First we have the revelation that many doctors prescribe a real "nothing" for patients, in part because nothing is wrong from them (or us) but just want time and the "laying of the hands" from a healer.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/10/30/ep.doctors.prescribe.placebos/
Next, rather than paying doctors for keeping people healthy or simply being there, health plans are -- even as legislative and ideological forces seek to eliminate the role of drug, biotech and device companies in discussing products with physicians -- filling the void with dollars and demands to swtich patients or start them on generic drugs. Nothing wrong with generic drugs, they are saving Medicare billions, but ultimately we want to get to point where prescribing is based on value, not just cost. But getting information about that will require close and open communication between everyone.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hsuaRf6mJu1lKskznFkkD9tHg6MAD944C4HG0
So you see, both power and knowledge abhor a vaccuum. And it will be filled by those pushing a financial and political agenda, such as trial attorneys and the consumer groups that benefits from their largesse, medical quacks and shakedown artists (like Steve Nissen).
How does this pentultimate preemption affect patients?
The most recent study from my former perch at the Center for Medical Progress at the Manhattan Institute (home to many solid Yankee fans!) tells the tale. The analysis, conducted by Columbia University Frank Lichtenberg is entitled:
Alive and Working: How Access to New Drugs has Slowed the Growth in America’s Disability Rates
It concludes that "access to pharmaceutical innovations has been responsible for keeping large numbers of U.S. residents off disability rolls who otherwise would have joined them."
The study shows that if " the average vintage of drugs prescribed since 1995 and paid for by Medicaid had not become more recent, the rate of increase at which working-age people were classified as disabled would have been 30 percent higher than it actually was, resulting in 418,000 additional people receiving disability payments in 2004. Social Security benefits paid to this population would have been an additional $4.5 billion."
Are generics really the best value for Americans? For millions of us, of course they are. But to say it's better to prescribe generics in all cases is to suggest that the only valuable thing doctors do is not to prescribe new drugs...
Better drugs (the right drug for the right person!), more time with doctors. That's a much better bang for the buck than what the social engineers and health policy elite have in mind.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mpr_07.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/10/30/ep.doctors.prescribe.placebos/
Next, rather than paying doctors for keeping people healthy or simply being there, health plans are -- even as legislative and ideological forces seek to eliminate the role of drug, biotech and device companies in discussing products with physicians -- filling the void with dollars and demands to swtich patients or start them on generic drugs. Nothing wrong with generic drugs, they are saving Medicare billions, but ultimately we want to get to point where prescribing is based on value, not just cost. But getting information about that will require close and open communication between everyone.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hsuaRf6mJu1lKskznFkkD9tHg6MAD944C4HG0
So you see, both power and knowledge abhor a vaccuum. And it will be filled by those pushing a financial and political agenda, such as trial attorneys and the consumer groups that benefits from their largesse, medical quacks and shakedown artists (like Steve Nissen).
How does this pentultimate preemption affect patients?
The most recent study from my former perch at the Center for Medical Progress at the Manhattan Institute (home to many solid Yankee fans!) tells the tale. The analysis, conducted by Columbia University Frank Lichtenberg is entitled:
Alive and Working: How Access to New Drugs has Slowed the Growth in America’s Disability Rates
It concludes that "access to pharmaceutical innovations has been responsible for keeping large numbers of U.S. residents off disability rolls who otherwise would have joined them."
The study shows that if " the average vintage of drugs prescribed since 1995 and paid for by Medicaid had not become more recent, the rate of increase at which working-age people were classified as disabled would have been 30 percent higher than it actually was, resulting in 418,000 additional people receiving disability payments in 2004. Social Security benefits paid to this population would have been an additional $4.5 billion."
Are generics really the best value for Americans? For millions of us, of course they are. But to say it's better to prescribe generics in all cases is to suggest that the only valuable thing doctors do is not to prescribe new drugs...
Better drugs (the right drug for the right person!), more time with doctors. That's a much better bang for the buck than what the social engineers and health policy elite have in mind.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mpr_07.htm
