James Raftery: Ever higher cancer drug prices—driven by US policies and genetic sequencing

The high prices charged by companies for cancer drugs has led to lots of speculation, but very little explanation. The most interesting attempt to explain these high prices has been made by a US oncologist Scott Ramsey. As the article is paywalled, I summarise it below (with thanks to the author for a copy). His […]

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James Raftery: The government response to the value based pricing consultation

The publication of the Government response to the value based pricing consultation provides some further insight into current thinking. 188 responses are summarised to the 20 questions posed in the consultation, along with the Department of Health response to each. Of the 20 questions, seven asked yes/no questions along the lines of do you agree that X […]

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James Raftery: Value based pricing – the consultation paper

The publication of the Department of Health’s consultation paper on value based pricing and the ongoing consultation on the Cancer Drugs Fund plus each consultation’s accompanying impact assessment mean that it is now possible to see what is being proposed. This blog looks at the essentials of value based pricing; later blogs will deal with […]

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James Raftery on a greater role for industry in NICE’s cost per QALY?

In December 2008 the Department of Health in England published the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme.  It describes how  the scheme will operate for at least five years from 2009. The previous scheme was to run to 2010 but the UK government withdrew it in February 2008 following a critical report from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). […]

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Vidhya Alakeson on US health reform

As with his presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s approach to health reform will leave little to chance. His strategy for enacting the first major coverage expansion in more than 40 years is starting to take shape. He is building public support for reform early in the hope that it will be enough to counter the opponents of […]

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Joe Collier: A stab at future UK Drug Pricing Policy

We are now into the fifth month of the negotiations to reform the secretive and perverse (and essentially discredited) UK Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS), and we can safely assume that the discussions will be hotting up as the new terms must be in place by the beginning of September. […]

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