Tom Coburn: Making medicine affordable is simple

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recently released a sweeping report, “Making Medicines Affordable: A National Imperative,” adding a new perspective to our national conversation about drug prices. Unfortunately, the recommendations made by this report fail to solve the drug pricing problem because they do not go far enough in addressing the lack of transparency and competition in the biopharmaceutical space.

In my mind, the solution is simple: Reintroduce true markets to pharmaceuticals, and many of the pricing and access problems will diminish significantly. This will not require any difficult maneuvering. We simply need to allow market forces to work as they do in the rest of our economy.