Drug Pricing Theme Issue: Is Pharma Earning Too Much?, R&D Costs Required to Bring a New Drug to Market, Probiotic Safety, and more
One in 4 people in the US has difficulty paying the cost of their prescription medications. This stark fact was recently reported in a 2019 Kaiser Family Foundation public opinion poll among a nationally representative random sample of 1205 adults.1 Persons who reported having the greatest difficulty affording their prescription drugs were those who most needed them, including those who took 4 or more prescription drugs, spent $100 or more per month on their drugs, and reported being in fair or poor health.
Scientists have just discovered a new mechanism that can be key in regulating these immune attacks, raising new hopes of drugs that can protect against joint inflammation and the ailments it can bring.
“This is the fourth time in the last two years we’ve had to activate our hospital’s emergency operations plan for a major drug shortage,” Dr. Biddinger told NBC News. “It’s almost unfathomable in modern medicine. I never thought we would get to a point in the U.S. healthcare system where we wouldn’t have essential medicines to be able to treat patients.”