Amanda Starc

Jul 15, 2024 | insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu | Craig Garthwaite |Amanda Starc

In 2022, Congress granted Medicare a privilege traditionally reserved for private insurers: The ability to negotiate directly with drugmakers. It’s expected to save American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, but Kellogg economists warn the savings come at the expense of future innovation. Understanding why requires understanding how new drugs come to market in the first place–and the incentives that make the whole system go.

Dec 17, 2023 | econofact.org | Craig Garthwaite |Amanda Starc |Galina Hale |Joshua Gottlieb

These two provisions of the IRA should provide meaningful steps to address high and rising prices of prescription drugs, but do so in quite a blunt way that could negatively affect incentives to invest in future drugs. It should be recognized that actions to reduce drug prices almost always involve a tradeoff between lower costs today against more limited access and reduced incentives to develop better drugs for the future.

Oct 6, 2023 | insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu | Amanda Starc

In August, President Biden announced the first 10 prescription drugs to feature in controversial new price negotiations between Medicare and the pharmaceutical companies that make them. Politically, this is a popular move. According to polls, Americans from across the political spectrum support the government’s plan, which Democrats have proposed in various forms for more than twenty years.

Aug 30, 2023 | economicstrategygroup.org | Amanda Starc |Craig Garthwaite

Papers Pharmaceutical pricing in the United States is a complicated and opaque process.