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 Drugs and Money written by Robert E. Grosse and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2001-03-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Money laundering has been around as long as there have been illicit businesses, since criminals have always had to convert their ill-gotten gains into clean financial instruments in order to utilize them in legitimate business. Grosse explores how drug traffickers turn profits from street sales of cocaine and crack into bank accounts, airplanes, securities investments, and other uses. These schemes are both creative and extensive, from shipping suitcases of dollars to Mexico, to buying gold with drug cash in California, to faking the export of clothing from Colombia to Panama. The amounts of money involved are often staggering--hundreds of millions of dollars in most cases. Grosse also considers some of the issues raised by money laundering. He offers advice to banks and other financial institutions that hope to avoid becoming involved in a money laundering process. He examines the social costs and benefits of money laundering, in particular the charge that the rapid development of Miami in the 1980s was due directly to the hundreds of millions of cocaine dollars invested in real estate and businesses by the cocaine cowboys. Increasing law enforcement has, in Grosse's opinion, only resulted in more clever laundering schemes, and recent discussion about legalizing narcotics will prove even more costly for the United States.

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 Drug Wars written by Robin Feldman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the shockingly high prices of prescription drugs continue to dominate the news, the strategies used by pharmaceutical companies to prevent generic competition are poorly understood, even by the lawmakers responsible for regulating them. In this groundbreaking work, Robin Feldman and Evan Frondorf illuminate the inner workings of the pharmaceutical market and show how drug companies twist health policy to achieve goals contrary to the public interest. In highly engaging prose, they offer specific examples of how generic competition has been stifled for years, with costs climbing into the billions and everyday consumers paying the price. Drug Wars is a guide to the current landscape, a roadmap for reform, and a warning of what is to come. It should be read by policymakers, academics, patients, and anyone else concerned with the soaring costs of prescription drugs.

Download or read book Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs written by Thomas C Rowe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We’re losing the “war on drugs”—but the fight isn’t over yet Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs examines our current anti-drug programs and policies, explains why they have failed, and presents a plan to fix them. Author Thomas C. Rowe, who has been educating college students on recreational drug use for nearly 30 years, exposes the truth about anti-drug programs he believes were conceived in ignorance of the drugs themselves and motivated by racial/cultural bias. This powerful book advocates a shift in federal spending to move funds away from the failed elements of the “war on drugs” toward policies with a more realistic chance to succeed—the drug courts, education, and effective treatment. Common myths and misconceptions about drugs have produced anti-drug programs that don’t work, won’t work, and waste millions of dollars. Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs looks at how—and why—this has happened and what can be done to correct it. The book is divided into “How did we get into this mess?” which details the history of anti-narcotic legislation, how drug agencies evolved, and the role played by Harry Anslinger, Commissioner of the United States Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962; “What works and what doesn’t work,” which looks at the failure of interdiction efforts and the negative consequences that have resulted with a particular focus on the problems of prisons balanced against the drug court system; and a third section that serves as an overview of various recreational drugs, considers arguments for and against drug legalization, and offers suggestions for more effective methods than our current system allows. Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs also examines: the creation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics current regulations and structures current federal sentencing guidelines current state of the courts and the prison system mandatory sentencing and what judges think interdiction for heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine, and marijuana early education efforts the DARE program drug use trends drug treatment models the debate over legalization Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs also includes several appendices of federal budget figures, cocaine and heroin purity and price, and federal bureau of prisons statistics. This unique book is required reading for anyone concerned about the drug problem in the United States and what is—and isn’t—being done to correct it.

Download or read book Down by the River written by Charles Bowden and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-05-16 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lionel Bruno Jordan was murdered on January 20, 1995, in an El Paso parking lot, but he keeps coming back as the key to a multibillion-dollar drug industry, two corrupt governments -- one called the United States and the other Mexico -- and a self-styled War on Drugs that is a fraud. Beneath all the policy statements and bluster of politicians is a real world of lies, pain, and big money. Down by the River is the true narrative of how a murder led one American family into this world and how it all but destroyed them. It is the story of how one Mexican drug leader outfought and outthought the U.S. government, of how major financial institutions were fattened on the drug industry, and how the governments of the U.S. and Mexico buried everything that happened. All this happens down by the river, where the public fictions finally end and the facts read like fiction. This is a remarkable American story about drugs, money, murder, and family.

Download or read book Drug Politics written by David C. Jordan and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drug Politics is an enlightening new book by a man who knows this disturbing and dangerous subject. A former United States ambassador to Peru, David C. Jordan has testified before the U.S. Senate and House Foreign Relations committees and has consulted with various government security organizations. His account of government protection of the criminal elements intertwined with local and global politics challenges many of the assumptions of current drug policies. Using examples from South America, Mexico, Russia, and the United States, Jordan shows that the narcotics problem is not merely one of supply and demand. Jordan argues that many national and international financial systems are dependent on cash from money laundering, and some governments are far more involved in protecting than in combating criminal cartels.

Download or read book The Billion Dollar Molecule written by Barry Werth and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Join journalist Barry Werth as he pulls back the curtain on Vertex, a start-up pharmaceutical company, and witness firsthand the intense drama being played out in the pioneering and hugely profitable field of drug research. Founded by Joshua Boger, a dynamic Harvard- and Merck-trained scientific whiz kid, Vertex is dedicated to designing—atom by atom—both a new life-saving immunosuppressant drug, and a drug to combat the virus that causes AIDS. You will be hooked from start to finish, as you go from the labs, where obsessive, fiercely competitive scientists struggle for a breakthrough, to Wall Street, where the wheeling and dealing takes on a life of its own, as Boger courts investors and finally decides to take Vertex public. Here is a fascinating no-holds-barred account of the business of science, which includes an updated epilogue about the most recent developments in the quest for a drug to cure AIDS.

Download or read book Why Do Drugs Cost So Much written by Joe and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2008-06 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caution! Reading this book in it's entirety may cause the following side effects: Surprise, Anger, Disbelief, and even Amusement. We begin by revealing the little known, inside workings of the pharmaceutical industry, based on the experiences of people who have worked there. Why do you think it is that your drugs cost so much? Is it because of all the high tech 'stuff' that goes into making it? Or is it something else that might shock or even anger you? What goes on behind the scenes often has nothing whatsoever to do with science. This leads to the second part which has to do with our health and the things you may not even realize are making us all sick. This is not just another 'eat right and exercise' book. You will discover information you have never heard before. There are even things that have been proven to harm you but have been covered up or ignored, and even encouraged, as long as there is money to be made. Do you like investigative reporting? Do you like history, or science fiction? Do you have a taste for the macabre? Are you concerned about declining health care, government and military cover ups, or the high cost of medicine? Written with some humor and at times a touch of sarcasm, there is a little bit of something here for everyone. You may or may not agree with some of the things in this book, but once you start reading it, your curiosity will make you want to pick it up again and again until you are finished.

Download or read book The Role of NIH in Drug Development Innovation and Its Impact on Patient Access written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2020-01-27 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Drugs and Money written by Michael Levi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-15 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phenomenon of psycho-active drugs, and our reactions to them, is one of the most fascinating topics of the social history of mankind. Starting with an analysis of the 'policy of fear' in which law enforcement is 'haunted' by drug money, Drugs and Money offers a radical reconsideration of this highly contentious issue. In this intriguing book, Petrus C. van Duyne and Michael Levi expose an ever-unfolding series of problems: the proliferation of mind-influencing substances the complications of international drug regulation the interaction between markets and economic actors, with the consequent amassing of huge amounts of crime-money. The social, cultural and economic aspects of this crime-money are explored, alongside the ongoing threat it poses to the legitimate economy and the state.

Download or read book The War on Drugs written by David Farber and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing look at the history and legacy of the "War on Drugs" Fifty years after President Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs," the United States government has spent over a trillion dollars fighting a losing battle. In recent years, about 1.5 million people have been arrested annually on drug charges—most of them involving cannabis—and nearly 500,000 Americans are currently incarcerated for drug offenses. Today, as a response to the dire human and financial costs, Americans are fast losing their faith that a War on Drugs is fair, moral, or effective. In a rare multi-faceted overview of the underground drug market, featuring historical and ethnographic accounts of illegal drug production, distribution, and sales, The War on Drugs: A History examines how drug war policies contributed to the making of the carceral state, racial injustice, regulatory disasters, and a massive underground economy. At the same time, the collection explores how aggressive anti-drug policies produced a “deviant” form of globalization that offered economically marginalized people an economic life-line as players in a remunerative transnational supply and distribution network of illicit drugs. While several essays demonstrate how government enforcement of drug laws disproportionately punished marginalized suppliers and users, other essays assess how anti-drug warriors denigrated science and medical expertise by encouraging moral panics that contributed to the blanket criminalization of certain drugs. By analyzing the key issues, debates, events, and actors surrounding the War on Drugs, this timely and impressive volume provides a deeper understanding of the role these policies have played in making our current political landscape and how we can find the way forward to a more just and humane drug policy regime.

Download or read book Narconomics written by Tom Wainwright and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2016-02-23 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, Colorado pot shops, and the online drug dens of the Dark Web, Tom Wainwright provides a fresh, innovative look into the drug trade and its 250 million customers. More than just an investigation of how drug cartels do business, Narconomics is also a blueprint for how to defeat them. How does a budding cartel boss succeed (and survive) in the 300 billion illegal drug business? By learning from the best, of course. From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola. And what can government learn to combat this scourge? By analyzing the cartels as companies, law enforcers might better understand how they work -- and stop throwing away 100 billion a year in a futile effort to win the "war" against this global, highly organized business. Your intrepid guide to the most exotic and brutal industry on earth is Tom Wainwright. Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, Colorado pot shops, and the online drug dens of the Dark Web, Wainwright provides a fresh, innovative look into the drug trade and its 250 million customers. The cast of characters includes "Bin Laden," the Bolivian coca guide; Old Lin," the Salvadoran gang leader; "Starboy," the millionaire New Zealand pill maker; and a cozy Mexican grandmother who cooks blueberry pancakes while plotting murder. Along with presidents, cops, and teenage hitmen, they explain such matters as the business purpose for head-to-toe tattoos, how gangs decide whether to compete or collude, and why cartels care a surprising amount about corporate social responsibility. More than just an investigation of how drug cartels do business, Narconomics is also a blueprint for how to defeat them.

Download or read book The Truth About the Drug Companies written by Marcia Angell and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2005-08-09 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Drug War Politics written by Eva Bertram and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1996-07-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have our drug wars failed and how might we turn things around? Ask the authors of this hardhitting exposè of U.S. efforts to fight drug trafficking and abuse. In a bold analysis of a century's worth of policy failure, Drug War Politics turns on its head many familiar bromides about drug politics. It demonstrates how, instead of learning from our failures, we duplicate and reinforce them in the same flawed policies. The authors examine the "politics of denial" that has led to this catastrophic predicament and propose a basis for a realistic and desperately needed solution. Domestic and foreign drug wars have consistently fallen short because they are based on a flawed model of force and punishment, the authors show. The failure of these misguided solutions has led to harsher get-tough policies, debilitating cycles of more force and punishment, and a drug problem that continues to escalate. On the foreign policy front, billions of dollars have been wasted, corruption has mushroomed, and human rights undermined in Latin America and across the globe. Yet cheap drugs still flow abundantly across our borders. At home, more money than ever is spent on law enforcement, and an unprecedented number of people—disproportionately minorities—are incarcerated. But drug abuse and addiction persist. The authors outline the political struggles that help create and sustain the current punitive approach. They probe the workings of Washington politics, demonstrating how presidential and congressional "out-toughing" tactics create a logic of escalation while the criticisms and alternatives of reformers are sidelined or silenced. Critical of both the punitive model and the legalization approach, Drug War Politics calls for a bold new public health approach, one that frames the drug problem as a public health—not a criminal—concern. The authors argue that only by situating drug issues in the context of our fundamental institutions—the family, neighborhoods, and schools—can we hope to provide viable treatment, prevention, and law enforcement. In its comprehensive investigation of our long, futile battle with drugs and its original argument for fundamental change, this book is essential for every concerned citizen.

Download or read book This Is Your Country on Drugs written by Ryan Grim and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2010-02-12 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everything we know about drugs-from acid to epidemics to DARE and salvia-turns out to be wrong Stock up on munchies and line up your water bottles: journalist Ryan Grim will take you on a cross-country tour of illicit drug use in the U.S.-from the agony (the huge DEA bust of an acid lab in an abandoned missile silo in Kansas) to the ecstasy (hallucinogens at raves and music festivals). Along the way, Grim discovers some surprising truths. Did anti-drug campaigns actually encourage more drug use? Did acid really disappear in the early 2000s? And did meth peak years ago? Did our Founding Fathers-or, better yet, their wives-get high just as much as we do? Traces the evolution of United States's long and twisted relationship with drugs Gives surprising answers to questions such as: how did heroin become popular, when did the meth epidemic peak, and has LSD gone the way of Quaaludes Based on solid reporting and wide-ranging research-including surveys, reports, historical accounts, and more Not since Eric Schlosser ventured underground to marijuana's black market in Reefer Madness has a reporter trained such a keen eye on drugs and culture. A powerful and often shocking history of one of our knottiest social and cultural problems, This is Your Country on Drugs leads you on a profound exploration of what it means to be an American.

Download or read book Drugs Law and the State written by Harold H. Traver and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 1992-08-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains nine essays written by distinguished scholars from North America. Europe, and Asia, and provides an in-depth examination of the socio-legal developments of drug control in different countries. Important rational approaches to the formulation of drug policy are discussed. A must-read for anyone interested in the highly topical, worldwide drug problem.