Paying for Pharmaceutical Value: The Problem of a One-Size-Fits-All Definition

20 Mar 2019

• By Roger Longman and Jane Barlow

It is a world, at least the US corner of it, in which any common understanding of drug value is confused by opposing incentives – to opacity and transparency, to looking at benefit broadly or narrowly, long-term or short-term: value, in short, to whom?

Consider the evolution of three species within the pharmaceutical ecosystem:

The industry has plenty of ways to define value. Thousands of academic and corporate health economists busily grind out cost-effectiveness...