Drug costs
From Ganfyd
The essential point is that doctors in most countries have great difficulty in estimating the cost of their prescriptions accurately and that across countries and training systems the main factor that influences doctor's drug price awareness is the cost of the drug. While factors such as market freedom, differential pricing formulas and distortions in perception all can play a role in determining a drug price, it seems that human factors rule. Actually doctors generally want cost information but find it inaccessible. They consistently overestimate the cost of inexpensive drugs and underestimate the cost of expensive ones with 31% of off the cuff estimates within 25% of the true cost. [1]. There can be marked variation in public funding arrangements. However general guides to drug cost do exist, similar to the British National Formulary in the UK. The potential impact of economic analysis in guiding prescribing where cost issues are viewed by the prescriber as marginal seems small.
