BioCentury
ARTICLE | Politics, Policy & Law

When single-payer systems adopt innovation better than U.S. commercial payers

Guest Commentary: Single-payer systems can teach U.S. private payers a thing or two about innovation

February 12, 2020 10:23 PM UTC
Updated on Feb 15, 2020 at 12:47 AM UTC

It is a truth universally acknowledged, to borrow from Jane Austen, that a single-payer system will say “no” to new technology. If they accept it at all, they do so only when the prices are rock-bottom and the coverage restrictions draconian. But the truth is more nuanced, and calls into question the assumption that single-payer systems are innovation-phobic Scrooges, denying their country’s citizens new life-enhancing technologies available to Americans in the U.S.’s private-payer system.

The prime example of the base assumption is the U.K.’s NHS and NICE, its cost-effectiveness watchdog, turning away life-saving innovations the healthcare industry has spent billions to create and bring to patients. In January, for example, they declined to cover Vitrakvi larotrectinib, the “tumor-agnostic” NTRK inhibitor from Bayer AG (Xetra:BAYN), and more famously delayed coverage of Abraxane in pancreatic cancer for years...