By all appearances, RUS has remembered its substantial international reference pricing (IRP) rule that, until now, was largely ‘bark’, and no ‘bite’. The set of countries was renewed by the 979 order in October 2015, but authorities in RUS have decided to ramp up its use in order to lower…
Novartis’ recently approved ENTRESTO impressed regulators with stellar clinical outcomes, including a 20% reduction in the risk of cardiovascular death and hospitalization and a 16% improvement in overall survival compared to the standard-of-care ACE inhibitor therapy enalapril. ENTRESTO is expected to change the management of heart failure with reduced ejection…
A recent economic analysis led by CBPartners in collaboration with Inova Fairfax and Gilead Sciences has demonstrated that utilising new direct-acting antiviral therapies in hepatitis C, which are safer and more effective than older pegylated interferon- and ribavirin-containing therapies, can lead to significant cost savings in the United States and…
How many times have we heard that biosimilars are expected to be priced at a 20-40% discount to their originators? This is a hypothesis that until recently appeared to hold true based on the examples of early biosimilar launches for ESAs and G-CSFs in Europe. Many predicted that the additional…
Russia’s Essential Drugs List (перечень жизненно необходимых и важнейших лекарственных препаратов) was created in April 2010, which enabled the federal authorities to more effectively regulate the prices of vital and essential pharmaceutical products in Russia in order to increase access to them for the public and healthcare institutions. Rosminzdrav, or…
SANOFI has launched TOUJEO, its successor to LANTUS (the world’s top selling insulin drug, as well as SANOFI’s top selling drug, which generated $7B in sales last year but lost patent protection in February 2015). SANOFI has announced that they will not discount TOUJEO relative to LANTUS, citing TOUJEO’s data…
On March 30th, UnitedHealth Group announced it would acquire Catamaran Corporation and integrate its pharmacy services into OptumRx, UnitedHealth’s standalone pharmacy services unit. This merger is the latest in a trend that has consolidated the majority of the USA’s pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), and gives UnitedHealth the scale to better…
Since the FDA’s approval of GILEAD’s SOVALDI in December 2013, there has been loud outcry from some members of the healthcare community regarding the continuing increase in cost of pharmaceutical drugs. SOVALDI offers the first “curative” treatment for HCV at USD 1,000 a pill, or USD 84,000 for the entire 12…
The United States is considered to be one of the last bastions of pricing freedom for new, innovative therapies. The realities of the US pricing and market access environment contradict this belief, both at the net-price levels and increasingly may hold true at the list-price level. Recent events regarding SOVALDI’s…
Five months after its EMA approval, GNE’s KADCYLA for metastatic breast cancer is experiencing mixed fortunes in Europe. This week, the HAS released its KADCYLA appraisal, granting the product and ASMR II due to its strong OS benefit vs. TYKERB and XELODA (+5.8 months, HR 0.682, p=0.0006) in mBC patients…