Step­ping in­to the pric­ing de­bate, FDA chief Scott Got­tlieb pro­pos­es new re­im­burse­ment idea for an­tibi­otics

In an at­tempt to make good on its promise to tack­le the su­per­bug prob­lem, the FDA trot­ted out a new idea to­day that it hopes will ad­dress the re­im­burse­ment catch-22 in­her­ent in the in­dus­try. Their idea? Treat drugs like soft­ware, hav­ing hos­pi­tals buy li­cens­es to an­tibi­otics in­stead of re­im­burs­ing on a per-use ba­sis.

Let’s set aside, for the mo­ment, that pric­ing is typ­i­cal­ly not a top­ic the FDA likes to weigh in on. Af­ter all, drug pric­ing is not un­der FDA’s di­rect purview and would re­quire some in­ter-agency col­lab­o­ra­tion with the likes of CMS. But wor­ries around the pace of in­no­va­tion in an­tibi­otics and oth­er an­timi­cro­bial drugs ap­pear to be dri­ving the FDA to ac­tion.

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