Excessive Medical Spending

This work contains a Foreword by Merrill Goozner, Author and Director, Integrity in Science, Center for Science and the Public Interest, Washington DC. This book exposes why healthcare costs have been rapidly increasing and includes a close examination of over-priced drugs. It contains a detailed explanation of how the drug industry takes billions of dollars from society each year and proposes radical new ideas to reign in excessive spending on medicine. Based on the latest research, its unique approach takes into account the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare policy and society to offer a wide ranging account. It is invaluable for all healthcare professionals, especially managers and doctors and nurses with budgetary responsibilities. It will also be useful for researchers, policy makers and shapers, pharmaceutical company executives and general readers with an interest in medical expenditure. While most discussions about the fiscal problems caused by aging societies have focused on pensions and income security, the more serious landmine in the road ahead is health-care finance, which will be in full-blown crisis sometime early in the next decade. That's why this book is timely. Until we learn to talk openly and honestly about what constitutes good health, good health care, and the best and most cost-effective way of achieving both, we'll never have an affordable health-care system. - Merrill Goozner, in the Foreword.