Op-ed: Should We Limit Spending on Lifesaving Drugs?

Health – UConn Today


“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” is a familiar quote from the opening of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” but the phrase is also applicable to the specialty drug market in the United States today.
Specialty drugs, usually complex biologic products created by genetic alterations of living tissues or organisms, have revolutionized patient care by creating human proteins, enzymes, and antibodies that can treat diseases much more specifically than previously. These breakthroughs have come through a collective national choice to let drugmakers set prices and reap the profits with limited oversight – as opposed to many other countries with strict controls.
However, this choice has come at a steep price: Health care costs are soaring at an unsustainable pace, putting the finances of states, the federal government, companies, and millions of Americans at risk.
Every American – especially our lawmakers preparing to remold our health care system for the second time in eight years – needs to understand the choice we have made and grapple with where to go from here. In the end, it comes down to one difficult question: What value should we place on a human life?
Drug costs are crippling us financially
Between premiums, deductibles, and co-pays, a typical family of four will directly pay U.S. $11,000 of the estimated $27,000 it is expected to spend on health care in 2017, up 22 percent since 2013. That’s quite a lot, especially considering the average American worker made only $46,120 in 2015.
But it will be impossible to control these spiraling costs without getting a handle on prescription drug spending, which is growing at a rate at least three times faster than every other major medical category.
What many people don’t know is that spending on traditional drugs such as statins, acid controllers, and antibiotics hasn’t changed much. It’s specialty and biologic drugs that ...

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