Download or read book The Price of Health written by Michael Kinch and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From "pharma bros" to everday household budgets, just how did the pharmaceutical industry betray its own history—and how can it return to its tradition of care? It’s an unfortunate and life-threatening fact: one in five Americans has skipped vital prescriptions simply because of the cost. These choices are being made even though we have reached a point in the conveyance of medical options where cancers can be cured and sight restored for those blinded by rare genetic disorders. How, in this time of such advancements, did we reach a point, where people cannot afford the very things that could save their lives? As the COVID-19 global pandemic has pointed out, we need the leadership of scientists, researchers, public health officials and lawmakers alike to guide us through not only in times of a global health crisis, but also during far more mundane times. For the first time in decades, people from all walks of life face the same need for medicine. It is time to discuss the tough questions about drug pricing in an open, honest and, hopefully, transparent manner. But first we must understand how we, as a society, got here. Medicines are arguably the most highly regulated—and cost-inflated—products in the United States. The discovery, development, manufacturing and distribution of medicines is carried out by an ever more complex and crowded set of industries, each playing a part in a larger “pharmaceutical enterprise” seeking to maximize profits. But this was not always the case. The Price of Health is the reveals the story of how the pharmaceutical enterprise took shape and led to the present crisis. The reputation of the pharmaceutical industry is suffering from self-inflicted wounds and its continued viability, indeed survival, is increasingly questioned. Yet the drug makers do not shoulder all the blame or responsibility for the current price crisis. Deeply researched, The Price of Health gives us hope as to how we can still right the ship, even amidst the roiling storm of a global pandemic. How have medicines have been made and distributed to consumers throughout the years? What sea of changes that have contributed to rising costs? Some individuals, actions, and systems will be familiar, others may surprise. Yet the combined implications of these actions for will be surprising and at times shocking to both industry professionals and average Americans alike. Like so much else in human history, the history of the pharmaceutical enterprise is populated mostly by well-intended and even noble individuals and organizations. Each contributed to the formation or maintenance of structures meant to improve the quality and quantity of life through the development and distribution of medicines. And yet systems originally created to do good have often been subverted in ways contrary to the motivations of their creators. Only by understanding this disconnect can we better tackle the underlying problems of the industry head on, preventing foreseeable, and thus avoidable, medical calamities to come.

Download or read book The Price We Pay written by Marty Makary and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestseller Business Book of the Year--Association of Business Journalists From the New York Times bestselling author comes an eye-opening, urgent look at America's broken health care system--and the people who are saving it--now with a new Afterword by the author. "A must-read for every American." --Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief, FORBES One in five Americans now has medical debt in collections and rising health care costs today threaten every small business in America. Dr. Makary, one of the nation's leading health care experts, travels across America and details why health care has become a bubble. Drawing from on-the-ground stories, his research, and his own experience, The Price We Pay paints a vivid picture of the business of medicine and its elusive money games in need of a serious shake-up. Dr. Makary shows how so much of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health and what you can do about it. Dr. Makary challenges the medical establishment to remember medicine's noble heritage of caring for people when they are vulnerable. The Price We Pay offers a road map for everyday Americans and business leaders to get a better deal on their health care, and profiles the disruptors who are innovating medical care. The movement to restore medicine to its mission, Makary argues, is alive and well--a mission that can rebuild the public trust and save our country from the crushing cost of health care.

Download or read book The Price of Global Health written by Ed Schoonveld and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-24 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public debate on the rising cost of new biotechnology drug treatments has intensified over the last few years as healthcare budget pressures have mounted under a strained economy. Meanwhile, the demand for new, effective medical and drug treatments continues to rise as unhealthy lifestyles cause further increases in diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Global drug pricing is one of the most hotly debated yet least understood aspects of the pharmaceutical industry. How should drug prices be set and what does it mean for patients? Why do governments increasingly get involved, and what is its impact on the global competitive environment? How can a life-saving industry have a poorer image than gun and tobacco industries, whose products are associated with death? Ed Schoonveld explains how pharmaceutical prices are determined in a complex global payer environment and what factors influence the process. His insights will help a wide range of audiences, from healthcare industry professionals to policy makers and the broader public, to gain a better understanding of this highly complex and emotionally charged field. The Price of Global Health is recognized as a valued and unique reference book that covers a complete array of topics related to global pharmaceutical pricing. It contains an in-depth but straightforward exploration of the pharmaceutical pricing strategy process, its underlying market access, general business and ethical considerations, and its implications for payers, physicians and patients. It is a much-needed and invaluable resource for anybody interested or involved in, or affected by, the development, funding and use of prescription drugs. In particular, it is of critical importance to pharmaceutical company executives and other leaders and professionals in commercialization and drug development, including marketing, business development, market access and pricing, clinical development, drug discovery, regulatory affairs, health outcomes, market research and public affairs. The second edition includes new chapters on payer value story development, oncology, orphan drugs and payer negotiations. Furthermore, many country chapters have been substantially updated to reflect changes in the healthcare systems, including the Affordable Care Act in the US, AMNOG in Germany, medico-economic requirements in France and many other country-specific changes. Lastly, almost every chapter has been updated with new examples and illustrations.

Download or read book What Price Better Health written by Daniel Callahan and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-01-05 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medical research, with its power to attract money and political support, and its promise of cures for a wide range of medical burdens, has good and bad sides--which are often indistinguishable. In this book, the author teases out the distinctions and differences, revealing the difficulties that result when the research imperative is suffused with excessive zeal, adulterated by the profit motive, or used to justify cutting moral corners. Exploring the National Institutes of Health's annual budget, the inflated estimates of health care cost savings that result from research, the high prices charged by drug companies, the use and misuse of human subjects for medical testing, and the controversies surrounding human cloning and stem cell research, he clarifies the fine line between doing good and doing harm in the name of medical progress. His work shows that medical research must be understood in light of other social and economic needs and how even the research imperative, dedic.

Download or read book Price Setting and Price Regulation in Health Care written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-26 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The objectives of this study are to describe experiences in price setting and how pricing has been used to attain better coverage, quality, financial protection, and health outcomes. It builds on newly commissioned case studies and lessons learned in calculating prices, negotiating with providers, and monitoring changes. Recognising that no single model is applicable to all settings, the study aimed to generate best practices and identify areas for future research, particularly in low- and middle-income settings. The report and the case studies were jointly developed by the OECD and the WHO Centre for Health Development in Kobe (Japan).

Download or read book Best Care at Lower Cost written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-05-10 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's health care system has become too complex and costly to continue business as usual. Best Care at Lower Cost explains that inefficiencies, an overwhelming amount of data, and other economic and quality barriers hinder progress in improving health and threaten the nation's economic stability and global competitiveness. According to this report, the knowledge and tools exist to put the health system on the right course to achieve continuous improvement and better quality care at a lower cost. The costs of the system's current inefficiency underscore the urgent need for a systemwide transformation. About 30 percent of health spending in 2009-roughly $750 billion-was wasted on unnecessary services, excessive administrative costs, fraud, and other problems. Moreover, inefficiencies cause needless suffering. By one estimate, roughly 75,000 deaths might have been averted in 2005 if every state had delivered care at the quality level of the best performing state. This report states that the way health care providers currently train, practice, and learn new information cannot keep pace with the flood of research discoveries and technological advances. About 75 million Americans have more than one chronic condition, requiring coordination among multiple specialists and therapies, which can increase the potential for miscommunication, misdiagnosis, potentially conflicting interventions, and dangerous drug interactions. Best Care at Lower Cost emphasizes that a better use of data is a critical element of a continuously improving health system, such as mobile technologies and electronic health records that offer significant potential to capture and share health data better. In order for this to occur, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, IT developers, and standard-setting organizations should ensure that these systems are robust and interoperable. Clinicians and care organizations should fully adopt these technologies, and patients should be encouraged to use tools, such as personal health information portals, to actively engage in their care. This book is a call to action that will guide health care providers; administrators; caregivers; policy makers; health professionals; federal, state, and local government agencies; private and public health organizations; and educational institutions.

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 An American Sickness written by Elisabeth Rosenthal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller/Washington Post Notable Book of 2017/NPR Best Books of 2017/Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 "This book will serve as the definitive guide to the past and future of health care in America.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems. In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast? Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.

Download or read book The Healthcare Imperative written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-01-17 with total page 852 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States has the highest per capita spending on health care of any industrialized nation but continually lags behind other nations in health care outcomes including life expectancy and infant mortality. National health expenditures are projected to exceed $2.5 trillion in 2009. Given healthcare's direct impact on the economy, there is a critical need to control health care spending. According to The Health Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes, the costs of health care have strained the federal budget, and negatively affected state governments, the private sector and individuals. Healthcare expenditures have restricted the ability of state and local governments to fund other priorities and have contributed to slowing growth in wages and jobs in the private sector. Moreover, the number of uninsured has risen from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008. The Health Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes identifies a number of factors driving expenditure growth including scientific uncertainty, perverse economic and practice incentives, system fragmentation, lack of patient involvement, and under-investment in population health. Experts discussed key levers for catalyzing transformation of the delivery system. A few included streamlined health insurance regulation, administrative simplification and clarification and quality and consistency in treatment. The book is an excellent guide for policymakers at all levels of government, as well as private sector healthcare workers.

Download or read book Redefining Health Care written by Michael E. Porter and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2006-04-24 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. health care system is in crisis. At stake are the quality of care for millions of Americans and the financial well-being of individuals and employers squeezed by skyrocketing premiums—not to mention the stability of state and federal government budgets. In Redefining Health Care, internationally renowned strategy expert Michael Porter and innovation expert Elizabeth Teisberg reveal the underlying—and largely overlooked—causes of the problem, and provide a powerful prescription for change. The authors argue that competition currently takes place at the wrong level—among health plans, networks, and hospitals—rather than where it matters most, in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of specific health conditions. Participants in the system accumulate bargaining power and shift costs in a zero-sum competition, rather than creating value for patients. Based on an exhaustive study of the U.S. health care system, Redefining Health Care lays out a breakthrough framework for redefining the way competition in health care delivery takes place—and unleashing stunning improvements in quality and efficiency. With specific recommendations for hospitals, doctors, health plans, employers, and policy makers, this book shows how to move health care toward positive-sum competition that delivers lasting benefits for all.

Download or read book Priced Out written by Uwe E. Reinhardt and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uwe Reinhardt was a towering figure and moral conscience of health care policy in the United States and beyond. Famously bipartisan, he advised presidents and Congress on health reform and originated central features of the Affordable Care Act. In Priced Out, Reinhardt offers an engaging and enlightening account of today's U.S. health care system, explaining why it costs so much more and delivers so much less than the systems of every other advanced country, why this situation is morally indefensible, and how we might improve it.

Download or read book The Cure That Works written by Sean M. Flynn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Right now, a country halfway around the world is using forgotten American ideas to deliver the world’s best healthcare at a quarter of the price of American healthcare. Even more amazing: every resident has access to the same high-quality care. Economics for Dummies author Sean Flynn shows us what we can learn from Singapore's superior, free market-style healthcare system in The Cure That Works.

Download or read book Big Med written by David Dranove and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-11-18 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is little debate that health care in the United States is in need of reform. But where should those improvements begin? With insurers? Drug makers? The doctors themselves? In Big Med, David Dranove and Lawton Robert Burns argue that we’re overlooking the most ubiquitous cause of our costly and underperforming system: megaproviders, the expansive health care organizations that have become the face of American medicine. Your local hospital is likely part of one. Your doctors, too. And the megaproviders are bad news for your health and your wallet. Drawing on decades of combined expertise in health care consolidation, Dranove and Burns trace Big Med’s emergence in the 1990s, followed by its swift rise amid false promises of scale economies and organizational collaboration. In the decades since, megaproviders have gobbled up market share and turned independent physicians into salaried employees of big bureaucracies, while delivering on none of their early promises. For patients this means higher costs and lesser care. Meanwhile, physicians report increasingly low morale, making it all but impossible for most systems to implement meaningful reforms. In Big Med, Dranove and Burns combine their respective skills in economics and management to provide a nuanced explanation of how the provision of health care has been corrupted and submerged under consolidation. They offer practical recommendations for improving competition policies that would reform megaproviders to actually achieve the efficiencies and quality improvements they have long promised. This is an essential read for understanding the current state of the health care system in America—and the steps urgently needed to create an environment of better care for all of us.

Download or read book Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High Income Countries written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the last 25 years, life expectancy at age 50 in the United States has been rising, but at a slower pace than in many other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia. This difference is particularly notable given that the United States spends more on health care than any other nation. Concerned about this divergence, the National Institute on Aging asked the National Research Council to examine evidence on its possible causes. According to Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries, the nation's history of heavy smoking is a major reason why lifespans in the United States fall short of those in many other high-income nations. Evidence suggests that current obesity levels play a substantial part as well. The book reports that lack of universal access to health care in the U.S. also has increased mortality and reduced life expectancy, though this is a less significant factor for those over age 65 because of Medicare access. For the main causes of death at older ages -- cancer and cardiovascular disease -- available indicators do not suggest that the U.S. health care system is failing to prevent deaths that would be averted elsewhere. In fact, cancer detection and survival appear to be better in the U.S. than in most other high-income nations, and survival rates following a heart attack also are favorable. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries identifies many gaps in research. For instance, while lung cancer deaths are a reliable marker of the damage from smoking, no clear-cut marker exists for obesity, physical inactivity, social integration, or other risks considered in this book. Moreover, evaluation of these risk factors is based on observational studies, which -- unlike randomized controlled trials -- are subject to many biases.

Download or read book Between Hope and Fear written by Michael Kinch and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you have a child in school, you may have heard stories of long-dormant diseases suddenly reappearing—cases of measles, mumps, rubella, and whooping cough cropping up everywhere from elementary schools to Ivy League universities because a select group of parents refuse to vaccinate their children. Between Hope and Fear tells the remarkable story of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases and their social and political implications. While detailing the history of vaccine invention, Kinch reveals the ominous reality that our victories against vaccine-preventable diseases are not permanent—and could easily be undone. In the tradition of John Barry’s The Great Influenza and Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies, Between Hope and Fear relates the remarkable intersection of science, technology, and disease that has helped eradicate many of the deadliest plagues known to man.

Download or read book The Economics of US Health Care Policy written by Charles E. Phelps and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-13 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Phelps and Parente explore the US health care system and set out the case for its reform. They trace the foundations of today’s system, and show how distortions in the incentives facing participants in the health care market could be corrected in order to achieve lower costs, a higher quality of care, a higher level of patient safety, and a more efficient allocation of health care resources. Phelps and Parente propose novel yet economically robust changes to US tax law affecting health insurance coverage and related issues. They also discuss a series of specific improvements to Medicare and Medicaid, and assess potential innovations that affect all of health care, including chronic disease management, fraud and abuse detection, information technology, and other key issues. The Economics of US Health Care Policy will be illuminating reading for anyone with an interest in health policy, and will be a valuable supplementary text for courses in health economics and health policy, including for students without advanced training in economics.

Download or read book Never Pay the First Bill written by Marshall Allen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From award-winning ProPublica reporter Marshall Allen, a primer for anyone who wants to fight the predatory health care system--and win. Every year, millions of Americans are overcharged and underserved while the health care industry makes record profits. We know something is wrong, but the layers of bureaucracy designed to discourage complaints make pushing back seem impossible. At least, this is what the health care power players want you to think. Never Pay the First Bill is the guerilla guide to health care the American people and employers need. Drawing on 15 years of investigating the health care industry, reporter Marshall Allen shows how companies and individuals have managed to force medical providers to play fair, and shows how you can, too. He reveals the industry's pressure points and how companies and individuals have fought overbilling, price gouging, insurance denials, and more to get the care they deserve. Laying out a practical plan for protecting yourself against the system's predatory practices, Allen offers the inspiration you need and tried-and-true strategies such as: Analyze and contest your medical bills, so you don't pay more than you should Obtain the billing codes for a procedure in advance Write in an appropriate treatment clause before signing financial documents Get your way by suing in small claims court Few politicians and CEOs have been willing to stand up to the medical industry. It is up to the American people to equip ourselves to fight back for the sake of our families--and everyone else.