Darius Lakdawalla, USC Mann professor of pharmaceutical economics and public policy, the Quintiles Chair in Pharmaceutical and Regulatory Innovation, and chief scientific officer at the Schaeffer Institute, testified on Wednesday, Dec. 10, before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in Washington, D.C. His testimony, before the Subcommittees on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs and Health Care and Financial Services, focused on accelerating medical breakthroughs for American patients.
His key points included:
- Rational and forward-thinking regulatory reforms can stimulate the uptake of new technologies that make good health more accessible and affordable.
- CMS has an opportunity to reform and focus Medicare’s coverage with evidence development (CED) program to better achieve its goals of generating evidence while ensuring new technologies are covered.
- Medicare Advantage can be transformed into a laboratory for forward-thinking reforms that stimulate valuable investments in prevention by aligning the interests of payers, innovators and patients, serving as a model for the commercial insurance market.
- Finally, there is opportunity for prudent regulatory reform in healthcare price transparency that best serves the needs of today’s patients and the generations of patients to come.
Read the full testimony here.