Making Medicines Affordable

Making Medicines Affordable

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2018-03-01

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 0309468086

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Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.


The Changing Economics of Medical Technology

The Changing Economics of Medical Technology

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1991-02-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 030904491X

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Americans praise medical technology for saving lives and improving health. Yet, new technology is often cited as a key factor in skyrocketing medical costs. This volume, second in the Medical Innovation at the Crossroads series, examines how economic incentives for innovation are changing and what that means for the future of health care. Up-to-date with a wide variety of examples and case studies, this book explores how payment, patent, and regulatory policiesâ€"as well as the involvement of numerous government agenciesâ€"affect the introduction and use of new pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and surgical procedures. The volume also includes detailed comparisons of policies and patterns of technological innovation in Western Europe and Japan. This fact-filled and practical book will be of interest to economists, policymakers, health administrators, health care practitioners, and the concerned public.


Research and Development in the Pharmaceutical Industry (A CBO Study)

Research and Development in the Pharmaceutical Industry (A CBO Study)

Author: Congressional Budget Office

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2013-06-09

Total Pages: 65

ISBN-13: 1304121445

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Perceptions that the pace of new-drug development has slowed and that the pharmaceutical industry is highly profitable have sparked concerns that significant problems loom for future drug development. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study-prepared at the request of the Senate Majority Leader-reviews basic facts about the drug industry's recent spending on research and development (R&D) and its output of new drugs. The study also examines issues relating to the costs of R&D, the federal government's role in pharmaceutical research, the performance of the pharmaceutical industry in developing innovative drugs, and the role of expected profits in private firms' decisions about investing in drug R&D. In keeping with CBO's mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, the study makes no recommendations. David H. Austin prepared this report under the supervision of Joseph Kile and David Moore. Colin Baker provided valuable consultation...


Pharmaceutical R&D

Pharmaceutical R&D

Author:

Publisher: DIANE Publishing

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780788104688

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Analyzes the costs, risks, and economic rewards of pharmaceutical R&D and the impact of public policy on both costs and returns. Examines the rapid increase in pharmaceutical R&D that began in the 1980s in the light of trends in science, technology, drug discovery, and health insurance coverage; Government regulation; product liability; market competition; Federal tax policy; and Federal support of prescription drug research. 12 appendices, including a glossary of terms.


The Role of NIH in Drug Development Innovation and Its Impact on Patient Access

The Role of NIH in Drug Development Innovation and Its Impact on Patient Access

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2020-01-27

Total Pages: 103

ISBN-13: 0309498511

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To explore the role of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in innovative drug development and its impact on patient access, the Board on Health Care Services and the Board on Health Sciences Policy of the National Academies jointly hosted a public workshop on July 24â€"25, 2019, in Washington, DC. Workshop speakers and participants discussed the ways in which federal investments in biomedical research are translated into innovative therapies and considered approaches to ensure that the public has affordable access to the resulting new drugs. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.


Bottle of Lies

Bottle of Lies

Author: Katherine Eban

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2020-06-23

Total Pages: 523

ISBN-13: 0063054108

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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * New York Times Notable Book * Best Book of the Year: New York Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Science Friday With a new postscript by the author From an award-winning journalist, an explosive narrative investigation of the generic drug boom that reveals fraud and life-threatening dangers on a global scale—The Jungle for pharmaceuticals Many have hailed the widespread use of generic drugs as one of the most important public-health developments of the twenty-first century. Today, almost 90 percent of our pharmaceutical market is comprised of generics, the majority of which are manufactured overseas. We have been reassured by our doctors, our pharmacists and our regulators that generic drugs are identical to their brand-name counterparts, just less expensive. But is this really true? Katherine Eban’s Bottle of Lies exposes the deceit behind generic-drug manufacturing—and the attendant risks for global health. Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistleblowers and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies routinely falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit, confident in their ability to fool inspectors. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume medicine with unpredictable and dangerous effects. The story of generic drugs is truly global. It connects middle America to China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, and represents the ultimate litmus test of globalization: what are the risks of moving drug manufacturing offshore, and are they worth the savings? A decade-long investigation with international sweep, high-stakes brinkmanship and big money at its core, Bottle of Lies reveals how the world’s greatest public-health innovation has become one of its most astonishing swindles.


Economic Dimensions of Personalized and Precision Medicine

Economic Dimensions of Personalized and Precision Medicine

Author: Ernst R. Berndt

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2019-04-22

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 022661106X

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Personalized and precision medicine (PPM)—the targeting of therapies according to an individual’s genetic, environmental, or lifestyle characteristics—is becoming an increasingly important approach in health care treatment and prevention. The advancement of PPM is a challenge in traditional clinical, reimbursement, and regulatory landscapes because it is costly to develop and introduces a wide range of scientific, clinical, ethical, and socioeconomic issues. PPM raises a multitude of economic issues, including how information on accurate diagnosis and treatment success will be disseminated and who will bear the cost; changes to physician training to incorporate genetics, probability and statistics, and economic considerations; questions about whether the benefits of PPM will be confined to developed countries or will diffuse to emerging economies with less developed health care systems; the effects of patient heterogeneity on cost-effectiveness analysis; and opportunities for PPM’s growth beyond treatment of acute illness, such as prevention and reversal of chronic conditions. This volume explores the intersection of the scientific, clinical, and economic factors affecting the development of PPM, including its effects on the drug pipeline, on reimbursement of PPM diagnostics and treatments, and on funding of the requisite underlying research; and it examines recent empirical applications of PPM.


Competition and the Cost of Medicare's Prescription Drug Program

Competition and the Cost of Medicare's Prescription Drug Program

Author: Anna Cook

Publisher:

Published: 2014-09-03

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13: 9781457856631

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The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (the Medicare Modernization Act, or MMA) substantially expanded the federal Medicare program by creating the prescription drug benefit known as Part D. In FY 2013, Medicare Part D covered 39 million people. The federal government spent $59 billion net of premiums on Part D in that year; after accounting for certain payments from states under the program, the net federal cost was $50 billion, which represented 10% of net federal spending for Medicare. A combination of broader trends in the prescription drug market and lower-than-expected enrollment in Part D has contributed to much lower spending for the program than projected when the MMA became law in 2003. This report examines the federal budgetary cost and competitive design of Medicare Part D and compares Medicare Part D and Medicaid Fee for Service. Figures and tables. This is a print on demand report.