Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The pharmaceutical industry is well known for taking doctors (and medical students) out to nice dinners, giving them presents, and doing whatever they can to entice physicians to prescribe their drug. Now, health insurers are following the pharmaceutical companies lead. The AP reports that in order to convince physicians to prescribe generic drugs, a Rochester…
Placebos are important for medical research. In order to determine if a certain pharmaceutical is effective, researchers compare medical outcomes between one group given the drug and another given a placebo. But should physicians give placebos to patients outside of clinical trials? The Economist magazine reports (“Great Expectations“) on the phenomenon that many physicians are…
In April 2006, I reviewed a well-known article which stated that the cost to bring a pharmaceutical to market was $802 million. This included the the cost R&D, clinical trials, failed drugs, and the cost of capial. The estimate was from DiMasi, Hansen and Grabowski (2003). The $802m figure was an updated from DiMasi, Hansen,…
The Wall Street Journal reports that China is aiming for Universal Health Care. The Chinese hope to cover 90% of the population within 2 years, and provide health coverage for all Chinese by 2020. “This all stands in contrast to China’s current system, which provides little government funding to government hospitals and requires patients to pay heavy out-of-pocket…
In Europe and North America, the influenza vaccination rate is about 20% to 40%. In China, this figure is only 2%. The pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis smells opportunity. China Business Daily reports that Sanofi-Aventi will invest €7 million to build a new vaccination prodction facility in Shenzhen. The article continues: “after the company’s the pharmaceutical factory…
On Monday I attended the Applied Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research Forum at UCSD. I will briefly summarize the presentations of the three speakers. Andreas Pleil, Senior Director Worldwide Medical & Outcomes Research, Pfizer. Dr. Pliel reviewed the findings of International Society For Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) Task Force on Real World Data. “Real World” data…
For researchers interested in studying the Medicare prescription drug benefit, CMS has claims data for Medicare Part D. Academy Health also has a useful powerpoint presentation giving some more information regarding Medicare Part D and what information is available as part of the CMS Medicare Part D claims data.
In “Does Roche have Genentech’s Rx?“, NPR’s Marketplace reports on Roche’s bid to purchase all of Genentech, a firm that developed the three best-selling cancer drugs in the United States.
Recently, health insurers have been more likely to offer a tiered copayment structure to enrollees. Patients face low co-payments for generic drugs, higher copayments for “preferred” name-brand drugs, and the highest for name-brand drugs on a “nonpreferred” list. Consumer driven health plans (CDHPs) however offer a simpler payment system. The consumer generally places funds into…
Frank Lichtenberg has two working papers Lichtenberg (#14008) and Lichtenberg and Duflos (#14009), which show that pharmaceuticals have worked to increase life expectancy. The first paper examines new cardiovascular drugs and finds that new cardiovascular drugs decreased mortality and hospitalizations in OECD countries. If drugs vintage had not increased from 1995-2004: 1) hospitalization and mortality…