Your biweekly update on health economics, policy, and impact
This Bulletin covers the future of drug development modelling, a new episode of A Dose of Economics on Most Favored Nation pricing and its implications, and a debate on valuing patient and carer time in HTA.
That’s your Bulletin summary, or read on for the full stories below.
Tim Watson, Marketing & Communications Director
The frameworks shaping health policy, and their blind spots
ISPOR 2026 is in full swing right now in the United States. Among the many debates taking place will be the suitability of the analytical frameworks shaping drug development, pricing, and value.
Our latest A Dose of Economics podcast takes on Most Favored Nation pricing — a policy that has moved faster than the evidence base informing it, with consequences for patients, pharma, and the global innovation ecosystem.
A new insight on valuing patient and carer time in HTA challenges the idea that a broader value framework could introduce inequity by favouring more productive individuals. The piece argues the opposite, that the exclusion of patient and carer time is creating inequity.
Are the frameworks guiding our decisions measuring the right things? It's a question that will echo through ISPOR this week, and is a challenge the field will be grappling with long after the closing session.
The limits of the CBO’s innovation model
Is the revised Congressional Budget Office model of new drug development fit for purpose?
The Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) revised simulation model aims to estimate how changes in pharmaceutical revenues could affect the development of future medicines. While the model has been updated in recent years, it still fails to reflect the complexity of modern biopharmaceutical investment, uncertainty, and portfolio-level decision-making.
Most Favored Nation pricing: what it means for policy, patients and pharma
What would happen if U.S. drug prices were tied to prices paid in other countries? This episode of ADose of Economics, OHE's new podcast, discusses the policy thinking behind Most Favored Nation (MFN) pricing and the potential implications for access to medicines, global pricing strategies, and future pharmaceutical innovation.
Valuing patient and carer time in HTA: equity and opportunity cost
Concerns have been raised that including patient and carer time in HTA could create inequities or shift focus away from health outcomes. This piece challenges that view, arguing that valuing time can improve fairness by avoiding hidden opportunity costs and ensuring that time-saving treatments are recognised within healthcare decision-making.
Mid-year health check: policy, pricing & what’s coming
Join us on 17 June for a mid-year webinar reviewing key policy developments so far in 2026 and what’s still to come, from MFN pricing and rare disease access, to the EU JCA update and the new NICE threshold era.
