Drug prices

If you have an elevated risk of heart attack, there are prescription drugs that can help with that. If you are overweight, there are prescription drugs that can help with that. If you have chronic problems with arthritis, there are prescription drugs that can help with that.

It’s never a good time to be sick, but prescription drugs do more and more marvelous things. Their trajectory keeps heading up.

Their prices seem to follow that upward trajectory. Sure, many people can use much less expensive generics. And many people never pay the full list price of a drug. Almost anyone, though, who takes prescription drugs is worried about their affordability.

The state of Oregon has been trying to take that on. Oregon’s Prescription Drug Affordability Board struggled last month to reach a consensus on what it should recommend that the Legislature do in 2025.

If the state does something that lowers prices, the lower price is obvious. What’s not obvious are the unintended consequences. Lower prices can reduce revenue to manufacturers. That can mean less money to develop the next wonderful prescription drug or less incentive to do so.

The board did reach consensus on a series of recommendations for the Legislature. Many of them are new requirements for manufacturers and insurers to detail aspects of their costs.

For the last few years, the board has been making a recommendation that the Legislature require manufacturers to do more reporting to the state’s drug price transparency program on manufacturer’s coupons to reduce patient costs. The Legislature hasn’t upped that requirement, so it’s back again.

There is another recommendation that the Legislature require pharmacy benefit managers to report more fully how their copay programs work.

There are more recommendations. You can find a complete list here: tinyurl.com/Drugrecommend.

Oregon chasing better information about prescription drug pricing would be an additional regulatory burden for manufacturers and insurers. Once legislators have that information, the real test begins. How will legislators set policies that won’t threaten the development of the next great prescription drugs?