The Price of Health
Title | The Price of Health PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Kinch |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Total Pages | 336 |
Release | 2021-04-06 |
Genre | Medical |
ISBN | 164313681X |
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.
The Price We Pay
Title | The Price We Pay PDF eBook |
Author | Marty Makary |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing USA |
Total Pages | 305 |
Release | 2019-09-10 |
Genre | Health & Fitness |
ISBN | 1635574129 |
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.
The Price of Global Health
Title | The Price of Global Health PDF eBook |
Author | Ed Schoonveld |
Publisher | Routledge |
Total Pages | 494 |
Release | 2016-02-24 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 131701930X |
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.
What Price Better Health?
Title | What Price Better Health? PDF eBook |
Author | Daniel Callahan |
Publisher | Univ of California Press |
Total Pages | 342 |
Release | 2003 |
Genre | Health & Fitness |
ISBN | 0520246640 |
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.
Care Without Coverage
Title | Care Without Coverage PDF eBook |
Author | Institute of Medicine |
Publisher | National Academies Press |
Total Pages | 213 |
Release | 2002-06-20 |
Genre | Medical |
ISBN | 0309083435 |
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.
An American Sickness
Title | An American Sickness PDF eBook |
Author | Elisabeth Rosenthal |
Publisher | Penguin |
Total Pages | 434 |
Release | 2017-04-11 |
Genre | Medical |
ISBN | 0698407180 |
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.
The Healthcare Imperative
Title | The Healthcare Imperative PDF eBook |
Author | Institute of Medicine |
Publisher | National Academies Press |
Total Pages | 852 |
Release | 2011-01-17 |
Genre | Medical |
ISBN | 0309144337 |
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.