International reference pricing of pharmaceuticals in the United States: Implications for potentially curative treatments.

Recent federal drug price control proposals have included mechanisms to benchmark US prices to international prices. These international price referencing (IRP) proposals recommend that the US government develop an index based on prices paid by a group of higher-income countries and restrict US prices to a narrow range of the index. IRP is a policy tool used across the globe to control drug costs, particularly in markets in which health care resources are limited.