The bottom line is that combination vaccines do provide an economic value, Jacobson said. The model that we have developed allows vaccine manufacturers to understand what that value is, but more importantly it allows for the inclusion of concerns of health-care consumers, the insurance industry and government so that they do not overpay. We can sit down with all parties and plug in the variables that they identify.
We can be a mediator and come up with a price that both sides can live with, he said. They may not all like our results, but the model is a tool with no emotion. They tell us what data to put in, and well run the numbers.
The new study focused on four combination vaccines that eventually may become available for distribution in the United States, with each combination configured with the 12 licensed vaccines now being used for six childhood diseases in the Recommended Childhood Immunization Schedule. Rather than finding a single price, the tool considers any number of cost-associated factors and finds a distribution of prices that match a manufacturers target market percentages and what consumers will pay.
The 2002 immunization schedule is crowded, with up to five injections recommended at a single office visit. As manufacturers produce new vaccines to protect against additional diseases, pressure mounts to add those vaccines to the immunization schedule.
In 1999, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians stated that combination vaccines are preferable to single-antigen vaccines and that physicians should begin using those that gain FDA approval.
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Contact: Jim Barlow
b-james3@uiuc.edu
217-333-5802
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
8-Apr-2002