March-In Guidance For Publicly Funded Drugs: A Necessary Safety Net For Patients

Americans pay twice as much per capita for their brand-name drugs as people in other wealthy countries, making medications less affordable as well as driving up the cost of health care and its funding through premiums and taxes. Yet our health outcomes are about average or a little worse than those of our peer nations. More than a quarter of patients report being unable to pay for the medicines we prescribe for them.

Even more frustrating, the breakthroughs that led to many medications, and the development of some key drugs from start to finish, were publicly funded by the federal National Institutes of Health through grants to scientists at universities and non-profit academic medical centers. For years, many...