Reasonable Rx

A Real Plan for Making Drugs Affordable–and Promoting Innovation, Too “This book is a necessity for understanding the pharmaceutical industry. Both the pluses and minuses of the present system are set forth with a judicious combination of historical narrative, economic analysis, and statistical data. The highly original proposals for reform will be a major stimulant to analysis and policy-making.” –Kenneth Arrow, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University “This is a timely book by authors who know what they are talking about. They tackle a big problem: rising drug prices that are threatening to overwhelm us all–and especially those with limited or absent health care insurance. Will we drive people overseas for healthcare? Will there be social unrest? This book describes the problem and then offers a solution. Worth a careful read by everyone, pharmaceutical manufacturers and government policymakers especially.” –Roger Williams, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of the United States Pharmacopeia and a former senior official of the Food and Drug Administration “This book confounds two sets of skeptics: Those who say there’s no way to resolve the conflict between the need to fund pharmaceutical research and our desire to keep medicine affordable; and those who think that economics never has anything good to say.” –Honorable Barney Frank, Congressman from Massachusetts “This book comes at the right time and could become the starting point of discussions, which will eventually lead us into new era in the healthcare care industry. It will without a doubt become a must for insiders of the pharma- and biotech industries.” –Dr. Jürgen Drews, retired President of Roche Pharmaceutical Group Global Research Acknowledgments viii About the Authors ix Introduction xi Chapter 1: Drugs and Drug Prices 1 Chapter 2: The American Way to Discover Drugs 21 Chapter 3: The Drug Industry Today 39 Chapter 4: Are Drug Companies Risky? 59 Chapter 5: How Not to Lower Drug Prices 77 Chapter 6: Squandering R & D Resources 103 Chapter 7: How to Lower Drug Prices 129 Appendix: Our Solution in Detail 155 Index 177

Advanced and Business Tort Law is an ideal casebook with statutes and problems for an advanced and personal torts courses, a business and unfair competition torts courses, or survey of advanced tort law courses. Advanced and Business Tort Law is designed for advanced torts classes with a detailed treatment of dignitary and personal economic torts or business and unfair competition torts or a summary treatment of both. Unlike other casebooks, Advanced and Business Tort Law is ideal for any of the common combinations of the subject matter discussed in upper-level torts classes. The authors’ approach emphasizes the elements of each tort and the policies underlying the tort doctrines. Even more than in their Basic Tort Law casebook, appreciating the statutes relevant to each tort is critical because of significant doctrinal differences among jurisdictions. Key Features of this Edition: Ideal for either dignitary and personal economic torts classes, business and unfair competition classes, or a survey class covering all torts not included in introductory torts classes. Complements Basic Tort Law: Cases, Statutes, and Problems providing complete coverage of modern tort law. The casebook emphasizes principal cases decided in the 2020s covering a broad range of present-day issues, including invasion of the right of privacy, misappropriation of persona, misrepresentation, defamation, the economic loss rule, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, interference with contractual relations, bad faith performance of contract, commercial disparagement, false and deceptive advertising, trademark infringement, trade secrets, copyright infringement, malicious prosecution, and SLAPPS. Advanced and Business Tort Law including contemporary cases, issues, and perspectives of cultural relevance. They include unauthorized use of the identities of television stars and celebrities, trends in the law of slander and libel, undisclosed use of paid social influencers, media harassment of public figures, Facebook’s banning of controversial posts and defamatory postings, and online reviews, legal claims for police misconduct and modern trends in police immunity, and marketing of performance-enhancing beverages. Professors and students will benefit from: Emphasis on the black letter law and policies underlying tort rules. Problems covering all torts presented in the book with answers provided in the Teachers Manual. Statutes introducing students to variations among states. Straightforward note materials emphasizing key points in each case. Perspective Notes discuss modern developments and policy conflicts.

Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.

From his unusual beginning in "Defining a vector" to his final comments on "What then is a vector?" author Banesh Hoffmann has written a book that is provocative and unconventional. In his emphasis on the unresolved issue of defining a vector, Hoffmann mixes pure and applied mathematics without using calculus. The result is a treatment that can serve as a supplement and corrective to textbooks, as well as collateral reading in all courses that deal with vectors. Major topics include vectors and the parallelogram law; algebraic notation and basic ideas; vector algebra; scalars and scalar products; vector products and quotients of vectors; and tensors. The author writes with a fresh, challenging style, making all complex concepts readily understandable. Nearly 400 exercises appear throughout the text. Professor of Mathematics at Queens College at the City University of New York, Banesh Hoffmann is also the author of The Strange Story of the Quantum and other important books. This volume provides much that is new for both students and their instructors, and it will certainly generate debate and discussion in the classroom.

This single-source reference will help students and general readers alike understand the most critical issues facing American society today. Featuring the work of almost 200 expert contributors, the Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Social Issues comprises four volumes, each devoted to a particular subject area. Volume one covers business and the economy; volume two, criminal justice; volume three, family and society; and volume four, the environment, science, and technology. Coverage within these volumes ranges from biotechnology to identity theft, from racial profiling to corporate governance, from school choice to food safety. The work brings into focus a broad array of key issues confronting American society today. Approximately 225 in-depth entries lay out the controversies debated in the media, on campuses, in government, in boardrooms, and in homes and neighborhoods across the United States. Critical issues in criminology, medicine, religion, commerce, education, the environment, media, family life, and science are all carefully described and examined in a scholarly yet accessible way. Sidebars, photos, charts, and graphs throughout augment the entries, making them even more compelling and informative.