Author: Timothy F. Donohue
Publisher: Parexel International Corporation
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309468086
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
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.

Author: Roy Levy
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428953639
Category : Antitrust law
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description

Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309069866
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The VA National Formulary generated controversy, which motivated congressional scrutiny and a directive to the VA to commission this report reviewing the experience with the National Formulary and formulary system. This Institute of Medicine committee was pleased to assist the Congress with this review, in part because the committee saw in the VHA example an opportunity to understand and anticipate problems that all publicly funded programs are likely to encounter in this new age of pharmaceuticals. The Congress asked the committee to review the restrictiveness of the National Formulary, its impact on the costs and quality of care in the VHA, and how it compared to formularies and drug management practices in the private sector and in other public programs, especially Medicaid. Detailed in the pages that follow, the committee's findings and conclusions on these questions are, the committee believes, highly instructive, though not always in the ways that we anticipated.

Author: Patrick M. Malone
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071492038
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 907

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Book Description
Extensive coverage of the Internet as a source of and distribution means for drug information, and detailed sections on evaluating medical literature from clinical trials Audience includes Pharmacists, Pharmacy students and Pharmacy schools Updated to include using PDAs for medication information Covers the ethical and legal aspects of drug information management Nothing else like it on the market

Author: United States. General Accounting Office
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drugs
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description

Author: Marcia Angell
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0375760946
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
During her two decades at The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell had a front-row seat on the appalling spectacle of the pharmaceutical industry. She watched drug companies stray from their original mission of discovering and manufacturing useful drugs and instead become vast marketing machines with unprecedented control over their own fortunes. She saw them gain nearly limitless influence over medical research, education, and how doctors do their jobs. She sympathized as the American public, particularly the elderly, struggled and increasingly failed to meet spiraling prescription drug prices. Now, in this bold, hard-hitting new book, Dr. Angell exposes the shocking truth of what the pharmaceutical industry has become–and argues for essential, long-overdue change. Currently Americans spend a staggering $200 billion each year on prescription drugs. As Dr. Angell powerfully demonstrates, claims that high drug prices are necessary to fund research and development are unfounded: The truth is that drug companies funnel the bulk of their resources into the marketing of products of dubious benefit. Meanwhile, as profits soar, the companies brazenly use their wealth and power to push their agenda through Congress, the FDA, and academic medical centers. Zeroing in on hugely successful drugs like AZT (the first drug to treat HIV/AIDS), Taxol (the best-selling cancer drug in history), and the blockbuster allergy drug Claritin, Dr. Angell demonstrates exactly how new products are brought to market. Drug companies, she shows, routinely rely on publicly funded institutions for their basic research; they rig clinical trials to make their products look better than they are; and they use their legions of lawyers to stretch out government-granted exclusive marketing rights for years. They also flood the market with copycat drugs that cost a lot more than the drugs they mimic but are no more effective. The American pharmaceutical industry needs to be saved, mainly from itself, and Dr. Angell proposes a program of vital reforms, which includes restoring impartiality to clinical research and severing the ties between drug companies and medical education. Written with fierce passion and substantiated with in-depth research, The Truth About the Drug Companies is a searing indictment of an industry that has spun out of control.

Author: Robin Feldman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108659500
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
In the warped world of prescription drug pricing, generic drugs can cost more than branded ones, old drugs can be relaunched at astronomical prices, and low-cost options are shut out of the market. In Drugs, Money and Secret Handshakes, Robin Feldman shines a light into the dark corners of the pharmaceutical industry to expose a web of shadowy deals in which higher-priced drugs receive favorable treatment and patients are channeled toward the most expensive medicines. At the center of this web are the highly secretive middle players who establish coverage levels for patients and negotiate with drug companies. By offering lucrative payments to these middle players (as well as to doctors and hospitals), drug companies ensure that inexpensive drugs never gain traction. This system of perverse incentives has delivered the kind of exorbitant drug prices - and profits - that everyone loves except for those who pay the bills.

Author: Milton M. Silverman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520309804
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
If national health insurance becomes a reality, what options should be considered for the coverage of prescription drugs? The authors—whose Pills, Profits, and Politics has had a dramatic effect on physicians, pharmacists, patients, and the drug industry as well as on federal and state legislators—insist that the major objective must be the best possible health care. But holding down costs to patients and taxpayers must also be a goal. To complicate matters further, the advantage of each likely option—including price controls, the use of formularies, drug utilization review, patient cost-sharing, and the use of low-cost, generic-name products—is offset by a disadvantage, even a danger. If drug prices are slashed too much, the industry will lose many of its incentives to develop better drugs for the future. Particular attention is focused on the so-called drug lag—the lengthy delays in licensing of new drugs, even after they have been used with apparently good results in other countries. Pills and the Public Purse also addresses the seldom-appreciated fact that investing tax dollars in needed drugs may save taxpayers in the long run by minimizing unnecessary physician visits and hospitalization. Pills and the Public Purse challenges Congress and such agencies as the Food and Drug Administration and the Health Care Financing Administration to enact policies that put the interests of the public before those of government, industry, physicians, and pharmacists. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

Author: Ethan N. Parvis
Publisher: Nova Publishers
ISBN: 9781590331996
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Politicians consistently wage high-profile battles over prescription drugs and the companies that make them. The dilemma is balancing the pharmaceutical industry's need to make a profit with the public's need for affordable medical care. This book presents analyses of the federal government's regulation of the drug industry and the arguments over the prices of prescription drugs.