Largest Fraud Takedown Announced by AG Sessions
On Thursday, July 13, 2017, United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price, M.D., announced the largest ever health care fraud enforcement action by the Medicare Fraud Strike Force. The action charged 412 defendants across forty-one federal districts for their alleged participation in health care fraud schemes involving $1.3 billion in false billings.
The 412 defendants include 115 doctors, nurses, and other licensed professionals. Of the 412 defendants, over 120 of them were charged for their roles in prescribing and distributing opioids and other danger...
Source: Policy and Medicine - July 19, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
Hemopurifier Filters Ebola, Hep C, Metastatic Melanoma: Interview with James A. Joyce, CEO of Aethlon Medical
Filtering infectious pathogens and cancer cells directly from whole blood has been an almost fantastic proposition, but the Hemopurifier from Aethlon Medical does just that. We’ve been covering it for over 10 years on Medgadget as it proves itself in clinical trials and new applications for it are discovered. It has already been studied as a treatment option for hepatitis C, metastatic melanoma, and the Ebola virus. Recently at the 2017 BIO International Convention in San Diego, virus capture data was presented from a study of the Hemopurifier involving health-compromised patients infected with a virus.
We wer...
Source: Medgadget - July 18, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Exclusive Medicine Oncology Source Type: blogs
Which Is More Efficient: Employer-Sponsored Insurance or Medicaid?
By SAURABH JHA, MD
An old disagreement between Uwe Reinhardt and Sally Pipes in Forbes is a teachable moment. There’s a dearth of confrontational debates in health policy and education is worse off for it.
Crux of the issue is the more efficient system: employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) or Medicaid. Sally Pipes, president of the market-leaning Pacific Research Institute, believes it is ESI. Employers spend 60% less than the government, per person: $3,430 versus $9,130, per person (according to the American Health Policy Institute). Seems like a no brainer.
Pipes credits “consumerist and market-friendly approaches t...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 13, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: at RogueRad Tags: Economics OP-ED employer-sponsored insurance Medicaid Sally Pipes Uwe Reinhardt Source Type: blogs
Undoctored: Health Should Be (Almost) Free
Follow the current debate on “healthcare reform”–which has NOTHING to do with healthcare reform, but healthcare insurance reform, by the way–and you will hear comments about the escalating and uncontrolled cost of healthcare and how people need access to it.
What you will NOT hear is that fact that, because the healthcare system fails to deliver genuine health, real health is actually quite easy, straightforward, and inexpensive–nearly free.
We achieve a life of being Undoctored, not becoming a profit source for the healthcare industry, not being subjected to the predatory practices of Big P...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - July 13, 2017 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Undoctored Wheat Belly Lifestyle acid reflux anti-aging autoimmune blood sugar bowel flora cholesterol Dr. Davis energy Gliadin gluten gluten-free grain-free grains health healthcare Inflammation joint pain low-carb Source Type: blogs
Hepatitis C and women of childbearing age
Hiding in the shadow of the opioid epidemic is another troubling public health crisis, the precipitous increase in people whose liver is infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV).
It’s likely you have seen the drug company commercials advertising medications to treat hepatitis C. In these commercials, it appears that hepatitis C is only a problem among older Americans. Although baby boomers still represent the largest group infected with hepatitis C virus, these commercials only tell a part of the story.
The hepatitis C virus is transmitted by direct contact with the blood of someone who is infected with the virus. Most peop...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - July 3, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Andrea Chisholm, MD Tags: Health Source Type: blogs
Government Regulation, Lawyers and the Opioid Crisis
By DEVON HERRICK
A short letter to a medical journal nearly 40 years ago may have been the nudge that set the opioid crisis in motion. A letter to the New England Journal of Medicine asserted addiction to prescription opioids was rare, claiming only four addictions were documented out of thousands patients who were prescribed powerful opioid pain pills in a hospital setting. The article has been cited hundreds of times in the years since. Doctors and drug makers may have relied on the letter as evidence that it was safe to prescribed opioids to more patients with chronic pain in settings far removed from carefully supervi...
Source: The Health Care Blog - June 12, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Opiood Crisis Vio Source Type: blogs
Drug Prices And Medical Innovation: A Response To Yu, Helms, and Bach
In a recent Health Affairs Blog post, Nancy Yu, Zachary Helms, and Peter Bach note that prices for top-selling drugs are higher in the United States than in other countries. They conclude that “premium pricing [in the United States] exceeds what is needed to fund global R&D.” They further suggest that “lowering the magnitude of the US premium” would have saved $40 billion for US prescription drug purchasers in 2015.
Essentially, the authors imply that the US price premium could be significantly reduced without affecting research and development investments or having other adverse effects. This is a strikingly b...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - June 2, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Henry Grabowski and Richard Manning Tags: Costs and Spending Drugs and Medical Innovation Featured Big Pharma drug innovation drug pricing Research and Development Source Type: blogs
Safe injection sites and reducing the stigma of addiction
Imagine a chronic medical condition in which the treatment itself has serious side effects. Examples of this are plentiful in medicine. For example, in diabetes, giving too much insulin can cause hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), a dangerous and potentially life-threatening condition. That doesn’t happen very often, but imagine that it was a common complication of treating diabetes because doctors couldn’t really tell how powerful a given dose of insulin actually was. And suppose that doctors and patient safety experts advocated for places where patients with diabetes could be carefully monitored when taking their insuli...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - June 2, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Scott Weiner, MD Tags: Addiction Behavioral Health Brain and cognitive health Mental Health Pain Management Source Type: blogs
Drug Prices Are Growing at Slowest Rate in Years
You’d think, from listening to politicians and news anchors, that the cost of prescription drugs is the highest it has ever been, and continuing to rise out of control. However, in reality, growth in drug prices this year was half of last year and the average out-of-pocket cost to consumers has decreased. This information comes from a new report from The QuintilesIMS Institute.
According to the report, growth in spending on prescription medications in the United States fell in 2016, as competition increased among manufacturers, and payers focused on efforts to limit price increases. According to the report,
Drug spen...
Source: Policy and Medicine - May 24, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
Hepatitis E in the United Kingdom
A recent posting in ProMED discussed the threat of Hepatitis E related to pork products imported into the United Kingdom from France, Germany and the Netherlands. Indeed, all countries concerned have been reporting increasing rates for this disease in recent years – see graph [1] :
Reference:
GIDEON Graphs Tool
Note featured on ProMED
The post Hepatitis E in the United Kingdom appeared first on GIDEON - Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Online Network. (Source: GIDEON blog)
Source: GIDEON blog - May 23, 2017 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Dr. Stephen Berger Tags: Epidemiology Graphs Source Type: blogs
No, I ’m not settling for family medicine
During a recent internal medicine rotation, a senior resident expressed disappointment that I’ve chosen a career in family medicine. He was concerned that my talents would be wasted, because — in his words — I wouldn’t get to care for the “more complex patients” he sees in internal medicine. Although I appreciated his confidence in my abilities, I felt my heart sink, as it does each time I am faced with misinformed perceptions about family medicine.
I thought back to my last family medicine rotation, and the following patients came to mind:
A young woman with a previous diagnosis of idi...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - May 16, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/lauren-abdul-majeed" rel="tag" > Lauren Abdul-Majeed < /a > Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
The Little Louisiana Purchase
By ROBERT PEARL, MD
“Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered,” the saying goes. And so may it prove to be true for the pharmaceutical industry.
Three articles, all published recently, illustrate the greed and egregious pricing by certain drug companies that are gaining public recognition and scrutiny.
Marathon Pharmaceuticals LLC serves as a case in point. Over the last 15 years, its chairman and CEO Jeffrey Aronin generated a billion-dollar valuation for the company. As reported in a Wall Street Journal article, “Drug Price Revolt Prods a Pioneer to Cash Out,” he achieved this milestone not by inventing ne...
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 12, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
The Louisiana Purchase
By ROBERT PEARL, MD
“Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered,” the saying goes. And so may it prove to be true for the pharmaceutical industry.
Three articles, all published recently, illustrate the greed and egregious pricing by certain drug companies that are gaining public recognition and scrutiny.
Marathon Pharmaceuticals LLC serves as a case in point. Over the last 15 years, its chairman and CEO Jeffrey Aronin generated a billion-dollar valuation for the company. As reported in a Wall Street Journal article, “Drug Price Revolt Prods a Pioneer to Cash Out,” he achieved this milestone not by inventing ne...
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 12, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
New Checks and Balances For Big Pharma
By ROBERT PEARL, MD
“Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered,” the saying goes. And so may it prove to be true for the pharmaceutical industry.
Three articles, all published recently, illustrate the greed and egregious pricing by certain drug companies that are gaining public recognition and scrutiny.
Marathon Pharmaceuticals LLC serves as a case in point. Over the last 15 years, its chairman and CEO Jeffrey Aronin generated a billion-dollar valuation for the company. As reported in a Wall Street Journal article, “Drug Price Revolt Prods a Pioneer to Cash Out,” he achieved this milestone not by inventing ne...
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 12, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Did Big Pharma BUY Big Media?
Healthcare is at the top of the list of societal problems in the U.S.
Healthcare interactions are unsatisfying to most people, costs are out of control and cost every American nearly $10,000 per person per year while bleeding 17.5% of GDP, more than any other nation on earth for a system that ranks low or last in quality compared to other developed countries. For a problem as big as healthcare, big enough to cripple the entire economy in addition to bankrupting more and more Americans, you would think that media reporting would be filled with debate, criticisms, and in-depth coverage about the problems in healthcare.
But...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - May 2, 2017 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Undoctored abc bias big pharma cbs cnn drug industry fox gluten grains health healthcare illness media nbc pharmaceutical tv wheat Source Type: blogs
