BACKGROUND Canadians pay amongst the highest generic drug prices in the world. In July 2010, the province of Ontario enacted a policy that halved reimbursement for generic drugs from the public drug plan, and substantially lowered prices for private purchases. We quantified the impact of this policy on overall generic drug expenditures in the province, and projected the impact in other province...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate prescription patterns and influencing factors in Chinese county hospitals. METHODS Prescription quality was evaluated by five indicators proposed by WHO/INRUD. A questionnaire for doctors was designed by our research group. All internists, surgeons, obstetricians, gynecologists and pediatricians from 10 county hospitals in Anhui province were asked to...

Using Medicaid Analytic eXtract (MAX) claims files for 1999 and 2001, the authors describe patterns of prescription drug use and expenditures among dually eligible Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries for all Medicaid full dually eligible beneficiaries and three important subgroups: (1) aged, (2) disabled, and (3) full-year nursing home residents. The analyses indicate great variation in use and...

OBJECTIVES To assess the impact of physician awareness to promote the prescription and the dispensing of generic drugs at hospital discharge. METHODS The study consisted in a Before/After Study design including the analysis of medical prescriptions at hospital discharge, after a pharmaceutical intervention to physicians in a geriatric ward. Each drug was classified according to its terms of p...

This article provides a synopsis of the new dynamics of the global biopharma industry. The emergence of global generics companies with capabilities approximating those of 'big pharma' has accelerated the blurring of boundaries between the innovator and generics sectors. Biotechnology-based products form a large and growing segment of prescription drug markets and regulatory pathways for biogene...

Over the past two decades, courts have consistently ruled that the manufacturer of a brand-name prescription drug cannot be liable for injuries suffered by those taking generic imitations of its product. This meant that a patient injured by a generic drug could have no remedy at all because in many instances the generic drug manufacturer would escape liability on the ground that it did not prod...

The following commentary unites a collection of articles primarily concerned with prescription drug issues in Medicaid. It also features highlights from a piece outlining Australia's pharmaceutical delivery system. Specifically, in this issue, you will find comprehensive analyses of drug expenditure trends, issues regarding access to pharmaceuticals in Medicaid, and an evaluation of ongoing gen...

OBJECTIVE This study proposed an alternative to brand loyalty as the explanation for the continued price rigidity of patent-expired brand-name prescription drugs despite the increase in market entry of generic drugs facilitated by the 1984 Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act. Study hypotheses were to test (1) whether market entries of new-product extensions are associated wit...

This paper echoes recent works of Abrasco, Gadelha and Guimarães emphasizing the need for a better integration between health policies and industrial development and innovation policies as the only way to keep the economic benefits generated by health expenditures in the country instead of letting them escape through imports and threaten the continuity of the social policy by growing trade defi...

Public and private third-party payers in many countries encourage or mandate the use of generic drugs. This article examines the development of generics policy in Australia, against the background of a description of international trends in this area, and related experiences of reference pricing programs. The Australian generics market remains underdeveloped due to a historical legacy of small ...