policy+practice

Members of Congress want to ensure that reports from the national academies, chartered in 1863 to provide Congress with expert scientific advice, are widely accepted as independent and free from special-interest or financial influence.

Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapies have been changing the cancer treatment landscape.

Democrats can’t do much on health care if they don’t cut prescription drug costs.

10% have skipped prescribed dosages to preserve drugs and save money.

The accelerated approval pathway is under fire as the agency recently signed off on a controversial new Alzheimer’s drug, with little precedent to explain its decision.

Democrats are counting on the drug policy proposal, which could generate budgetary savings of as much as $700 billion over a decade, to help pay for their other health policy priorities.

Drugs are inherently expensive to make. In 2016 a group from Tufts estimated that a new drug on average costs $2.6 billion (2013 dollars) to create, growing at 8.5% per year above general price inflation.

Making the prices of medicines more transparent around the world would appear to be a positive force for patients.

Among the targets: giving drug companies new protections for changes to old inventions.

Many medical professionals look to biosimilar drugs as a way to increase competition and give consumers cheaper options, much as generic drugs do, and they point to the more robust use of these products in Europe to cut costs.

At the technical briefing, a new vision for collaboration between the public and private sectors was put forward to provide better access to safe, effective, novel, high-priced medicines.

True or false: Pharmaceutical companies are required to send drug ads to the FDA for approval before they're used.

A bill in Congress would allow Medicare to use its bulk-purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. Big Pharma is not pleased.

Biosimilars are cheaper versions of biologic drugs made from living organisms.

The U.N.-backed vaccine program is so far behind schedule that not even 10 percent of the population in poor countries is fully vaccinated, experts say.