All articles by Charles Beever

Spiraling drug prices aren’t the only challenge facing the U.S. health-care system. Medical technology costs must be controlled, without sacrificing innovation.

Spending on prescription drugs is one of the biggest contributors to the unrelenting rise in the cost of health care for business. Critics of rising drug costs are quick to blame pharmaceutical companies’ advertising and aggressive sales practices for the problem. In fact, the real culprit is a third-party reimbursement system that undermines economic incentives to control costs.

Medical mistakes kill almost 100,000 Americans each year and cost the country as much as $29 billion annually. The right prescription could be a nationwide information system modeled on the FDA’s adverse drug reaction network.