Amid growing anxiety over a lack of antibiotics, a new report from a Congressional watchdog found that the Department of Health and Human Services lacks an overarching strategy for developing new incentives to manufacturers.
In particular, the Government Accountability Office argued that the HHS so far hasn’t agreed about the need to offer certain types of so-called pull incentives, which could be offered to companies to help cover manufacturing and marketing costs after antibiotics have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and reached the market.
These sorts of incentives are in contrast to more conventional mechanisms that the federal government typically offers manufacturers, notably upfront grants that are provided by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, an office within the HHS. Drug makers and advocacy groups, in fact, have been urging Congress to consider pull incentives for some time.
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