Canada’s provincial drug plans and drug rebates – negotiating savings or creating tiered healthcare?

Canada’s health care system has come under increasing scrutiny as the debate on health reform intensifies in the U.S.  The National Post recently published an interesting article on Canada’s provincial drug plans and recent changes that have allowed some of them to negotiate prices directly with drug companies in exchange for having their products listed.  [...]

Tiered Pricing Enables Health for All

PAHO must accept their share of the responsibility in ensuring health for all in the 21st century. Many Latin American countries are “rich” today compared to most African states and some of their sister “south” American nations. Middle income PAHO states cannot hold much of Africa or their own poorer member countries like Haiti hostage for the self-interests of their more powerful, richer rapidly developing countries.

PAHO’s vaccine system hampers African efforts

Efforts to make newer and more costly vaccines widely available to the poorest in Africa are being hampered by a long-standing system that makes vaccines affordable to middle-income Latin American countries, reports the Financial Times.
The Pan American Health Organization’s (PAHO) revolving fund, which began in 1979, negotiates substantial discounts with manufacturers on prices in richer [...]

Counterfeits and drug resistance: the global concern of malaria

Many health experts are concerned that the growing resistance to artemisinin drugs in western Cambodia could result in a repeat of the fate of chloroquine, which became largely ineffective. Counterfeit drugs can contain insufficient amounts of active ingredient, failing to cure the disease parasite and allowing it to mutate and resist the drug.  With half [...]

Innovation in Drug Access

A recent article in Global Health Magazine (Big pharma bets on emerging economies) focuses on the increasing use of tiered pricing by pharmaceutical companies to remain competitive in the global economy. 
“Such nuanced approaches to drug pricing that more closely reflect the ability to pay represent an attractive new trade-off for pharmaceutical companies: they provide greater [...]

New Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme in the U.K. to Encourage Innovation and Access

A new Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS) came into effect in the U.K. on January 1, 2009.  The PPRS represents an attempt to balance incentives for innovation with cost and price restraint.  The objectives of the 2009 PPRS are:

To deliver value for money; securing the provision of safe and effective medicines at reasonable prices;
To encourage innovation [...]

Drug price controls may shorten lives – report

Imposing European-style price controls on prescription drugs in the United States would result in modest cost savings that would be more than offset by shortened life spans as the pace of drug innovation slows.
A Reuters article continues:
“We found policies that regulate the prices of drugs could result in modest savings for consumers, in the best [...]

Consumers in Canada spend the same percentage of their income on prescription drugs as in the United States

Despite the significant differences between the Canadian and American healthcare systems, consumers in both countries spend the same percentage of their income on prescription drugs. 
Government policies surrounding the pricing and reimbursement of prescription drugs in Canada do not produce lower costs for Canadians compared to Americans.  Despite major differences between the Canadian and American healthcare systems, [...]