Federal funding for comparative drug studies not in US budget

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7440.603

BMJ 2004;328:603 (13 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7440.603

News roundup

Federal funding for comparative drug studies not in US budget

Washington Charles Marwick

Heavy lobbying by the US drug industry has, for the time being, held up studies comparing the clinical efficacy of prescription drugs. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which administers Medicare, has been effectively prevented from using evidence of functional equivalence when deciding whether or not Medicare should approve a particular drug for coverage and Medicaid programmes.

The drug companies argued, prior to legislation being passed, that attempts to determine equivalence between older and most likely cheaper drugs, would discourage manufacturers from developing new and possibly better products, even though they were likely to be more expensive.

Last year Congress considered legislation requiring such comparisons (BMJ 2003;327:642). By the time the President signed into law the new Medicare legislation in December, however, the funding for comparative studies had been eliminated from the President�s proposed 2004-5 budget.

The law also said that the CMS did . . . [Full text of this article]

Add to CiteULike CiteULike Add to Complore Complore Add to Connotea Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us Add to Digg Digg Add to Reddit Reddit Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon Add to Technorati Technorati What's this?