BOOK CLUB — The Right Price: A Value-Based Prescription for Drug Costs

For your summer reading. The Right Price: A Value-Based Prescription for Drug Costs offers the best explanation I’ve found of how drug costs are set, and how they should be. Using real-life patient stories, the authors give a balanced and comprehensive look at fair and reasonable pricing for a product that epitomizes market failure. The book leaves out the well-documented political, scandalous, and scientific breakthroughs to focus on value — finding prices high enough to encourage innovation but low enough to be accessible. The book includes the best description I’ve found of the US prescription drug market, the players, how other states operate, proposed solutions, how to measure value, the unique US political and lobbying environment, and how we can move forward.