Disclosing Prescription-Drug Prices in Advertisements - Legal and Public Health Issues.

1: From the Department of Health Policy, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville (S.B.D.); and Stanford Law School and the Department of Health Research and Policy, Stanford University School of Medicine - both in Stanford, CA (M.M.M.).; "Despite the problems associated with requiring disclosure of list prices, the sentiment behind the proposed rule — that patients should know how much drugs will cost before they fill their prescriptions — is sensible. The question is how best to achieve that outcome. Just before the CMS rule was announced, the main trade organization of the pharmaceutical industry, PhRMA, released its own guidelines for voluntary disclosure of the costs of advertised medicines. It proposes that advertisements direct patients to a website where the company provides information about list price as well as “average, estimated, or typical patient out-of-pocket costs.” This information is more useful than the WAC alone, but 'typical' out-of-pocket costs don’t convey the variation in what patients pay."

TimAllenMDJD