Here's the key phrase in John Arnold's article on how to make PBMs great again: "The Laura and John Arnold Foundation has supported the development of value-based pricing through the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, which can be used by pharmacy benefit managers to select drugs that maximize patient value rather than the size of the rebate. CVS recently announced it would use ICER pricing in establishing its formulary."
Translation: Let a handful of experts decide for millions of Americans about patient access by setting prices based on some abstract estimate of human worth and then enforcing those prices by excluding drugs, step therapy, prior authorization, clinical pathways and cost sharing (albeit at net prices).
Arnold and his foundation cast his effort as an effort to use the best scientific evidence developed by the most expert experts to achieve the greatest good in an era of scarce resources. Indeed, his investment is part of a long tradition of wealthy individuals funding as Thomas Leonard wrote in "Illiberal Reformers", "scientific experts (who) should be in society’s saddle, determining the “human hierarchy” and appropriate social policies." Indeed, Arnold's entire philanthropic program is based on the belief that a better future would derive from the beneficent activities of expert social engineers (armed with evidence from randomized clinical trials) who would bring to the service of social ideals all the technical resources which research could discover and ingenuity could devise.”
At that time, the progressive solution was eugenics. And in addition to making the case for experts making decisions about selective breeding and whether or not to spend money on helping the sickest based on randomized controlled trial data.
And here is the statement of Margaret Sanger, a eugenics proponent:
"Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed child, every congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of infinite importance to that poor individual; but it is of scarcely less importance to the rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in one way or another for these biological and racial mistakes."
Here's the Steve Pearson, the President of ICER:
“The opportunity cost of supporting the use of ultra-orphan drugs necessitates that patients with a more common disease, for which a cost-effective treatment is available, are denied treatment.” To reduce that cost we must restrain “society’s desire to help those weakest among us, especially when their small numbers allow us to see them as unique individuals.” In that way, we can “ensure that an undue burden is not placed on others for the sake of a few.”
ICER is part of an enduring feature of progressivism in its prior and current incarnations. As Leonard points out, "this last Progressive belief—that modern conditions of industrial capitalism no longer permitted a quaint liberal individualism, but demanded wise government by expert elites— is what we can call technocratic paternalism. The idea is that benignly motivated experts should interpose themselves, in the name of the greater good, to better represent the interests of the industrial poor, for whom many reformers felt contempt as much as pity. "
ICER’s assault on people with rare diseases is rooted in such technocratic paternalism. As Leonard noted: "Progressives believed that modern conditions required the state to assume control of human reproduction."
Today, as articulated and calculated by ICER, they require expert elites to assume control of the human condition. And instead of eugenics, ICER and John Arnold want to turn an evidence-based approach to Munchausen syndrome by proxy to control drug costs.
History is scarred with the accounts of societies and governments that deployed the solutions of expert technologists to empower to apply their wisdom to improve humankind. We know better and have chosen better. Civilization is enriched when people who are marginalized – or have been eliminated -- because of their medical condition are freed from despair.
Translation: Let a handful of experts decide for millions of Americans about patient access by setting prices based on some abstract estimate of human worth and then enforcing those prices by excluding drugs, step therapy, prior authorization, clinical pathways and cost sharing (albeit at net prices).
Arnold and his foundation cast his effort as an effort to use the best scientific evidence developed by the most expert experts to achieve the greatest good in an era of scarce resources. Indeed, his investment is part of a long tradition of wealthy individuals funding as Thomas Leonard wrote in "Illiberal Reformers", "scientific experts (who) should be in society’s saddle, determining the “human hierarchy” and appropriate social policies." Indeed, Arnold's entire philanthropic program is based on the belief that a better future would derive from the beneficent activities of expert social engineers (armed with evidence from randomized clinical trials) who would bring to the service of social ideals all the technical resources which research could discover and ingenuity could devise.”
At that time, the progressive solution was eugenics. And in addition to making the case for experts making decisions about selective breeding and whether or not to spend money on helping the sickest based on randomized controlled trial data.
And here is the statement of Margaret Sanger, a eugenics proponent:
"Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed child, every congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of infinite importance to that poor individual; but it is of scarcely less importance to the rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in one way or another for these biological and racial mistakes."
Here's the Steve Pearson, the President of ICER:
“The opportunity cost of supporting the use of ultra-orphan drugs necessitates that patients with a more common disease, for which a cost-effective treatment is available, are denied treatment.” To reduce that cost we must restrain “society’s desire to help those weakest among us, especially when their small numbers allow us to see them as unique individuals.” In that way, we can “ensure that an undue burden is not placed on others for the sake of a few.”
ICER is part of an enduring feature of progressivism in its prior and current incarnations. As Leonard points out, "this last Progressive belief—that modern conditions of industrial capitalism no longer permitted a quaint liberal individualism, but demanded wise government by expert elites— is what we can call technocratic paternalism. The idea is that benignly motivated experts should interpose themselves, in the name of the greater good, to better represent the interests of the industrial poor, for whom many reformers felt contempt as much as pity. "
ICER’s assault on people with rare diseases is rooted in such technocratic paternalism. As Leonard noted: "Progressives believed that modern conditions required the state to assume control of human reproduction."
Today, as articulated and calculated by ICER, they require expert elites to assume control of the human condition. And instead of eugenics, ICER and John Arnold want to turn an evidence-based approach to Munchausen syndrome by proxy to control drug costs.
History is scarred with the accounts of societies and governments that deployed the solutions of expert technologists to empower to apply their wisdom to improve humankind. We know better and have chosen better. Civilization is enriched when people who are marginalized – or have been eliminated -- because of their medical condition are freed from despair.
