDA review is based on a benefit/risk balance. What’s new is that the patient’s voice is now being considered in that calculation. And it’s about time. The FDA has also recognized the urgency of a more comprehensive, strategic program for tracking performance once a product is on the market. A focused, more risk-based approach provides important balance to sophisticated cutting-edge scientific techniques, particularly as we move toward a more aggressive effort to validate biomarkers, that now make it possible to truncate the traditional clinical trial process. Shorter review cycles on the front end are being matched with more rigorous, real-time post-market surveillance.
The draft legislation will allow the FDA to approve a groundbreaking drug if it proves effective after a phase II trial. That will deliver treatments to patients much sooner and eliminate the need for some phase III trials, which take years and account for 90% of the total development costs for drugs that eventually gain FDA approval. The 21st Century Cures Act will also spur new drug development by helping innovators to “fail faster” through earlier and more regular meetings in the review process. Identifying even 5% of eventual failures in phase I instead of phase III will save at least $15 million per drug—allowing drug companies to redirect billions toward promising new treatments.
Victory will result in the FDA bringing new products to market both more quickly and with more information about their safety. Initiatives such as 21st Century Cures will transform the FDA from a perceived roadblock to an innovation enabler.
No, because the act will lower the bar for approval of certain therapeutics, says Ameet Sarpatwari, assistant director of the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law, in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Two sets of provisions are particularly alarming. The first concerns medical devices. The act would prompt the FDA to treat case histories and peer-reviewed studies as valid scientific evidence and would also loosen regulations controlling the safety and effectiveness of alterations to the devices that take place after their initial approval. The creation of a novel pathway would also enable FDA approval of high-risk medical devices on the basis of “clinically significant” surrogate measures, such as their effect on a biomarker, and would also require the agency to complete its review within six months.
Each of these changes could open the door to patient harm. Making approval decisions based on scant data increases the risk of adverse events once a device is widely used, and many surrogate measures have proved to be poor predictors of actual clinical outcomes. Case histories and peer review, meanwhile, are plagued by quality concerns. Additionally, even small changes to medical devices can prove deadly, as several high-profile recent cases can attest. It is better if such changes are reviewed by the FDA, rather than by the company itself or a third party paid by the company.
The second set of provisions involves antimicrobials. To combat the growing threat of multidrug resistance, the act would also authorize the FDA to approve certain antibiotics and antifungals on the basis of preliminary, uncontrolled clinical trials as long as those medications carry a disclaimer that explains their “indicated use in specific populations of patients.” However, evidence suggests that disclaimers on drug labels are inconsistently read, let alone heeded.
These measures collectively represent a fundamentally flawed attempt to promote medical innovation. They would lower the bar for therapeutic approval in several respects, threatening to take us back in time to the patent medicines era in which unsafe and ineffective products flooded the market. The Senate would be wise to start anew in determining what, if any, changes to the regulatory apparatus are necessary as prescription drug and device development expands in the 21st century. Read More & Comment...
Should Congress Pass the Cures Act?
Two experts face off on new legislation that aims to speed up the approval process for drugs and medical devices.
IN JULY 2015, the United States House of Representatives approved the 21st Century Cures Act with broad bipartisan support. The legislation, which aims to “save more lives and keep this country the leader in medical innovation,” provides $8.75 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health and accelerates approval processes for drugs and medical devices. But as the bill heads to the Senate for approval, critics argue that pharmaceutical and biotechnology interest groups will benefit at the expense of patient safety.
Yes. The act will allow the FDA to approve effective drugs and devices faster while maintaining high safety standards, says Peter Pitts, a former FDA associate commissioner and president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.
Where you stand depends on where you sit. If you’re a patient with a life-threatening disease, the FDA is often viewed as a roadblock to innovation. If you’ve suffered a serious side effect of an FDA-approved medicine or device, you may view the process as too swift and cavalier. Both positions fail to take into account a basic truth—there is no such thing as a drug or medical device that is 100% safe.
FDA review is based on a benefit/risk balance. What’s new is that the patient’s voice is now being considered in that calculation. And it’s about time. The FDA has also recognized the urgency of a more comprehensive, strategic program for tracking performance once a product is on the market. A focused, more risk-based approach provides important balance to sophisticated cutting-edge scientific techniques, particularly as we move toward a more aggressive effort to validate biomarkers, that now make it possible to truncate the traditional clinical trial process. Shorter review cycles on the front end are being matched with more rigorous, real-time post-market surveillance.
The draft legislation will allow the FDA to approve a groundbreaking drug if it proves effective after a phase II trial. That will deliver treatments to patients much sooner and eliminate the need for some phase III trials, which take years and account for 90% of the total development costs for drugs that eventually gain FDA approval. The 21st Century Cures Act will also spur new drug development by helping innovators to “fail faster” through earlier and more regular meetings in the review process. Identifying even 5% of eventual failures in phase I instead of phase III will save at least $15 million per drug—allowing drug companies to redirect billions toward promising new treatments.
Victory will result in the FDA bringing new products to market both more quickly and with more information about their safety. Initiatives such as 21st Century Cures will transform the FDA from a perceived roadblock to an innovation enabler.
No, because the act will lower the bar for approval of certain therapeutics, says Ameet Sarpatwari, assistant director of the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law, in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Two sets of provisions are particularly alarming. The first concerns medical devices. The act would prompt the FDA to treat case histories and peer-reviewed studies as valid scientific evidence and would also loosen regulations controlling the safety and effectiveness of alterations to the devices that take place after their initial approval. The creation of a novel pathway would also enable FDA approval of high-risk medical devices on the basis of “clinically significant” surrogate measures, such as their effect on a biomarker, and would also require the agency to complete its review within six months.
Each of these changes could open the door to patient harm. Making approval decisions based on scant data increases the risk of adverse events once a device is widely used, and many surrogate measures have proved to be poor predictors of actual clinical outcomes. Case histories and peer review, meanwhile, are plagued by quality concerns. Additionally, even small changes to medical devices can prove deadly, as several high-profile recent cases can attest. It is better if such changes are reviewed by the FDA, rather than by the company itself or a third party paid by the company.
The second set of provisions involves antimicrobials. To combat the growing threat of multidrug resistance, the act would also authorize the FDA to approve certain antibiotics and antifungals on the basis of preliminary, uncontrolled clinical trials as long as those medications carry a disclaimer that explains their “indicated use in specific populations of patients.” However, evidence suggests that disclaimers on drug labels are inconsistently read, let alone heeded.
These measures collectively represent a fundamentally flawed attempt to promote medical innovation. They would lower the bar for therapeutic approval in several respects, threatening to take us back in time to the patent medicines era in which unsafe and ineffective products flooded the market. The Senate would be wise to start anew in determining what, if any, changes to the regulatory apparatus are necessary as prescription drug and device development expands in the 21st century. Read More & Comment...
03/16/2016 03:38 AM | Peter Pitts
National Public Radio’s Marketplace program reports:
The Food and Drug Administration recently said it’s going to prioritize any generic drug application when there’s currently just one manufacturer.
Here’s why:
At the University of Utah Healthcare, pharmacist Erin Fox said in about a year, the heart medication Isuprel went from $50 a dose to $1800 after Valeant purchased the drug.
She said they had always stocked on crash carts.
“Basically, it’s the kind of [drug] you might see on TV, code blue, cardiac arrest, everyone is rushing around,” she said. It’s the kind of medication that can save a life, she said.
But at $1800 a dose, it got pulled off the carts, only to be used in extreme emergencies.
This is what happens when a company has a lock on a given drug.
Some estimate there are 500 generic drugs – for everything from cancer, to multiple sclerosis to heart disease – that currently have virtual monopolies. And companies like Valeant and Turing have taken advantage.
“This is a good circumstance of the FDA actually getting out in front of a problem before it becomes serious,” said Peter Pitts, a former associate FDA Commissioner. “I think this is a program that’s going to have significant impact.”
Pitts said cutting the application process from 2-3 years to as short as six months will help clamp down on some of the price gouging. The FDA says it has 125 current submissions for drug approvals that will be expedited.
Former industry CEO George Zorich wondered if that’s enough of an incentive.
“If I’m a manufacturer, I’m hard pressed just to drop everything without some discussion from the FDA and some real frank discussions with the [FDA]," he said.
Some major generic manufacturers – and the industry trade group - declined interview requests. In statements, several simply said competition is important.
Perhaps an indication that speeding up the FDA process is just one step needed to drive more competition.
The NPR story can be heard here.
My conversation with the reporter also included the issues related with inadequate CMS reimbursement policies as a cause for single source products – but it didn’t make it into the brief radio report.
We need to focus on the perverse economic incentives of Average Sales Price (ASP) as a key factor behind the problem.
We need legislation to deal with:
* Price Stability — Change the Medicare reimbursement rate for generic injectable products with 4 or fewer active manufacturers from Average Sales Price (ASP) + 6% to Wholesale Acquisition Cost (WAC) in order to achieve market price stability.
* Medicaid/340B Rebate Exemption — Exempt generic injectable products with 4 or fewer active manufacturers from Medicaid rebates and 340B discounts in order to achieve market price stability.
The FDA has done its part. Now it’s time for Congress to step up to the plate. Read More & Comment...
The Food and Drug Administration recently said it’s going to prioritize any generic drug application when there’s currently just one manufacturer.
Here’s why:
At the University of Utah Healthcare, pharmacist Erin Fox said in about a year, the heart medication Isuprel went from $50 a dose to $1800 after Valeant purchased the drug.
She said they had always stocked on crash carts.
“Basically, it’s the kind of [drug] you might see on TV, code blue, cardiac arrest, everyone is rushing around,” she said. It’s the kind of medication that can save a life, she said.
But at $1800 a dose, it got pulled off the carts, only to be used in extreme emergencies.
This is what happens when a company has a lock on a given drug.
Some estimate there are 500 generic drugs – for everything from cancer, to multiple sclerosis to heart disease – that currently have virtual monopolies. And companies like Valeant and Turing have taken advantage.
“This is a good circumstance of the FDA actually getting out in front of a problem before it becomes serious,” said Peter Pitts, a former associate FDA Commissioner. “I think this is a program that’s going to have significant impact.”
Pitts said cutting the application process from 2-3 years to as short as six months will help clamp down on some of the price gouging. The FDA says it has 125 current submissions for drug approvals that will be expedited.
Former industry CEO George Zorich wondered if that’s enough of an incentive.
“If I’m a manufacturer, I’m hard pressed just to drop everything without some discussion from the FDA and some real frank discussions with the [FDA]," he said.
Some major generic manufacturers – and the industry trade group - declined interview requests. In statements, several simply said competition is important.
Perhaps an indication that speeding up the FDA process is just one step needed to drive more competition.
The NPR story can be heard here.
My conversation with the reporter also included the issues related with inadequate CMS reimbursement policies as a cause for single source products – but it didn’t make it into the brief radio report.
We need to focus on the perverse economic incentives of Average Sales Price (ASP) as a key factor behind the problem.
We need legislation to deal with:
* Price Stability — Change the Medicare reimbursement rate for generic injectable products with 4 or fewer active manufacturers from Average Sales Price (ASP) + 6% to Wholesale Acquisition Cost (WAC) in order to achieve market price stability.
* Medicaid/340B Rebate Exemption — Exempt generic injectable products with 4 or fewer active manufacturers from Medicaid rebates and 340B discounts in order to achieve market price stability.
The FDA has done its part. Now it’s time for Congress to step up to the plate. Read More & Comment...
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