14 - Conclusions and Policy Implications

Summary

Introduction

This final chapter summarizes key findings and conclusions of the previous chapters and explores their policy implications. More specifically, we discuss eight policy issues that arise as governments seek to promote pharmaceutical innovation in their countries as well as to cope with the consequences of such innovation on public and private budgets, distinguishing between new innovations that are worth the extra cost from those that are not. The issues, which have implications for public decision making ranging from industrial to health policy, are (1) whether or not a country without a well-developed pharmaceutical sector can successfully promote developing such a sector with an industrial policy, (2) strategies for promoting pharmaceutical innovation, (3) incentives for development and production of vaccines, (4) public provision of information on pharmaceutical cost and effectiveness, (5) policies to promote competition in markets for pharmaceutical products, (6) differentials in prices of pharmaceutical products among countries, (7) health benefits of pharmaceuticals, and (8) how governments cope with pharmaceutical innovation.

Is an Industrial Policy Aimed at Promoting Development of a Pharmaceutical Industry Likely to Succeed?

Government policy makers wear two hats vis-à-vis the pharmaceutical sector: (1) seeking to promote economic growth by increasing national employment and income, key objectives of industrial policy, and (2) promoting personal health and life expectancy and averting the spread of pandemics, key objectives of health policy, the latter being more likely to succeed as a consequence of the widespread availability and use of innovative pharmaceutical products (Sloan and Hsieh, Chapter 1).