Drugs and medicines account for about half of the total medical out-of-pocket expenses of households. This share of drugs to total medical expenses is much higher for the poor than the rich. Thus, affordability of medicines is an important issue in poverty reduction. Recent efforts to improve...

This paper attempts to give an overview of the debate surrounding the patentability of new therapeutic uses for known active ingredients, both in developed and developing countries. After close scrutiny of international patentability standards, this paper concludes that second medical uses do...

We study the impact of regulation on competition between brand-names and generics and pharmaceutical expenditures using a unique policy experiment in Norway, where reference pricing (RP) replaced price cap regulation in 2003 for a sub-sample of off-patent products. First, we construct a vertical...

The rules underlying the assessment of quality of generic drugs, and their bioequivalence to brand name products, have not changed significantly since the passage of the Hatch-Waxman Act in 1984. Yet the products on the market are significantly more complicated today, which may imply that two...

This report provides an assessment of the Department of Health's (DOH) three drug provision programs, i.e., Botika ng Barangay (BnB), Botika ng Bayan (BNB), and the P100 Treatment Pack (P100). (a) The BnB program expanded its distribution network rapidly in the past decade, contributing to...