A carregar...
Publicação
The impact of pharmaceutical policy measures: a structural-break approach
| Nome: | Descrição: | Tamanho: | Formato: | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.62 MB | Adobe PDF |
Autores
Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
Pharmaceutical spending in many other countries has had a steep increase in the
last decade. The Portuguese Government has adopted several measures to reduce
pharmaceutical expenditure growth, ranging from increased co-payments to price
decreases determined administratively. Promotion of generic consumption has also
ranked high in political priorities. We assess the overall impact of the several
policy measures on total pharmaceutical spending, using monthly data over the
period January 1995 – August 2008. Endogenous structural breaks (time-series)
methods were employed. Our findings suggest that policy measures aimed at
controlling pharmaceutical expenditure have been, in general, unsuccessful. Two
breaks were identified. Both coincide with administratively determined price
decreases. Measures aimed at increasing competition in the market had no visible
effect on the dynamics of Government spending in pharmaceutical products. In
particular, the introduction of reference pricing had only a transitory effect
of less than one year, with historical growth resuming quickly. The consequence
of it is a transfer of financial burden from the Government to the patients,
with no apparent effect on the dynamics of pharmaceutical spending. This
strongly suggests that pharmaceutical companies have been able to adjust to
policy measures, in order to sustain their sales. It remains a challenge for the
future to identify firms’ strategies that supported continued growth of sales,
despite the several policy measures adop
Descrição
Palavras-chave
Pharmaceutical expenditures, structural breaks
Contexto Educativo
Citação
Editora
Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam.