Billie Pettersson and Frank R. Lichtenberg - SNS

Figure 1. Mean age at death: Actual vs. in absence of pharmaceutical innovation80,580,080,2879,579,6979,078,578,40In absence of…78,01996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012We examined the effect of pharmaceutical innovation on hospital use during the period2000−2009. The estimates indicate that an increase in the number of drugs marketed fora disease reduces the number of hospital days (number of discharges and length of stay),due to the disease eight years later, primarily due to its effect on the number of hospitaldischarges. We estimated that if no new drugs had been put on the market during theperiod 1992−2001, the number of hospital days would have been about 12% higher in2009 (Figure 2).17