The cost effectiveness of pharmaceuticals

Abstract

Worldwide, in the 1990s, the central issue for health care is going to be ‘cost effectiveness’. This is very different from the emphasis on mere ‘cost containment’ in the 1980s. During the past decade there was a fashionable view that health care costs were somehow ‘out of control’. The costs of health services were thought to be rising too fast, and this opinion was supported by evidence of ‘waste’ in medical care. Gradually, however, as we enter the last decade of this century a new attitude to medicine is emerging. Governments and social security organizations are coming to realise that the public place an extremely high priority on ‘better health’ . As more and more people experience for themselves the problems of ageing relatives, they can see the urgent need to spend more money improving people’s health and the quality of life, especially amongst older people. It is the shortage of health care rather than its cost which is now seen to be the problem.