Access And Affordability

A medicine sitting on a pharmacy shelf does no good. Prescription medicines improve people's lives. They can allow patients who suffer from chronic diseases to live happier, healthier, more productive lives. In addition, adherence to prescription regimens can help lower overall healthcare costs by keeping people out of the hospital.

But biopharmaceutical companies recognize not everyone has access to the medicines they need. That is why they offer assistance to financially struggling, uninsured Americans through the Partnership for Prescription Assistance.

Since its launch in April 2005, PPA has helped connect millions of people to patient assistance programs that may meet their needs. The program brings together pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers, patient advocacy organizations and community groups to help qualifying patients get free or low-cost medicines. PPA, whose goal is to increase awareness of and boost enrollment in patient assistance, offers a single point of access to more than 475 such public and private programs.

The innovation that occurs at biopharmaceutical companies also increases access to and affordability of medicines in another way. Their investments in research ultimately lead to the availability of generic substitutes for medicines.

Today, Americans are spending less on prescription medicines. In its most recent national health care spending projections, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that retail prescription drug spending grew 1.2 percent in 2010. This is the lowest growth rate in the more than 50 years.

Generic substitutes are one reason for the decline. According to IMS Health, prescriptions are filled with generic versions of medicines more than 78 percent of the time.

Savings from generic use is one stage of the prescription-medicine life cycle, but saving money is possible only because biopharmaceutical research companies create medicines that are later copied by generic companies. Generic copies would not exist without the development of new medicines by innovative companies.

New medicines offer hope for advance treatments for diseases such as cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Looking at Alzheimer’s alone, a recent study projects that developing new treatments to slow the progression of the disease by five years would save Medicare and Medicaid $100 billion per year by 2030.

Therefore, it is short-sighted to view medicines only as a cost to patients and the healthcare system and not as a critical source of better health outcomes and savings to that system.

Resources

Generic Entry and Price Competition in the Biopharmaceuticals Market
The U.S. health care system is designed to promote both continued medical advances and cost savings. Brand-name biopharmaceutical research companies are a driving force behind these medical advances. Reports that focus only on brand-name medicines exaggerate drug price trends and miss the point that cheap, broadly used generics are possible only because they originated as a brand-name medicine.

Government data show spending growth trends on prescription medicines at historic lows.

How Medicare Can Help With Prescriptions
Medicare now offers prescription drug coverage to eligible Americans. If you qualify for Medicare, it will help you pay for both brand-name and generic medicines -- whatever your income, medical history or current coverage. This page directs patients to the resources they need to determine if they are eligible for the benefits and how to locate a Medicare insurance plan, among other things.

PPA 2.0
On its fifth anniversary in 2010, the Partnership for Prescription Assistance launched online resources designed to expand the program’s outreach, including a text hotline and smart-phone application. Dubbed PPA 2.0, it is an evolution of the nationwide effort sponsored by America’s pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies.