The Beacon, 11 May 2006
Reaching consensus - AIMS invites discussion through the Canadian Health Care Consensus Group; AIMS tackles the catastrophic drug coverage problem in Atlantic Canada; and the institute publishes two new papers.
The Beacon, 24 April 2006
In this edition of The Beacon there's news on the catastrophic gap in drug coverage; a new paper that shows aquaculture is FARMING, not fishing; and a lesson in resource revenue economics.
Who Cares?
AIMS tackles issue of quality of hospital care on behalf of patients and their families.
A Finger on the Pulse
Consumers need to be able to compare the quality of products and services, if they are to make an informed choice. That's no different whether shopping for a new car, or looking for the best hospital for care. In this first paper in AIMS Hospital Report Card series, author Julia Witt compares the models used to measure the quality of care in hospitals.
We Can’t Go On Like This.
In this talk to the Annual Meeting of the Canada-Sweden Business Association in Stockholm, Sweden, AIMS president Brian Lee Crowley provides a picture of the health care demands of the future. He suggests that as the Baby Boom generation ages, it will demand changes in the provision of health care services.
Contraindicated: Canada can’t solve US pharmaceutical woes.
The US Congress is once again considering authorization of the re-importation of pharmaceuticals from Canada. As AIMS Fellow in Health Care Economics Brian Ferguson explains in a commentary in the National Post, such a solution to the US pharmaceutical woes is a dream cop-out for politicians.
Alice in Borderland
The idea that Americans should be able to buy their prescription drugs in Canada, either in person or, more importantly, over the Internet, has been gaining favour with US politicians for some months now. It’s to the point where a number of states have either passed, or are considering passing, legislation that they believe will make this kind of cross-border shopping legal. This commentary explains why, if re-importation ever becomes law in the US, American prices will not fall, while in Canada we will either find drug prices rising to US levels, or supplies being restricted and shortages developing.
Lower Prescription Drug Costs Don’t Tell the Whole Story
AIMS president Brian Lee Crowley discusses important issues surrounding the prescription drug debate.
AIMS Commentary: U.S. Flu Shot Shortage – Why Canada Should Stand up and Take Notice
How to reform drug policy, the latest paper from the AIMS series on Canadian pharmaceutical policy
This Won’t Hurt a Bit
The US flu shot crisis didn’t occur because of too little government involvement in the industry, but rather too much. "This Won’t Hurt a Bit: Why the vaccine crisis shows we shouldn’t believe what health “planners” tell us about how to reform drug policy" explains that, contrary to some recently published media reports, over-zealous governments have made the production of flu vaccines in that country very unattractive and helped to make less therapeutically valuable drugs the focus of industry attention.