How ICER Will Put Together Its 2020 Unsupported Price Increase List

The Institute of Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) announced changes in its methods for picking drugs for inclusion in its annual “unsupported price increase” report, a kind of rogue's gallery of pharmaceutical price hikes.

But in a press release ICER said the changes it is making will allow for manufacturers input and expand the type of studies it will consider. The 2020 report is scheduled to be published in January 2021, according to the press release.

The drugs on ICER’s unsupported price increase list last year were Humira (adalimumab, AbbVie), Lyrica (pregabalin, Pfizer), Truvada (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, Gilead), Rituxan (rituximab, Genentech), Neulasta (pegfilgrastim, Amgen), Cialsis (tadafil, Eli Lilly), and Tecfidera (dimethyl fumurate, Biogen). According to ICER’s calculations, the net price increases for those seven drugs were responsible for $4.8 billion in additional U.S. drug expenditures duringg 2017 and2018. Humira’s 15.9% price increase was, by ICER’s reckoning, responsible for $1.86 billion of that additional spending, or about 40% of the total.

Other changes that ICER is making this year including the pricing calculations to a year, rather than two, in order to match the annual timing of the report. It is also using the average price for a drug for the entire year rather than just the fourth quarter price.

Drug companies have been criticized for raising prices for existing drugs without any justification. ICER’s unsupported price increase report is an attempt to take a systematic look at price increases.

The process that ICER outlined in today's press release begins with identifyication of the top 100 drugs by net sales revenue in the U.S., administered in any setting. Then ICER researchers find drugs that have wholesale acquisition cost (WAC) price increases over twice the medical Consumer Price Index (CPI). They take the drugs in that group and arrive at a figures for net price. ICER then ranks drugs by the budget impact of net price increase over one year and puts together a top 10 list.

In the press release ICER said will it supplement that top 10 list with up to three additional drugs based on public input.