Peter J. Neumann

Jul 16, 2024 | healthaffairs.org | Peter J. Neumann

The many tributes to Gail Wilensky, the health economist and Senior Fellow at Project HOPE who passed away on July 11, aptly recall her accomplishments. She had a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan and, early in her career co-directed the National Medical Care Expenditure Survey.

Jul 3, 2024 | healthaffairs.org | Peter J. Neumann |Marie Phillips |Joshua Cohen

Value assessments in health care tend to focus on pharmaceuticals rather than services and procedures, despite the outsized contribution of services and procedures to health spending. We use the term “value assessment” to refer to explicit consideration of health benefits and economic costs through various analytic techniques. In the US, services and procedures comprise roughly 70 percent of health spending, but encompass 42 percent of published cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs).

Feb 5, 2024 | healthaffairs.org | Peter J. Neumann |Joshua Cohen

With some new drug therapies priced like high-end condos, the question of whether prescription drugs are undervalued may seem misplaced. Still, there are compelling reasons to believe that the value of many drugs—and health care innovations broadly—is underestimated in conventional economic assessments. There are also important caveats to these arguments.

Oct 18, 2023 | healthaffairs.org | Melanie D. Whittington |Peter J. Neumann |Joshua Cohen |Jonathan D. Campbell

This commentary argues that practitioners of cost-effectiveness analyses should incorporate dynamic drug pricing into formal cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs). For reasons we discuss, doing so will more accurately reflect drug costs over time.

Jun 23, 2023 | healthaffairs.org | Sean Tunis |Peter J. Neumann

On July 6, 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to decide whether to grant traditional approval for Leqembi (lecanemab), a monoclonal antibody (mAb) for patients with mild cognitive impairment or mild Alzheimer’s disease. Lecanemab received accelerated approval in January 2023.