Objective We examined changes in patterns of benzodiazepine use in British Columbia over a period of increasing evidence of harms associated with long-term use.Methods Using linked administrative databases for the years 1996 and 2006, we performed logistic regression to examine how...

Objectives To explore the redistributive impact of two different pharmaceutical financing policies (age-based versus income-based pharmacare) on the distribution of income in British Columbia (B.C.), Canada.Methods Using household-level data on all payments that are used to finance prescription...

Recent comparative evidence from OECD countries suggests that Australia's mixed public-private health system does a good job in ensuring high and fairly equal access to doctor, hospital and dental care services. This paper provides some further analysis of the same data from the Australian...

Introduction Policy-makers worldwide struggle to balance health with industrial policy objectives in the pharmaceutical sector. Tensions arise over pricing and reimbursement in particular. What health plans view as necessary to maintain equitable access to medicines, industry views as inimical...

Objectives We aimed to systematically review and assess published estimates of the cost of developing new drugs.Methods We sought English language research articles containing original estimates of the cost of drug development that were published from 1980 to 2009, inclusive. We searched seven...

We study the extent and drivers of income-related inequity in utilization of dental services in Canada using the concentration-index approach that has been widely applied to study inequity in physician and hospital services. Because dental care is almost wholly privately financed in Canada, our...

This study examines the role of proximity to death (PTD) in need-based approaches to health care by: (1) investigating whether PTD is a statistically significant, independent predictor of health-care use; and (2) estimating PTD's marginal impact on need-based allocation of health-care resources.