Who Can Afford It?: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act\u27s Failure to Regulate Excessive Cost-Sharing of Prescription Biologic Drugs

This Note will discuss how the PPACA’s abbreviated approval pathway for biological products creates an expedited procedure to bring less expensive biologic drugs to the market, but ultimately fails to make those biologic drugs affordable because of its lack of provisions limiting insurers’ use of excessive cost-sharing requirements. Part II provides an overview of prescription drugs, compares biologics with traditional prescription drugs, and provides a brief legislative history of prescription drug laws. Part III analyzes the impact of the abbreviated approval pathway on biologic drugs’ costs to prescribed patients. It also examines the PPACA’s effects on biologics inclusion into health insurance plans. This Note will demonstrate how the PPACA continues to keep prescription biologic drugs unaffordable for insured patients by permitting private insurers to continue to include excessive cost-sharing requirements in insurance plans. Finally, Part IV proposes a recommendation by which the PPACA would be amended to include a modified version of current proposed legislation. To fully address the problem, Congress must formulate and enact legislation that properly protects patients from excessive out-of-pocket costs, while balancing the insurance companies’ interests to remain competitive and profitable

Who Can Afford It?: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act\u27s Failure to Regulate Excessive Cost-Sharing of Prescription Biologic Drugs

This Note will discuss how the PPACA’s abbreviated approval pathway for biological products creates an expedited procedure to bring less expensive biologic drugs to the market, but ultimately fails to make those biologic drugs affordable because of its lack of provisions limiting insurers’ use of excessive cost-sharing requirements. Part II provides an overview of prescription drugs, compares biologics with traditional prescription drugs, and provides a brief legislative history of prescription drug laws. Part III analyzes the impact of the abbreviated approval pathway on biologic drugs’ costs to prescribed patients. It also examines the PPACA’s effects on biologics inclusion into health insurance plans. This Note will demonstrate how the PPACA continues to keep prescription biologic drugs unaffordable for insured patients by permitting private insurers to continue to include excessive cost-sharing requirements in insurance plans. Finally, Part IV proposes a recommendation by which the PPACA would be amended to include a modified version of current proposed legislation. To fully address the problem, Congress must formulate and enact legislation that properly protects patients from excessive out-of-pocket costs, while balancing the insurance companies’ interests to remain competitive and profitable

Platforms: A Systematic Review Of The Literature Using Algorithmic Historiography

The concept of a platform is in widespread use across a range of disciplines. This research explores the development of the platform concept through a systematic review of the literature using algorithmic historiography. The paper generates a time-based visualisation of relationships between the most cited articles in the domain. Key structural findings are triangulated using thematic content analysis, quantitative citation and network graph analysis. The analysis delineates two conceptions of platform: interior and exterior. These two classifications provide a historical lens that demonstrate the development of the platform concept over time. Furthermore, the methodology provides a generalizable systematic approach to examining the historical development, underlying structures and significant contributions of a specific knowledge domain