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1 [i] (2008)

handle is hein.amenin/aeiabmp0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 









                   ANUPAM B. JENAANDTOMAS J. PHILIPSON

 The twentieth century brought tremendous advances in health care technology, from
 antibiotics to laparoscopic surgery to targeted therapies for cancer-but these gains
 have been expensive. Governments are struggling to control burgeoning expenditures
 without compromising the quality of health care. Increasingly, these efforts have relied
 on 'cost-effectiveness analysis that balances costs against patient benefits to determine
 which treatments will qualify for reimbursement.
    Is the use of cost-effectiveness analysis to guide technology adoption wise? Although
 reimbursement criteria may satisfy government health budgets today, they threaten to
 stifle the innovation that will generate new breakthroughs in health care technologies
 tomorrow. Such criteria benefit current patients by lowering the cost of health care in
 the short term, but they also hurt future patients by limiting producers' incentives for
 further medical innovation. Developers of drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, for example, earn
 lifetime profits equal to only 5 percent of the estimated $1.4 trillion social value of
 their treatments. How can policymakers reward innovators adequately-and thereby
 secure the welfare of future patients-while ensuring that current patients have access
 to much-needed new treatments?
    In Innovation and Technology Adoption in Health Care Markets, Anupam B. Jena
 and Tomasj. Philipson argue that further use of cost-effectiveness analysis to curb health
 care spending may do more harm than good. Governments should adopt a more
 inclusive view of cost-effectiveness, one that reflects not only the short-term costs to
 patients but also the long-term effect on medical innovation. Policymakers should
 provide sufficient incentives for companies to develop new health care technologies-
 or risk a dangerous shortage of life-saving drugs in the future.

 Anupam B. Jena, Ph.D., is a visiting fellow at the Bing Center for Health Economics at
 the RAND Corporation and a fellow in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the
 University of Chicago.

 Tomas J. Philipson, Ph.D., is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and
 the Daniel Levin Professor at the University of Chicago's Irving B. Harris Graduate
 School of Public Policy.
                                                    Current Events/Public Health  $15.00
                                                      ISBN-13   978-0-8447-4268-7
                                                      ISBN-10   0-8447-4268-6
            rican Enterprise Institute
            for Public Policy Research
            1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
            Washington, D.C. 20036
                                                     9 780844 742687
Cover image © Adam Gault/Digital Vision/Getty Images

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