Tag Archives: prescriptions

Health Alerts

Celebrity Apprentice And Medical Innovation Have Something Important In Common

696012-f43ef348-7dbf-11e3-89a5-f01a1cd39a6c(A version of this Health Alert was published by Forbes.)

A new report should help President Trump find his way out of the confusion suggested by his very mixed signals on the role of medical innovation to American prosperity and patients. Last month, he said research-based drug-makers’ practices were “disastrous,” the industry was “getting away with murder,” and suggested the federal government should dictate prices of medicines.

A couple of weeks later, he told pharmaceutical executives: “You folks have done a terrific job over the years … The U.S. drug companies have produced extraordinary results…” To cap it off, he promised to end “global freeloading.” “Foreign price controls reduce the resources of American drug companies to finance drug R&D and innovation.” Continue reading Celebrity Apprentice And Medical Innovation Have Something Important In Common →

Drugs

Big Pharma and Access to Medicines

prescription-drugsHaving written critically about a decision made by Doctors Without Borders /Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to reject a donation of vaccines by Pfizer, Inc., I am grateful for a new report which ranks research-based pharmaceutical companies on a number of measurements of how they make medicines available to patients in low-income countries.

Jointly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and British and Dutch taxpayers, the Access to Medicine Index ranks 20 large drug makers. It is a very thorough report: Continue reading Big Pharma and Access to Medicines →

Drugs

They Can’t Even Give It Away: Global Charity Rejects Free Vaccines

vaccine-shotDoctors Without Borders /Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has decided to reject a donation of one million doses of pneumonia vaccine from Pfizer, Inc. The global health charity’s convoluted reasoning goes like this:

There is No Such Thing as “Free” Vaccines

Pneumonia claims the lives of nearly one million kids each year, making it the world’s deadliest disease among children. Although there’s a vaccine to prevent this disease, it’s too expensive for many developing countries and humanitarian organizations, such as ours, to afford.

Free is not always better. Donations often involve numerous conditions and strings attached, including restrictions on which patient populations and what geographic areas are allowed to receive the benefits.

Critically, donation offers can disappear as quickly as they come. The donor has ultimate control over when and how they choose to give their products away, risking interruption of programs should the company decide it’s no longer to their advantage.

This remarkable document goes on to praise GSK, a competitor of Pfizer’s, for having declined to offer pneumonia vaccines for free, but instead offer them for $3.05 per dose to all humanitarian organizations. I don’t know about you, but I will take free over three bucks any day. Continue reading They Can’t Even Give It Away: Global Charity Rejects Free Vaccines →

Drugs

Will Drug Companies’ Price Firewall Melt?

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Variety of Medicine in Pill BottlesA recent Kaiser Family Foundation Tracking Poll brings dire news for innovative drug companies: 83 percent of respondents favor a policy “allowing the federal government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries.” That includes 93 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of Republicans.

Despite dramatic headlines about pharmaceutical price increases, they have been in line with price increases for other health goods and services. Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals have been negotiated by government for over half a century, without containing costs.

Nevertheless, we are at a point in the polls where any careerist politician, Democrat or Republican, will likely follow Hillary Clinton’s lead demanding politically fixed drug prices. This teaches a lesson about inviting the government into your business. Continue reading Will Drug Companies’ Price Firewall Melt? →

Drugs

Reciprocal Regulatory Approval To Reduce Drug Prices

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prescription-drug-shortageSenators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) recently introduced the RESULT Act, which would allow drugs and medical devices approved in certain other countries to be allowed in the U.S. as well. The countries included are European Union members, Israel, Canada, Japan, and Australia.

The benefits of this act would be significant. Professor Daniel Klein of the Mercatus Institute at George Mason University and Professor William L. Davis of the University of Tennessee at Martin have surveyed economists on this policy, and a majority agree it would improve patients’ access to safe and effective drugs. Continue reading Reciprocal Regulatory Approval To Reduce Drug Prices →

Health Alerts

To Control Drug Prices, Pursue Fraud, Not Manufacturers

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prescription-bottle(A version of this Health Alert appeared in the Orange County Register.)

A Los Angeles-based nonprofit has gathered enough signatures to get two initiatives on the November statewide ballot. The one of greater interest to ordinary Californians would legislate that any prescription drug paid for with state money cost no more than the amount paid by the Veterans Administration. The California Drug Price Relief Act would have little, if any, short-term effect. There is a better way to control Medi-Cal’s escalating costs. Continue reading To Control Drug Prices, Pursue Fraud, Not Manufacturers →

Policy Updates

FDA Driving Drug Prices into Stratosphere

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BloombergBusiness has another story of a jaw-dropping price hike for a very old medicine. In this case,

Colchicine, a gout remedy so old that the ancient Greeks knew about its effects, used to cost about 25 cents per pill in the U.S. Then in 2010 its price suddenly jumped 2,000 percent.

How did this happen? Colchicine is one of a small number of drugs that were marketed before 1938. That year, the Food, Drugs, & Cosmetics Act was passed to require new drugs to be approved for “safety” as well as be “pure” (that is, not adulterated or misbranded as required since 1906). Continue reading FDA Driving Drug Prices into Stratosphere →

Health Insurance

Patients Forgoing Prescriptions – Some for Good Reasons

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Patients failed to fill 6.8% of prescriptions for name-brand drugs and 4.1% of generic prescriptions in 2008, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. This has prompted some to conclude that patients are forgoing medications to save money. Yet considering how many people obtain prescriptions they don’t take and how many take prescriptions that don’t work, asking patients to assess how much their drugs are really worth to them may not be such a bad idea.

In The Innovator’s Prescription, Clayton Christensen and his colleagues point to data from the Physicians’ Desk Reference showing that:

  • 40% of asthma patients do not respond to drug therapy
  • 50% of migraine patients do not respond to drug therapy
  • 70% of Alzheimer’s patients do not respond to drug therapy

Past studies have found that, even for people who start drug therapy, about half discontinue therapy within a year. One reason many patients stop taking medications is because the medication isn’t working – possibly because they’ve been misdiagnosed.

Physicians

More on the Downside of Electronic Medical Records

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In the face of so much cheerleading, we have previously cautioned here, here and here. This is a doctor writing in the New York Times:

In short, the computer depersonalizes medicine. It ignores nuances that we do not measure but clearly influence care….. I have half-joked with residents that they could type "child has no head" in the middle of a computer record – and it might be missed.

A box clicked unintentionally is as detrimental as an order written illegibly – maybe worse because it looks official. It takes more effort and thought to write a prescription than to pull up a menu of medications and click a box. I have seen how choosing the wrong box can lead to the wrong drug being prescribed.