Drug prices

To Modulate Drug Prices, We Need Less Regulation and More Competition

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444199/prescription-drug-price-control-reciprocity-food-drug-administration?utm_source=jolt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Jolt%201/25/2017&utm_term=Jolt

Excerpt: Another example was the sordid saga of a drug called pirfenidone, used to treat a pulmonary disorder called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), which killed tens of thousands of Americans annually. The cause of the disease is unknown, and there were no drug treatments approved for it in the United States until October 2014, although pirfenidone had already been marketed in Europe (since 2011), Japan (2008), Canada (2012), and China. Pirfenidone was approved in the EU on the basis of three randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies, one conducted in Japan and the other two in Europe and the United States. In spite of a recommendation for approval by an FDA advisory committee (consisting of outside experts) in 2010, agency officials opted not to approve the drug and demanded another major clinical study. The results, published in May 2014, were impressive, and the FDA finally approved the drug without fanfare in October 2014; but between 2010 and the approval, IPF killed more than 150,000 patients in the United States.