Would supply-side policies reduce regional variation in drug spending?
Based on one study from Sweden, the answer is ‘no’. A paper by Johansson and Svensson (2022) use data from Sweden on regional variation in […]
International Health Care Systems
Challenge in HTA for gene therapies
Last month, the Office of Health Economics published a report titled “Health Technology Assessment of Gene Therapies: Are Our Methods Fit for Purpose?” I summarize […]
Effect of pharmaceutical innovation on longevity
Using data from 2006-2018 across 26 high-income countries, Lichtenberg et al. (2022) measures the relationship between pharmaceutical innovation and longevity. Innovation is measured by “mean […]
International Reference Pricing for Cell and Gene Therapies
In recent years, the US government has had a number of proposals which aim to lower drug prices by linking US drug prices to the […]
Coverage with evidence development for medical devices in Central and Eastern Europe
The value of medical devices caries with it less certainty than pharmaceuticals for a variety of reasons. As described in Kovács et al. (2022) medical […]
How can payers create favorable risk selection?
Many countries allow private plans to administer health insurance benefits but with restrictions on premiums and with the potential for risk adjusted government payments based […]
Cross-border medical care in Europe
In Europe, some patients are able to seek medical care in other countries. Reasons for doing so include shorter waiting times, access to treatment that […]
Coverage with Evidence Development (CED) in Europe: Examining CED for medical devices
That is the topic of a new paper by Drummond et al. (2022). When medical devices receive regulatory approval, payers can make one of three […]
International Reference Pricing: Cross-country comparison
The price of pharmaceuticals are much higher in the U.S. than in other countries. Some policymakers have claimed that international reference pricing could be used […]
Digital health in Europe: Before and after COVID
An interesting report from the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies examined the “Use of digital health tools in Europe: before, during and after […]
Biosimilar use in France
Like generic drugs for small molecules, biosimilars offer the hope for reducing drug prices after biologic therapies lose their patent protections. But how big an […]
Demand curves still slope downwards
Unsurprisingly, high-deductible health plans lead to lower utilization of healthcare services. A study by Sandoval et al. (2021) use data from 2007-2019 from Switzerland to […]
How easy is it for patients to access cell and gene therapies in Europe?
Cell and gene therapies have the potential to produce dramatic improvements in quality of life and survival for severe and often rare diseases. Currently, however, […]
International Reference Pricing: List vs. Net Pricing issues
Leah Rand and Aaron Kesselheim have an interesting commentary in Value in Health reviewing some of the challenges of implementing international reference pricing (IRP) in […]
A value framework for diagnostics in Latin America
That is the topic of a recent paper by Augustovski et al. (2021). The authors conduct a targeted literature review of previous diagnostics value frameworks […]
Paying for mental health care in the Netherlands
As COVID-19 has made many of us acutely aware, providing high quality mental health care is vital. However, the mental health care market is a […]
Healthcare spending by age: An international comparison
We all know that health care spending per person in the US is highest among all countries. But are these results consistent across age groups? […]
Health care battle: US vs. England
A new study by Choi et al. (2020) compares the health of individuals aged 55-64 in the US compared to England. They use data from […]
Health care in Ukraine
Recently I read an interesting book called Moneyland by Oliver Bullough. The book describes how with porous borders facilitated by the internet, the rich can […]
