On September 14, 2016, the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines released its report, in which they had a mandate to “review and assess proposals and recommend solutions for remedying the policy incoherence between the justifiable rights of inventors, international human rights law, trade rules and public health in the context of health technologies.”[1]
On September 14, 2016, the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines issued its long-awaited report, which addressed the policy incoherencies between intellectual property, trade, human rights, innovation, and public health.
The report is available here: http://www.unsgaccessmeds.org/final-report/
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On September 7, 2016, the National Cancer Advisory Board Blue Ribbon Panel issued a draft report with recommendations directed to the Cancer Moonshot Task Force.
The draft included 10 interesting and useful recommendations (see A – J) related to cancer research, but none to address the pricing or affordability of products. Continue Reading
A German patent court has ordered a compulsory license under Section 24 of the Patent Act, allowing Merck (US) to continue to market the HIV drug raltegravir (marketed as Isentress).
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has published a factsheet presenting, “Hillary’s Plan to Respond to Unjustified Price Hikes for Long-Available Drugs.”
Today via Twitter, KEI Director James Love offered a six point commentary on Secretary Clinton’s proposal to address drug price hikes:
The attached briefing note analyzes transparency legislation that has been proposed in 14 states in 2015 and 2016. The bills would require various degrees of transparency for research and development (R&D) and marketing costs, as well as for drug prices and price changes.
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On August 5, 2016, KEI received a response from the Department of the Army to KEI and UACT’s January 14, 2016 request that the Army and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) exercise the governments’ rights in the patents for… Continue Reading
Bloomberg reported on August 2, 2016, that CVS Health announced that it plans to exclude 35 drugs from its formulary beginning in 2017, including Xtandi, bringing the total number of excluded drugs to 131.
Vivendi-SFR lobbyist nominated to WIPO by Hervé Le Crosnier
The Associated Press recently released a chart from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Office of the Actuary that outlines spending for the top 20 costliest drugs to Medicare in 2015 after reaching Medicare’s catastrophic spending threshold: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/07/25/us/ap-us-medicare-pricey-drugs-glance.html.
UPDATE: The AP also released another story, on July 24, 2016, outlining the overall program costs of catastrophic spending and explaining various spending increases: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/07/24/us/politics/ap-us-medicare-pricey-drugs.html.
