The one [Big Pharma] helps the other [Life Expectancy], for all the hostility drug companies receive. -ASActually, what the study says is that the latest "vintage" of government approved drug therapies has an important effect on health. One assumes that such drugs get approved because the government applies rigorous scientific standards to evaluating whether they work (or are at least not harmful). Without the government, there truly would be elixirs on the market without relevant scientific merit.
how medical innovation, uniquely facilitated by America's private healthcare system, is integral to bettering health
The study makes no conclusions about "Big Pharma" or whether innovation is facilitated uniquely by it. Cross-sectional studies of life-expectancies suggest that America is behind, right?
Some of the other findings:
INNOVATION DOESN'T IMPLY WE HAVE TO ACCEPT PRICE SPIRALS, WASTE
It's reasonable to expect that innovation occurs without ever rising drug prices:
IT'S GOOD FOR EVERYONE, NOT JUST THE UNINSURED
• States that had the greatest increase in drug vintage did not experience above-average increases in overall medical expenditure. While use of newer drugs has increased some types of medical expenditure, it has reduced other types, and the expenditure reductions approximately offset the expenditure increases.
What those Americans who have been supporting a single-payor system that will improve access to healthcare have been saying all along - it's a win-win, because it improves the health of the workforce:
Last, I didn't see why the authors believe that there are different 'vintages' in use in different states (it's not in the summaries). It could be that doctors in Oklahoma don't know about the latest therapies, because Big Pharma doesn't spend its marketing dollars there? Because pay standards don't attract the newest physicians back to that State? In other words, the very thing that made this study possible might be other failings of the US healthcare system, yes or no?• States with larger increases in Medicaid drug vintage had faster productivity growth, conditional on income growth and other factors.
• The increase in Medicaid drug vintage is estimated to have increased output per employee by about 1% per year. Much of this may be attributable to increased hours worked per employee
