See-through pharma?
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
Pharma's approach to transparency is not always wholehearted. Its position on proposed revisions to the European Union's Transparency Directive, for instance, is in essence that drug pricing is a matter for bilateral discussions between industry and the reimbursement authorities in each country, and that the detailed outcomes of those discussions should not be shared across member states. That's a nice point of principle – the business even of public companies is private – but whether it is sustainable in a marketplace where cost and value are becoming more strongly linked is debatable.