Dan Todd Highlights Policy Changes Community Oncologists Should Look Out For

Drug pricing is one area where there may be potential future policy changes that impact community oncologists, said Dan Todd, JD, principal at Todd Strategy.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What big policy issues and changes, other than the Affordable Care Act, should community oncologists keep an eye on?

I think drug pricing is still a really big issue, I don’t think it is necessarily going to go away, and I think that it’ll likely be impacted in several different avenues. One is with faster approvals at the FDA, which will certain impact practices. I think the focus on cost and some of those drivers, so things like the 340B program, that the administration has turned its attention to. So, to me the impact of drug pricing and its bleed effect on market consolidation will continue to be a big issue.

With so much bipartisan interest in drug pricing, do you expect to see any legislation in this area, and what might it look like?

I think that there will always be a focus on cost pressures. I think it’s a really complicated issue, particularly for Congress. There’s obviously a lot of politics around it and there’s a lot of support for innovation, generally, and reimbursement rates impact where investments are made and I think they’re aware of that.

I do think that particularly with some of the more novel drug launches, that are going to be happening, with some fairly high prices, the dialogue will continue. I don’t see necessarily an opportunity for broad fundamental changes. I think that healthcare has been a difficult issue for the Republicans in Congress and we’re very quickly running out of a legislating window so I think a lot is going to happen at the administration level.