The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the cost-effectiveness watchdog for health systems in England and Wales, is renowned for rejecting drugs it deems as poor value for the money, based on a well-known cost-effectiveness threshold. Many disagree with its approach, and with its threshold. But by and large pharmaceutical manufacturers know what they’re up against.
Most US payers have, for a variety of reasons, until recently resisted the health technology assessment (HTA) approach. Medicare can’t,...