Download or read book Making Medicines Affordable written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Rare Diseases and Orphan Products written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-04-03 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rare diseases collectively affect millions of Americans of all ages, but developing drugs and medical devices to prevent, diagnose, and treat these conditions is challenging. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends implementing an integrated national strategy to promote rare diseases research and product development.
Download or read book Care Without Coverage written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2002-06-20 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Americans believe that people who lack health insurance somehow get the care they really need. Care Without Coverage examines the real consequences for adults who lack health insurance. The study presents findings in the areas of prevention and screening, cancer, chronic illness, hospital-based care, and general health status. The committee looked at the consequences of being uninsured for people suffering from cancer, diabetes, HIV infection and AIDS, heart and kidney disease, mental illness, traumatic injuries, and heart attacks. It focused on the roughly 30 million-one in seven-working-age Americans without health insurance. This group does not include the population over 65 that is covered by Medicare or the nearly 10 million children who are uninsured in this country. The main findings of the report are that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to receive too little medical care and receive it too late; be sicker and die sooner; and receive poorer care when they are in the hospital, even for acute situations like a motor vehicle crash.
Download or read book How Increased Competition from Generic Drugs Has Affected Prices and Returns in the Pharmaceutical Industry written by and published by U.S. Government Printing Office. This book was released on 1998 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book WHO guideline on country pharmaceutical pricing policies written by and published by World Health Organization. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, high prices of pharmaceutical products have posed challenges in high- and low-income countries alike. In many instances, high prices of pharmaceutical products have led to significant financial hardship for individuals and negatively impacted on healthcare systems' ability to provide population-wide access to essential medicines. Pharmaceutical pricing policies need to be carefully planned, carried out, and regularly checked and revised according to changing conditions. Strong, well-thought-out policies can guide well-informed and balanced decisions to achieve affordable access to essential health products. This guideline replaces the 2015 WHO guideline on country pharmaceutical pricing policies, revised to reflect the growing body of literature since the last evidence review in 2010. This update also recognizes country experiences in managing the prices of pharmaceutical products.
Download or read book Coverage and Cost of Medicaments written by Pierre Deloménie and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The 800 Million Pill written by Merrill Goozner and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-10-10 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Goozner shows how drug innovation is driven by dedicated scientists intent on finding cures for diseases, not by pharmaceutical firms, whose bottom line often takes precedence over the advance of medicine. Stories of a university biochemist who spent twenty years searching for single blood protein that later became the best-selling biotech drug in the world, a government employee who discovered the causes for dozens of crippling genetic disorders, and the Department of Energy-funded research that made the Human Genome Project possible - these accounts illustrate how medical breakthroughs actually take place.".
Download or read book Pharmaceutical R D written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1993 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Saving Lives Buying Time written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2004-09-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than 50 years, low-cost antimalarial drugs silently saved millions of lives and cured billions of debilitating infections. Today, however, these drugs no longer work against the deadliest form of malaria that exists throughout the world. Malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africaâ€"currently just over one million per yearâ€"are rising because of increased resistance to the old, inexpensive drugs. Although effective new drugs called "artemisinins" are available, they are unaffordable for the majority of the affected population, even at a cost of one dollar per course. Saving Lives, Buying Time: Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance examines the history of malaria treatments, provides an overview of the current drug crisis, and offers recommendations on maximizing access to and effectiveness of antimalarial drugs. The book finds that most people in endemic countries will not have access to currently effective combination treatments, which should include an artemisinin, without financing from the global community. Without funding for effective treatment, malaria mortality could double over the next 10 to 20 years and transmission will intensify.
Download or read book Greater Access to Generic Drugs written by Michelle Meadows and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Save Lives written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-06-16 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The opioid crisis in the United States has come about because of excessive use of these drugs for both legal and illicit purposes and unprecedented levels of consequent opioid use disorder (OUD). More than 2 million people in the United States are estimated to have OUD, which is caused by prolonged use of prescription opioids, heroin, or other illicit opioids. OUD is a life-threatening condition associated with a 20-fold greater risk of early death due to overdose, infectious diseases, trauma, and suicide. Mortality related to OUD continues to escalate as this public health crisis gathers momentum across the country, with opioid overdoses killing more than 47,000 people in 2017 in the United States. Efforts to date have made no real headway in stemming this crisis, in large part because tools that already existâ€"like evidence-based medicationsâ€"are not being deployed to maximum impact. To support the dissemination of accurate patient-focused information about treatments for addiction, and to help provide scientific solutions to the current opioid crisis, this report studies the evidence base on medication assisted treatment (MAT) for OUD. It examines available evidence on the range of parameters and circumstances in which MAT can be effectively delivered and identifies additional research needed.
Download or read book Sick to Debt written by Peter A. Ubel and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An informed argument for reworking the broken market†‘based U.S. healthcare system by making cost and quality more transparent The United States has the most expensive healthcare system in the world. While policy makers have argued over who is at fault for this, the system has been quietly moving toward high†‘deductible insurance plans that require patients to pay large amounts out of pocket before insurance kicks in. The idea behind this shift is that patients will become better consumers of healthcare when forced to pay for their medical expenses. Laying bare the perils of the current situation, Peter A. Ubel—a physician and behavioral scientist—notes that even when patients have time to shop around, healthcare costs remain largely opaque, difficult to access, and hard to compare. Arguing for a middle path between a market†‘based and a completely free system, Ubel envisions more transparent, smarter healthcare plans that tie the prices of treatments to the value they provide so that people can afford to receive the care they deserve.
Download or read book MDS 3 written by Martha A. Embrey and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Managing Drug Supply (MDS) is the leading reference on how to manage essential medicines in developing countries. MDS was originally published in 1982; it was revised in 1997 with over 10,000 copies distributed in over 60 countries worldwide. The third edition, MDS-3: Managing Access to Medicines and Health Technologies reflects the dramatic changes in politics and public health priorities, advances in science and medicine, greater focus on health care systems, increased donor funding, and the advent of information technology that have profoundly affected access to essential medicines over the past 14 years. Nearly 100 experts from a wide range of disciplines and virtually every corner of the world have contributed to this third edition. In addition to many new country studies, references, and extensive revisions, MDS-3 offers new chapters on areas such as pharmaceutical benefits in insurance programs, pricing, intellectual property, drug seller initiatives, and traditional and complementary medicine. The revisions and new chapters echo the wide variety of issues that are important to health practitioners and policy makers today. MDS-3 will be a valuable tool in the effort to ensure universal access to quality medicines and health technologies and their appropriate use.
Download or read book Cancer and Society written by Eric H. Bernicker and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While a number of books have looked at the intersection between human health in general and other topics, such as climate change or diet, this book focuses specifically on cancer as it impacts and is impacted by social justice issues. The massive explosion of research knowledge of cancer immunology and genomics is holding out great promise of therapeutic advances, yet other human actions—climate change, pollution, business decisions, advertising – are fostering health inequalities as well as increasing risks. Those involved in cancer care and research are in a unique position to let their experiences and knowledge inform the public, yet very often have not taken strong public roles when it comes to discussing issues surrounding tobacco, climate change and health risks, financial toxicity of treatments, and diet choices. Written by a multidisciplinary team of authors and for medical oncologists, cancer researchers, occupational health workers, and related medical students, residents, and fellows, this book encourages oncologists to address public health care and the societal issues associated with cancer risk. This volume discusses the overarching theme of environmental justice and oncology, focuses on business and cancer (such as clinical trials, drug development and profits, and global disparities), as well as animals and cancer.
Download or read book Powerful Medicines written by Jerry Avorn, M.D. and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you believe that the latest blockbuster medication is worth a premium price over your generic brand, or that doctors have access to all the information they need about a drug’s safety and effectiveness each time they write a prescription, Dr. Jerry Avorn has some sobering news. Drawing on more than twenty-five years of patient care, teaching, and research at Harvard Medical School, he shares his firsthand experience of the wide gap in our knowledge of the effectiveness of one medication as compared to another. In Powerful Medicines, he reminds us that every pill we take represents a delicate compromise between the promise of healing, the risk of side effects, and an increasingly daunting price. The stakes on each front grow higher every year as new drugs with impressive power, worrisome side effects, and troubling costs are introduced. This is a comprehensive behind-the-scenes look at issues that affect everyone: our shortage of data comparing the worth of similar drugs for the same condition; alarming lapses in the detection of lethal side effects; the underuse of life-saving medications; lavish marketing campaigns that influence what doctors prescribe; and the resulting upward spiral of costs that places vital drugs beyond the reach of many Americans. In this engagingly written book, Dr. Avorn asks questions that will interest every consumer: How can a product judged safe by the Food and Drug Administration turn out to have unexpectedly lethal side effects? Why has the nation’s drug bill been growing at nearly 20 percent per year? How can physicians and patients pick the best medication in its class? How do doctors actually make their prescribing decisions, and why do those decisions sometimes go wrong? Why do so many Americans suffer preventable illnesses and deaths that proper drug use could have averted? How can the nation gain control over its escalating drug budget without resorting to rationing or draconian governmental controls? Using clinical case histories taken from his own work as a practitioner, researcher, and advocate, Dr. Avorn demonstrates the impressive power of the well-conceived prescription as well as the debacles that can result when medications are misused. He describes an innovative program that employs the pharmaceutical industry’s own marketing techniques to reduce use of some of the most overprescribed and overpriced products. Powerful Medicines offers timely and practical advice on how the nation can improve its drug-approval process, and how patients can work with doctors to make sure their prescriptions are safe, effective, and as affordable as possible. This is a passionate and provocative call for action as well as a compelling work of clear-headed science.
Download or read book Nightwork written by Nora Roberts and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts introduces an unforgettable thief in an unputdownable new novel... Greed. Desire. Obsession. Revenge . . . It’s all in a night’s work. Harry Booth started stealing at nine to keep a roof over his ailing mother’s head, slipping into luxurious, empty homes at night to find items he could trade for precious cash. When his mother finally succumbed to cancer, he left Chicago—but kept up his nightwork, developing into a master thief with a code of honor and an expertise in not attracting attention—or getting attached. Until he meets Miranda Emerson, and the powerful bond between them upends all his rules. But along the way, Booth has made some dangerous associations, including the ruthless Carter LaPorte, who sees Booth as a tool he controls for his own profit. Knowing LaPorte will leverage any personal connection, Booth abandons Miranda for her own safety—cruelly, with no explanation—and disappears. But the bond between Miranda and Booth is too strong, pulling them inexorably back together. Now Booth must face LaPorte, to truly free himself and Miranda once and for all.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of the Biopharmaceutical Industry written by Patricia M. Danzon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The biopharmaceutical industry has been a major driver of technological change in health care, producing unprecedented benefits for patients, cost challenges for payers, and profits for shareholders. As consumers and companies benefit from access to new drugs, policymakers around the globe seek mechanisms to control prices and expenditures commensurate with value. More recently the 1990s productivity boom of new products has turned into a productivity bust, with fewer and more modest innovations, and flat or declining revenues for innovative firms as generics replace their former blockbuster products. This timely volume examines the economics of the biopharmaceutical industry, with eighteen chapters by leading academic health economists. Part one examines the economics of biopharmaceutical innovation including determinants of the costs and returns to new drug development; how capital markets finance R&D and how costs of financing the biopharmaceutical industry compare to financing costs for other industries; the effects of safety and efficacy regulation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and of price and reimbursement regulation on incentives for innovation; and the role of patents and regulatory exclusivities. Part two examines the market for biopharmaceuticals with chapters on prices and reimbursement in the US, the EU, and other industrialized countries, and in developing countries. It looks at the optimal design of insurance for drugs and the effects of cost sharing on spending and on health outcomes; how to measure the value of pharmaceuticals using pharmacoeconomics, including theory, practical challenges, and policy issues; how to measure pharmaceutical price growth over time and recent evidence; empirical evidence on the value of pharmaceuticals in terms of health outcomes; promotion of pharmaceuticals to physicians and consumers; the economics of vaccines; and a review of the evidence on effects of mergers, acquisitions and alliances. Each chapter summarizes the latest insights from theory and recent empirical evidence, and outlines important unanswered questions and areas for future research. Based on solid economics, it is nevertheless written in terms accessible to the general reader. The book is thus recommended reading for academic economists and non-economists, and for those in industry and policy who wish to understand the economics of this fascinating industry.
