Health Affairs December 22, 2025
Every few months a new analysis lands with the same headline: launch prices for new drugs outpace inflation. The latest reported that the median net launch price for 154 medicines rose 51 percent from 2022 to 2024, faster than list prices over the same period, and that many exceeded benchmarks set by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) for treatments such as CAR-T therapies and GLP-1 inhibitors. That sounds damning, but it largely answers the wrong question.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures inflation in the price of the same basket of goods over time. It is designed for stability, not novelty. Medical innovation, by contrast, introduces different baskets—capabilities that did not exist last year. When the goal...
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