Health reform accelerates changes in the pharmaceutical industry

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act makes major changes to the Medicare prescription drug benefit, reducing drug costs for many seniors and increasing rebates and other costs for industry. Although these changes will affect prescription drug costs and pharmaceutical companies' profits, they are unlikely to alter the trends already reshaping the pharmaceutical industry. By participating in crafting health care reform, instead of opposing reform as it did in 1993, the pharmaceutical industry avoided some potential threats to revenues and made accommodations that limited the overall federal costs of reform.