- Covid booster tested mice – what we know.
- The cost of Biden’s attempts to undo Trump’s deregulations: 15.3% of household income for the bottom one-fifth of the income distribution, but only 2.2% for the top fifth.
- Gene Steuerle: it’s not clear there has been any slow down in the growth of health care spending.
- Over the last half-century or so, the median household has seen income gains of less than 1% per year.
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Conspiracy Between Drug Companies and PBMs Inhibit Generic Competition
Last year the state of Tennessee health plan paid $62,000 apiece for 775 patients who were on the biologic drug Humira. Humira is used for autoimmune and inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and others. All told Tennessee spent nearly $50 million on one drug. This is a lot of money for only 775 patients. What is even more amazing is that nine (9) different new drugs biosimilar to Humira just hit the market. The lowest price for a generic copy is $994 a month. That is shy of $12,000 a year, or about $50,000 a year cheaper than Humira.
Monday Links
- GAO: unemployment insurance fraud during the pandemic as high as $135 billion. (That is roughly $1,350 for every household in America.)
- Medicare targets cheap, generic, life saving drug for price “negotiation.” (WSJ)
- Rich countries get quality medicines; the poor sometimes get poison. But, contra NYT, the solution is markets, not regulation.
- Court tells the FDA to stop playing doctor. (WSJ)
- As a percent of income, lower-income people cheat more on their income taxes than higher income people. HT: David Henderson
- Did the eradication of hookworms cause modern allergies?
Saturday Links
- Did the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN) censor a meta study showing that lock downs had no effect on covid?
- A smart pill — the size of a blueberry! — can be used to automatically detect key biological molecules in the gut that suggest problems, and wirelessly transmit the information in real time.
- Robin Hansen: World population will peak in about thirty years, and then will likely fall by half every generation or two.
- How the government sets Medicare prices: it’s “a pattern of combining dated, imprecise cost reports with idiosyncratic and opaque adjustments that were not constructed to guarantee the best outcomes for the dollars spent.”