These findings suggest that despite having a more similar health care structure to other high spending health care systems, the U.S. health care system for those aged over 65 continues to be more expensive than comparators, although spending growth does appear to level off at older ages...
Dr. Myrskylä[/caption]
Mikko Myrskylä PhD
Executive Director, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Professorial Research Fellow,
London School of Economics Professor of Social Statistics
University of Helsinki
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Life expectancy in the U.S. increased at a phenomenal pace throughout the twentieth century, by nearly two years per decade. After 2010, however, U.S. life expectancy growth stalled and has most recently been declining. A critical question for American health policy is how to return U.S. life expectancy to its pre-2010 growth rate. Researchers and policy makers have focused on rising drug-related deaths in their search for the explanations for the stalling and declining life expectancy.
Dr. Wouters[/caption]
Olivier Wouters, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Health Policy
Department of Health Policy (COW 2.06)
London School of Economics and Political Science
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Drug companies often point to high research and development costs as justification for the rising prices of new medicines.
Yet most prior analyses of research and development costs have been based on confidential data voluntarily supplied by drug companies to researchers with financial ties to the industry. Independent teams have not been able to verify those findings.