Better access to drugs doesn’t make healthier patients, study says

Two new studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggest government regulations, and maybe healthcare reform, could cut costs and make for better patient care. In the first study, U.S. researchers reported that spending more on drugs doesn’t always make for healthier patients; in the second, researchers found that when government insurers limit payments for certain drugs, doctors are less likely to prescribe them unnecessarily. The first found large variations in how much doctors and hospitals spend on drugs to help Medicare patients across the country, but that spending didn’t correlate to how patients fared. The second found that, when Medicare stopped paying so much for a drug that might be used inappropriately, doctors used it less often and more effectively.

Reuters