The World’s Health Care Crisis: From the Laboratory Bench to the Patient’s Bedside

At present, human society is facing a health care crisis that is affecting patients worldwide. In the United States, it is generally believed that the major problem is lack of affordable access to health care (i.e. health insurance). This book takes an unprecedented approach to address this issue by proposing that the major problem is not lack of affordable access to health care per se, but lack of access to better, safer, and more affordable medicines. The latter problem is present not only in the United States and the developing world but also in countries with socialized health care systems, such as Europe and the rest of the industrialized world. This book provides a comparative analysis of the health care systems throughout the world and also examines the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

Examines the health care structure of the United States, Europe, and the third world, both separately and comparativelyOffers primary source insight through in-depth interviews with pharmaceutical and health care industry leaders from around the worldCarefully explains, in clear terms, the intricacies of the health care and pharmaceutical system and how these intricacies have led to the current crisisOffers concrete, comprehensive solutions to the health care crisis

PART I: THE GLOBAL HEALTH CARE CRISIS

1. The World’s Health Care Crisis: The United States’ Leadership

2. The Health Care Crisis in Other Parts of the World

PART II: UNDERSTANDING THE BIOPHARMACEUTICAL BUSINESS

3. Brief Commercial History of the Biopharmaceutical Industry up to the Year 2000

4. The Biopharmaceutical Industry in the Twenty-first Century: Titanic Challenges Ahead

5. Understanding Research and Development and Marketing in a Biopharmaceutical Company

6. The Pharmaceutical Regulators

PART III: THE COMPLEXITY OF INNOVATION

7. The Academia-Industry Relationship

8. Translating Academic Innovation into Health Care Products

9. The Biotechnology World and Its Challenges

10. Causes of the Pharmaceutical Crisis

PART IV: MORALITY AND DUTY ON A LONELY PLANET

11. Wealth versus Poverty

12. Social Responsibility, Governmental Role, and Nongovernmental Organizations

PART V: REINVENTING RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

13. Time for Reorganization