Title: U.S. healthcare reform and the pharmaceutical industry
Description: Fiercely contested before, during, and since its passage, the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) will restructure the U.S. healthcare market if fully implemented in coming years. This article describes the institutional and political context in which the ACA was passed, and develops estimates of its likely impact on the biopharmaceutical industry. Universal insurance, either through a government-run system or by mandated purchase of private insurance, has been controversial in the United States since it was first proposed in the mid-1930s. Even in the absence of national health coverage, the United States became the world's largest prescription drug market and emerged as the global leader in new drug research and testing. With health benefits globally from the availability of new drugs, albeit for poorer populations only after patent terms expire, changes to the U.S. healthcare system are also of significance to patients and the pharmaceutical industry internationally. This article evaluates how the ACA will affect the size of the biopharmaceutical market and competitive dynamics within the industry. Estimates are developed for healthcare spending in 2015 and 2020, especially for expenditures on prescription drugs in nominal terms and as a percentage of overall health spending. The article concludes with a discussion of the political economy of insurance and the sustainability of largely free-pricing of pharmaceuticals in the United States.