Abstract

Good health policy is all about getting the incentives right. For drugs, the right incentives would:

  1. Encourage industry to develop new drugs that provide substantial clinical benefits compared with existing alternatives.
  2. Ensure that high quality information about the benefits and harms of drugs in the real world is available.
  3. Discourage the development of "me too" drugs.
  4. Establish drug prices that have a reasonable correlation with their incremental benefit, reward industry appropriately, and are affordable from a societal point of view.
  5. Ensure that drugs are given to those who will benefit, and not to those with little to gain.