- Center on Health Equity & Access
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- Health Care Cost
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- Value-Based Care
Impact of Cost on Patients' Access to Treatment
Zachary T. Bloomgarden, MD, MACE: We have to have rational drug pricing. We have to change, in such a fashion, to have the cost of drugs in America not differ from the cost of drugs in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, or Japan, for that matter. We need to have an effective approach to making drugs available for everyone.
Currently, individuals who have Medicare Part D have a huge burden of paying for drugs once they reach the so-called donut hole, and that certainly needs to change. But, most importantly, we have to stop confusing the cost of the drug, in terms of buying the product, [with] the cost of the drug in terms of its likelihood of ultimately affording benefit to the individual in question.
This is an area in which I fear that we’ve erred tremendously. We allow higher-cost versus lower-cost drugs to be prescribed less frequently, even though the higher-cost drugs may truly be better. So, we have to rethink some of our concepts.
STEER Data Open Door to SMA Gene Therapy for Wider Age Range of Children
March 19th 2025Delivery of onasemnogene abeparvovec into the intrathecal space was safe and effective for children with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) aged 2 to 17 years, who had previously been shut out of receiving gene therapy.
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Neurologists Share Tips for Securing Patient Access to Gene Therapies
March 19th 2025Tenacious efforts at every level, from the individual clinician to the hospital to the state to Congress, will be needed to make sure patients can access life-saving gene therapies for neuromuscular diseases.
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