Yesterday evening the American Sustainable Business Council launched a new campaign, Business Leaders Transforming Healthcare, and screened a half-hour film called “Big Pharma – Market Failure.” The new coalition is urging sweeping and greatly needed changes to the U.S. health care system, advocating for a single-payer model, evidence-based decision making, best practices, and transparency and accountability throughout the system, for drug manufacturers, insurance companies,

One of the country’s largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), Express Scripts, just lost its largest customer. Anthem Inc. recently told Express Scripts that it would drop the PBM and not renew its contract when it expires in 2019. The company is already looking at proposals for a new service provider. In a statement, Express Scripts told reporters that “Anthem intends to move its business when the company’s current contract with Anthem expires on December 31, 2019, and that

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made repeated promises to aggressively negotiate the cost of prescription drugs, and claimed drug companies were “getting away with murder.” Since he assumed office, his rhetoric has been more muted. But legislators have not been idle. Eighteen Democratic Senators sent a letter to Trump in December 2016 listing actions that he could take to reduce drug costs. These solutions included allowing Medicare to negotiate better pri

Yesterday the New York Times published an op-ed on drug price gouging by Tim Wu, Professor at Columbia Law School. Rising drug prices are a huge problem and pressure is building for Congress and the administration to take action. Professor Wu suggested that the administration already has significant power to combat price gouging, located in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. The Food and Drug Administration can allow imports of drugs whenever it determines they are safe