Opinion: A consultant wrote the playbook on drug pricing — then distanced himself from it

STAT May 13, 2022
Billy Kenber

When Biogen announced the price for Aduhelm, its controversial Alzheimer’s drug, the explanation the company gave — it represented the “overall value this treatment brings to patients, caregivers and society” — came right out of Mick Kolassa’s playbook.

For many years, Kolassa was the man drug companies turned to when they wanted advice on how to price a drug.

While Biogen earlier this year had to take the unusual step of cutting the price of a new medication, halving the cost of Aduhelm in the U.S. market, there has been only one direction of travel for drug prices — up.

“It is theoretically possible to set a price that is too high,” Kolassa once wrote in a book on pharmaceutical...

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