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This is the first of three papers to review international policies to control spending on drugs and improve the efficiency of drug use. Policies can target three main groups: patients, prescribing doctors, and the drugs industry. In this paper we examine policies aimed at patients, particularly restrictions on reimbursement (such as prescription charges). Rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental studies suggest that policies to limit the level of reimbursement of drugs reduce the use of essential as well as non-essential drugs and may do more harm than good.
Freemantle et al. (Sat,) studied this question.