Posted by Michael Wonder on 24 Aug 2016
The high cost of prescription drugs in the United States: origins and prospects for reform
23 August 2016 - The increasing cost of prescription drugs in the United States has become a source of concern for patients, prescribers, payers, and policy makers.
In a paper published in JAMA, Dr. Aaron Kesselheim of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues state that high drug prices are the result of the approach the United States has taken to granting government-protected monopolies to drug manufacturers, combined with coverage requirements imposed on government-funded drug benefits.
They state that the most realistic short-term strategies to address high prices include enforcing more stringent requirements for the award and extension of exclusivity rights; enhancing competition by ensuring timely generic drug availability; providing greater opportunities for meaningful price negotiation by governmental payers; generating more evidence about comparative cost-effectiveness of therapeutic alternatives; and more effectively educating patients, prescribers, payers, and policy makers about these choices.
