Drug patent litigation settlements containing brand-to-generic "reverse payments" are a decades old antitrust concern that has been estimated to cost drug purchasers billions of dollars per year. Most estimates of the harm rely on the Federal Trade Commission's calculation that such payments...

The pharmaceutical market has experienced a massive wave of vertical integration between pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and health insurers in recent years. Using a unique dataset on insurer-PBM contracts, we document increasing vertical integration in Medicare Part D-vertically integrated...

In this survey chapter on pricing and reimbursement in U.S. pharmaceutical markets, we first provide background information on important federal legislation, institutional details regarding distribution channel logistics, definitions of alternative price measures, related historical...

We establish four facts concerning competition among U.S. generic drug suppliers, using IQVIA's National Sales Perspective™ 2004Q4 - 2016Q3 data. We define a unique product market ("molform"), consisting of the combination of a molecule active ingredient and a route of administration...

There is wide dispersion in pharmaceutical prices across countries with comparable quality standards. Under monopoly, off-patent and generic drug prices are at least four times higher in the United States than in comparable English-speaking high income countries. With five or more competitors,...

Since the 1984 passage of the Waxman-Hatch Act, generic prescription drugs have become central to disease treatment and generic drug entry and price competition has been vigorous in the U.S. Nonetheless, recent policy concern has focused on potential supply inadequacy and price increases among...

The fivefold increase in opioid deaths between 2000 and 2017 rivals even the COVID-19 pandemic as a health crisis for America. Why did it happen? Measures of demand for pain relief - physical pain and despair - are high but largely unchanging. The primary shift is in supply, primarily of new...

The introduction of Tagamet in the United States in 1977 represented both a revolution in ulcer therapy and the beginning of an important new industry. Today there are four prescription H2- antagonist drugs: Tagamet, Zantac, Pepcid and Axid, and they comprise a multi-billion dollar market for...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Prescription Drug Consumer Price Index (CPI-Rx) has been the focus of considerable controversy in recent years. The CPI-Rx limits its sampling frame to transactions in retail outpatient outlets, and excludes prescription pharmaceuticals dispensed in hospitals,...

We study the effect of price caps on the provision of costly effort by pharmaceutical firms using variation in drug discounts generated by a price regulation program that allows eligible hospitals to purchase outpatient drugs at steep discounts. These discounts directly affect drug...