Suchergebnisse

The pharmaceutical industry stands at a peculiar place in the United States. It is one of the largest industries in the United States, "enjoy[ing] profit margins nearly four times that of the average Fortune 500 company." It is also a global leader, responsible for an enormous amount of research and development. Despite its size and power, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry is largely reviled, Perhaps what differentiates the U.S. pharmaceutical industry from the pharmaceutical industries of other nations is its "free market" price setting. Other nations, particularly those in the European Union, use government price controls to keep pharmaceutical prices low. One of the most popular systems of price control is reference pricing. Reference pricing is a method of controlling spending on drug reimbursement by using the price of similar or existing drugs to set "a reimbursement tariff (called reference price) for groups of drugs which are considered to be 'interchangeable.'" This Comment explores the validity of reference pricing as a method of reducing government healthcare spending, particularly in the United States, through comparison to foreign price controls.