Payers around the world have been protesting the rapid rise in drug prices. The prices for some older prescriptions have gone up as much as 5,000 or 6,000 percent. And the price tag on new pharmaceuticals can be extremely high. Many analysts believe that this trend is not sustainable.
Will Manufacturers Change the Way They Set Drug Prices?
As a result, the pharmaceutical industry is contemplating a new model: What if they charged by how much the patient benefits instead of by how many pills are sold? It’s an interesting concept that might even benefit patients who now have a hard time affording lifesaving medicines for hepatitis C or certain cancers.
It is a little difficult to imagine how this might work. Some European countries have already made performance-based agreements with selected drug manufacturers, so we may look to their experience. Most likely such a change will require a lot of negotiation and will affect patients and physicians in some unforeseen ways.
