Drug pric­ing re­mains the big is­sue for 2017; Let's not go down the rab­bit hole at the FDA

End­points as­sess­es the big bio­phar­ma R&D sto­ries of the week, with a lit­tle added com­men­tary on what they mean for the in­dus­try.

  Drug pric­ing re­mains the biggest is­sue fac­ing the in­dus­try in 2017

Per­haps it was ap­pro­pri­ate that Time mag­a­zine de­cid­ed to de­liv­er Don­ald Trump’s thoughts for their Per­son of the Year cov­er sto­ry in a se­ries of tweet-like re­marks. Twit­ter, af­ter all, is his fa­vorite fo­rum. So we were all treat­ed to a very clear mes­sage: I’m go­ing to bring drug prices down. It just ar­rived with ab­solute­ly no in­sights in­to how he plans to do that. And that’s the is­sue we face in 2017. While the reg­u­la­to­ry winds have been blow­ing in bio­phar­ma’s fa­vor for years now, drug pric­ing re­mains a con­tro­ver­sial black box that en­cour­ages scan­dal. It’s al­so a po­tent pop­ulist is­sue which can stir mass protests. The in­dus­try still has a chance to adopt a com­mon­sense ap­proach to self-reg­u­lat­ing price hikes. And there are good rea­sons to re­quire a trans­par­ent list of ne­go­ti­at­ed prices for peo­ple to see what is ac­tu­al­ly paid, while al­so pro­hibit­ing goug­ing con­sumers for old tech­nol­o­gy. But time is wast­ing. And hes­i­tan­cy will on­ly make any pub­lic back­lash sting all that much more.

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