The Biden administration is expected to unveil an ambitious policy agenda that is sure to include prescription drug pricing. But if the President-elect’s agenda has any resemblance to his campaign proposal, then Americans need to know about and publicly debate what the proposal might mean for them and those they love — and what it might mean is a system that limits needed care for the most vulnerable Americans.
Under the Biden plan, a so-called “expert” panel, modeled in part on some foreign countries’ health care systems and the private Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) in the United States, would assess the “fair” value of drugs. These models rely on a metric called a quality-adjusted life year (QALY), which assigns a value to a person’s life based on whether they’re sick, disabled, or old. Basically, such a person’s life is deemed to be worth less, and so this system determines that less money should be spent on treating them.
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