Inmaculada Hernandez, PharmD, PhD, is an associate professor at Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UC San Diego and senior author of a research study that found high drug rates are not associated with the expenses of research study and advancement. Credit: UC San Diego Health Sciences.
In a paper recently published in the journal JAMA Network Open, Wouters and coworkers from the University of California San Diegos Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences found no such association for 60 brand-new drugs authorized by the United States Food and Drug Administration from 2009 to 2018.
The researchers compared information on drug pricing and R&D expenses. They found no connection between pharmaceutical corporations R&D spending and the rates they charge for brand-new drugs. The therapeutic value of a product was also evaluated by the scientists, however they found no link between healing value and price..
” Our findings provide evidence that drug companies do not set costs based on just how much they spent on R&D or how good a drug is. Instead, they charge what the marketplace will bear,” stated senior author Inmaculada Hernandez, PharmD, Ph.D., associate professor at Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
The Congressional Budget Office approximates that the pharmaceutical sector invested $83 billion on research and advancement in 2019. It is approximated that companies spend between $1 billion and $3 billion on average to bring a single new item to market. According to the database company Statista, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry made more than $490 billion in sales in 2019, making up near to half of the around the world pharmaceutical market.
Americans invest more on prescription drugs per capita than people in any other country. In 2019, that exercised to more than $1,200 per person. A 2021 Rand Corporation study found U.S. drug rates were 2.56 times greater than those in 32 similar nations. A Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll released earlier this year found that eight in 10 adults stated the cost of prescribed medications was unreasonable.
Legislators in Congress have in current years presented numerous proposals planned to apply down pressure on drug prices. Pharmaceutical business and trade groups have actually opposed these reforms, arguing that high drug costs are required to recuperate R&D investments.
” If this argument is to be utilized to justify high rates and oppose steps to curb prescription drug expenses, drug business need to supply more data to support their claims that high drug prices are needed to recuperate R&D investments,” said Hernandez.
Reference: “Association of Research and Development Investments With Treatment Costs for New Drugs Approved From 2009 to 2018″ by Olivier J. Wouters, Ph.D., Lucas A. Berenbrok, PharmD, MS, Meiqi He, MS, Yihan Li, BS and Inmaculada Hernandez, PharmD, Ph.D., 26 September 2022, JAMA Network Open.DOI: 10.1001/ jamanetworkopen.2022.18623.
The study authors acknowledged that the analysis was limited by the small sample size.
The researchers compared details on drug rates and R&D expenses. They found no connection in between pharmaceutical corporations R&D spending and the prices they charge for brand-new drugs. Americans spend more on prescription drugs per capita than residents in any other country. A 2021 Rand Corporation study found U.S. drug prices were 2.56 times greater than those in 32 similar nations.
Expensive research study and advancement arent necessarily why drugs are so pricey.
Pharmaceutical companies argue that high drug prices are required to recuperate the expenses of research and development, however scientists discovered no relationship between the 2.
A multinational group of scientists examined whether high R&D (research study and development) expenditures account for high drug rates in the United States in the very first recognized research study of its kind.
” There is a presumption that high R&D costs justify high drug rates. If that were true, then we d see a positive association in between the two procedures,” said first author Olivier Wouters, Ph.D., assistant professor at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences
