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# Go To ‘Value-Based’ Drug Pricing: Report
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/go-to-value-based-drug-pricing-report/
- Published: 2019-04-25T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T01:22:47.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5143951

Writing in the *Journal of the American Medical Association*, former FDA commissioner **Robert Califf** and former Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services acting administrator **Andrew Slavitt** [say](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2731151/?ref=fdaweb.com) the “most promising path toward a fair system” of prescription drug pricing is what they term value-based payments. They write that “encouraging a vibrant innovator biopharmaceutical ecosystem requires focusing rewards on useful innovation and reducing bloated distribution systems.” The two reject either large-scale drug importation, reducing administrative costs, and direct negotiation as the best single ways to reduce prices. They say such changes “can all improve affordability for some populations, but these remedies would still leave many U.S. residents without access to needed medications, while also failing to send a sufficiently clear signal for innovation.”

Califf and Slavitt say a drug’s price should be based on demonstrated risk-adjusted costs of development and actual measured value.

“Like all complex problems,” the authors conclude, “the solutions lie in a combination of policies and actions that can be continuously refined. Fortunately, the crisis in drug pricing is occurring at a time when a new evidence-generation system can realistically provide actual measurement of benefits and costs. When this system is combined with closing of loopholes, selective importation to deal with isolated monopolistic pricing, reform of bloated and opaque non-scientific costs, and direct negotiations, prices can be adjusted to broaden access to therapies while continuing to stimulate innovation and funding research and development in a competitive but sustainable manner.”