Bio­gen's new Alzheimer's drug serves as a ral­ly­ing cry for drug pric­ing re­forms

A coali­tion of em­ploy­ers and health care pur­chasers are call­ing on the top House and Sen­ate lead­ers to take a hard look at the “as­tro­nom­i­cal price” of Bio­gen’s new Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm and “move bold­ly” to en­act pre­scrip­tion drug pric­ing re­form.

The group Em­ploy­er­sRx, which in­cludes the Amer­i­can Ben­e­fits Coun­cil and the Na­tion­al Al­liance of Health­care Pur­chas­er Coali­tions among oth­ers, says that while it strong­ly sup­ports mar­ket so­lu­tions to es­tab­lish rea­son­able prices, when no mar­ket ex­ists — as is the case for ad­u­canum­ab — “we sup­port al­low­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to en­ter in­to mean­ing­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions on the price of drugs on be­half of all pay­ers.”

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