Valuing Treatments to Prevent and Effectively Treat Alzheimer's Disease
HSS Investigators: Kouta Ito, Jerry Gurwitz
Funding Agency: National Institute on Aging
Status: Complete
Project Overview: No matter how desirable the availability of highly effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease may be, the American health care sector is ill prepared to face the challenge of assessing and paying for these future treatments. To date, policy analyses of the challenge of valuing highly-effective treatments for chronic conditions have focused mainly on developing new ways to pay for the anticipated extremely high prices of treatments that provide the possibility of a lifetime of benefit for rare and ultra-rare diseases. Few have considered novel therapies for conditions with applicability to the care of large numbers of older patients, such as those with Alzheimer’s disease. The question remains: how should a fair, value-based price be determined? Evaluating different approaches to calculating and presenting suggested value-based prices will be essential to providing policymakers, payers, health care organizations, and the academic and manufacturer communities with a platform that can reward innovation while supporting a sustainable U.S. health care system. Importantly, this information will ultimately have direct relevance to the care of those with Alzheimer’s disease, particularly in relation to access to effective therapies and shared clinical decision-making efforts among clinicians, patients, and their families. Read more about this research project here.