August 6, 2019 – Keeping Check

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Anchor lead: Soaring pharmaceutical prices have prompted state action, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Maryland is poised to begin scrutinizing pharmaceutical prices and investigating price hikes with a board of experts appointed by the governor. Jeremy Greene, a pharmaceutical pricing activist and physician at Johns Hopkins, says such action in needed with our current absence of transparency.

Greene: When a prescription drug price jumps by a certain amount now this board can compel a justification for the drug price increase. To date part of the problem of understanding increasing prescription drug prices is that there’s no ability for anybody to compel information about why prices are going up or who actually sets prices. So I’m all for a system in which if prices are going to go up there has to be a compelling reason why rather than simply because people will pay what the market will bear.   :32

Greene notes that a federal policy on pharmaceutical pricing is what’s really needed to protect consumers. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.