27th Annual Dorothy J. MacLean Fellows Conference on Clinical Medical Ethics
The MacLean Center at the University of Chicago has prepared another world class conference on clinical medical ethics. It is November 13 and 14. It is free.Panel 1: Ethics and Healthcare Economics Moderator: Mark Siegler
The True Cost of Hepatitis C Therapy (Andrew Aronsohn, The University of Chicago)
Ethics of Sustainability (Stacy Lindau, The University of Chicago)
Are There Ethical Standards For Health Insurance Companies? (David Rubin, The University of Chicago)
What’s Wrong With Healthcare Rationing (Peter Ubel, Duke University)
An Economic Analysis of Medical Ethics (Anup Malani, The Universit...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - October 26, 2015 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Thaddeus Mason Pope Tags: Health Care medical futility blog syndicated Source Type: blogs
Finding Common Ground in the Search for Better Patient Care and Outcomes
By JOE V. SELBY, MD
A basic rule of scientific discovery is that the answers you get are only as good as the questions you ask.
That is certainly the case in health care. Traditionally, it has been the sole responsibility of health researchers to develop questions for study that, when answered, can provide reliable and relevant information for patients and clinicians. For the most part, they’ve done an exceptional job, as evidenced by countless discoveries about the nature of disease and remarkable advances in diagnosing, preventing and treating them. But when researchers are the only ones determining scientific inquiry,...
Source: The Health Care Blog - October 7, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Simon Nath Tags: THCB Source Type: blogs
Find a cost-effective way for drug companies to innovate
Recently, two significant pharmaceutical breakthroughs have resulted in a renewed debate about the costs of drug therapy. In the last year, a new drug class for the treatment of hepatitis C has been released by two different manufacturers and has been found to cure a once incurable chronic liver disease for nearly 90 percent of patients who are treated with a full course of therapy. The drug appears to be safe and highly effective; however, the cost of a curative course of therapy is nearly $80,000. As you might image, there are already barriers to access for many patients including those treated in the Veterans’ Affairs...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 3, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Kevin R. Campbell, MD Tags: Meds GI Heart Source Type: blogs
The Section 1557 Regulation: What’s Missing, And How We Can Include It
Kristin Agar, a 63-year-old social worker, was diagnosed with lupus in 2008, a rare disease in which the body’s own immune system can cause serious damage to the kidneys, brain, skin, and joints. Unfortunately, despite having insurance coverage, Kristin has found that the drug she needs to treat her lupus is unaffordable. All around the United States, Kristin joins other patients with chronic conditions like HIV, Hepatitis C, Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Leukemia, who are having trouble paying for their medications.
In June, Robert Restuccia and I wrote a Health Affairs Blog post showing that discrimi...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 21, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Douglas Jacobs Tags: Costs and Spending Drugs and Medical Technology Equity and Disparities Following the ACA Insurance and Coverage Long-term Services and Supports Payment Policy Population Health Public Health Americans With Disabilities Act chronic dise Source Type: blogs
Why we are #ProudtobeGIM: A general internal medicine top 10 list
A strong wind would have knocked Geraldine to the ground. At 78 pounds, she was underweight, chronically ill, and in need of acute medical or psychosocial care every time she came to the clinic. A survivor of domestic violence with severe mental illness, she had a history of substance abuse and was infected with both HIV and Hepatitis C. In chronic pain but too high a risk to prescribe opioids, her suicide attempts this past year neared the double digits. But you know what? Unless she was in the hospital, she never missed an appointment in the primary care clinic. A sweet, kind woman with complete biopsychosocial disarray,...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 15, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Douglas Olson, MD and Rebecca Andrews, MD Tags: Education Primary care Source Type: blogs
Are we to blame for the heroin epidemic?
This article blames physicians for opiate addiction – Doctors Play A Role In The Opioid Addiction Epidemic, Study Finds.
To begin to figure out how many, a team at the Mayo Clinic, led by pain specialist Dr. W. Michael Hooten, analyzed the medical records of 293 patients given a short-term prescription for opiates for the first time in 2009. These patients were being treated for acute pain — from traumas such as sprained ankles or major surgeries — so their doctors did not expect them to become long-term users of painkillers.
Yet just over 1 in 4 of these patients went on to use opioid painkillers for lon...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - September 6, 2015 Category: Internal Medicine Authors: rcentor Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs
Infant Dies Following 5 Vaccine Doses
Life after losing a loved one to vaccines is very painful. With a heavy heart, we share Sebastian Ryan Morley’s story. He was a healthy boy whose life ended after routine vaccinations. Sebastian’s mother and grandmother have worked many years in both the veterinary and human healthcare fields. What they were taught in school led them to believe vaccines were safe, but now they will never vaccinate again. We thank his family for coming forward and sharing very important information the public isn’t usually made aware of.
Sebastian’s grandmother, Valerie Murfin, shared:
“On December 11, 2002, when my grandson Sebas...
Source: vactruth.com - September 5, 2015 Category: Allergy & Immunology Authors: Augustina Ursino Tags: Augustina Ursino Human Top Stories adverse reactions dtap Hepatitis B vaccine Sebastian Ryan Morley truth about vaccines Vaccine Death vaccine injury VAERS Valerie Murfin Source Type: blogs
The Value And Limits Of Economic Evaluation In Policy Analysis
Health care resources, no matter how represented, are ultimately finite. Trade-offs occur as spending in one area means that those same resources are unavailable to fund another program. In spite of this, U.S. policymakers remain reluctant to engage in conversations that even hint at “rationing.” This reluctance is evidenced by the fact that the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Initiative (PCORI) is legislatively forbidden to include cost-effectiveness ratios in its comparative effectiveness evaluations.
Diametrically opposed to the U.S. system, most other countries embrace cost-effectiveness, whereby competing progr...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 1, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Victoria Phillips Tags: Costs and Spending Drugs and Medical Technology Equity and Disparities Global Health Health Policy Lab Medicaid and CHIP Payment Policy Population Health Quality Comparative Effectiveness cost-effectiveness health economics heart d Source Type: blogs
Rising Cost Of Drugs: Where Do We Go From Here?
The trends are clear: patients and institutions across the nation are concerned about skyrocketing drug prices. This post offers some information about drug pricing, explores the notion of market intervention, and proposes a series of responses to high pharmaceutical costs.
A few jaw-dropping facts quickly illustrate the pattern of rising drug costs. The average annual cost of cancer drugs increased from roughly $10,000 before 2000 to over $100,000 by 2012, according to a recent study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Several breakthrough specialty medications and orphan drugs recently approved by the Food and Drug Administratio...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 31, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Ifrad Islam Tags: Costs and Spending Drugs and Medical Technology Featured Medicaid and CHIP Payment Policy Public Health Big Pharma CMS FDA Gilead Sciences hepatitis C Pricewaterhouse Coopers Source Type: blogs
Biopharmaceuticals: Pricing For Clinical Value And In-Market Risk
Prescription drug pricing has become a very hot topic in the last year. The public policy debate began in earnest with the market launch of Gilead’s Hepatitis C cure, Sovaldi, in 2014, sparking a Congressional investigation. Most recently, the price of Sanofi’s chronic care cholesterol lowering agent, Praluent, is a source of discussion. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, has called for reform of how Medicare and Medicaid pay for drugs.
To have a better and more productive policy debate about drug pricing, we need to have a better understanding of how the market landscape̵...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 20, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Jane Horvath Tags: Costs and Spending Drugs and Medical Technology Featured Medicaid and CHIP Medicare Payment Policy 340B Drug Discount program Big Pharma Biopharmaceuticals Gilead Medicare Part D Sovaldi Source Type: blogs
A (Lower Cost) Healthcare Industry to Deal With a (Higher Cost) Healthcare Industry
By MARC-DAVID MUNK, MD
I was recently on the phone with a medical device company executive who was describing his company’s efforts to develop a non-invasive diagnostic device that could quantify the degree of cirrhosis in a patient with liver illness. It’s technology that his firm sees as timely given the recent introduction of Solavdi and other Hepatitis C therapies: the device will be offered as a way for healthcare systems (and insurers) to risk-stratify a bolus of patients who are waiting for hepatitis C antiviral therapy.
As background: Sovaldi was really the first pharmaceutical therapy to give hea...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 11, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: suchandan roy Tags: THCB Marc-David Munk Source Type: blogs
Hepatitis C Treatments Are Cost Effective
Gilead’s Hepatitis C drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni are often targeted for their upfront price, rather than their long-term benefits for patients. Some states are pushing for legislation which would require drug companies to disclose their costs associated with the drug, often citing Sovaldi’s $84,000 course of treatment as a core reason behind the push. Massachusetts has proposed mandatory price caps in certain cases.
However, what is often lost in the discussion is the fact that Hepatitis C is the leading cause of cirrhosis, liver cancer, and liver transplantation. These diseases and surrounding procedures and complicatio...
Source: Policy and Medicine - August 7, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
“Bad Guy” Big Pharma: An Easy Target?
<p style="font-size: 11.1999998092651px; line-height: 19.0400009155273px;"><span style="font-size: 11.1999998092651px; line-height: 19.0400009155273px;">Do Americans always need an entire industry to hate or complain about? Big tobacco, big banks, big insurers, big brokerage houses, big oil and energy companies, big automakers, big for-profit hospital companies, big pharma, have all been easy targets in the past. More often than not because of big profits, abuses and excesses, and safety concerns. On July 23, 2015, The New York Times fired another salvo at big pharma when it published Andrew...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - August 6, 2015 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Hayley Dittus-Doria Tags: Health Care Pharmaceuticals cost drug safety syndicated Source Type: blogs
Praluent, the Next Expensive "Game Changer," Blockbuster," "New Hope," - But Not Yet Shown to Benefit Patients
ConclusionsThe NEJM study was accompanied by an editorial by Stone and Lloyd-Jones(2) which documented that drugs previously shown to lower cholesterol were never proved to do any good for patients, and concluded,it would be premature to endorse these drugs for widespread use before the ongoing randomized trials, appropriately powered for primary end-point analysis and safety assessment, are available. After an FDA advisory committee recommended approval of aliromucab and another PCSK9 inhibitor in June, 2015, John Mandrola entitled a Medscape article,Dear FDA: Resist the Urge on PCSK9 DrugsHis reasons included lack o...
Source: Health Care Renewal - August 5, 2015 Category: Health Management Tags: aliromucab evidence-based medicine health care prices manipulating clinical research PCSK9 inhibitor Praluent Regeneron Sanofi-Aventis Source Type: blogs
