Why are the prices of pharmaceuticals so high?
We might imagine a 10-part series exploring this question, or a front-page New York Times story that jumps to two full pages inside, or a long story in The New Yorker.
Instead, what we see this week is a short story in The New Yorker—a one-pager by the New Yorker financial columnist James Surowiecki, tucked in his usual spot inside The Talk of the Town.
In fewer than 1,000 words, Surowiecki tells us pretty much all we need to know about why drug prices are high and whether they are likely to stay that way. What's most surprising to me is that his discussion of the medical issues and the drugs is absolutely on target. I was surprised not because I expected less of Surowiecki, but because medical and pharmaceutical stories written by non-medical writers so often get something wrong, even if it's just the nuance or the phrasing. Surowiecki gets it right.
He begins with a quick review of the recent boom in biotech stocks, something that not all medical and science writers follow. Then he narrows his focus to the new hepatitis drug Sovaldi, made by the biotech firm Gilead. The FDA has approved the drug, which represents an important treatment advance and will be a financial boon for the company: Hepatitis C afflicts 3.2 million Americans and a course of treatment "comes to more than eighty grand," Surowiecki reports.
But it's not so good for taxpayers and insurers, who will pick up that tab. And here he cleverly inserts a statistic that sharpens the issue: Hepatitis patients, he writes, "have an average annual income of just twenty-three thousand dollars." He goes on to explain why this can happen in the U.S., and whether it is likely to continue.
Drug pricing is a complicated issue, affected by financial interests, medical realities, research progress, and competition in the marketplace. Surowiecki makes it seem simple.
-Paul Raeburn
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