The AMA’s 2025 physician survey found that the average doctor handles 40 prior authorization requests every week, eating up roughly 13 hours of their time. Almost two full working days every week are spent on paperwork instead of patients. Ninety-five percent of physicians surveyed said prior authorization gets in the way of necessary care. Seventy-nine percent said patients give up on treatment entirely because the process is too much or the approval never arrives.
Source: The Health Care Blog
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the World Health Organization reported that over 32,000 pregnant women faced limited access to diagnostics and limited amounts of the stable electricity needed to sustain neonatal units. Prenatal care faces delays because of the lack of everything from testing supplies to available facilities. And now, even once successful improvements in health indicators have fallen: a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research measured an increase in infant mortality rates from 4.0 to 9.9 per 1,000 births between 2018 and 2025.
Source: Ananya Rupanagunta at VOX
Our analysis … looks at the first 25 medicines for which Medicare officials have already set government prices. We estimate that the price controls have, or will, reduce those drugs’ net prices by about 37%, on average, relative to a world without government price setting.
In our model, that drop in brand-name drugs’ revenue leads to a 38% decline in the number of generic or biosimilar competitors coming to market. As a result of this decreased competition, the price of those post-exclusivity generics and biosimilars would be 45% higher, on average.
Source: Tomas Philipson