Engineers at UC San Diego are testing new ways to build biosensors into the elastic bands on underpants to monitor key biomarkers on health. One day the super underpants could be used to check everything from the level of alcohol in your system to the level of stress you're operating under. Story
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Secretary Katherine Sebelius on the evils of private sector rationing in 2009:
"It's private insurers who often are telling their clients that, "No, you can't get this recommended treatment that the doctor has made"; "No, you can't get this drug"; "No, you're not going to be able to stay in the hospital an extra day"; "No, you're not going to get this because we're concerned about costs."
HHS solution to the fact that Congress has underbudgeted money for temporary insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions in state run high risk pools:
“There’s a certain amount of money authorized in the statute, and we will do our best to make sure that that amount of money insures as many people as possible and does as much good as possible,” said Jay Angoff, director of the Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). “I think it’s premature to say [what happens] when it’s gone.”
Read more here
Sounds like rationing to me, at least according to the definition used by Sec. Sebelius: "We will not allow these companies to insure only the healthy and leave the sick to suffer."
instead, the government will make that happen.
"It's private insurers who often are telling their clients that, "No, you can't get this recommended treatment that the doctor has made"; "No, you can't get this drug"; "No, you're not going to be able to stay in the hospital an extra day"; "No, you're not going to get this because we're concerned about costs."
HHS solution to the fact that Congress has underbudgeted money for temporary insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions in state run high risk pools:
Health law risks turning away sick
- 07/01/10 07:13 PM ET
The Obama administration has not ruled out turning sick people away from an insurance program created by the new healthcare law to provide coverage for the uninsured.
Administration officials insist they can make changes to the program to ensure it lasts until 2014, and that it may not have to turn away sick people. Officials said the administration could also consider reducing benefits under the program, or redistributing funds between state pools. But they acknowledged turning some people away was also a possibility.“There’s a certain amount of money authorized in the statute, and we will do our best to make sure that that amount of money insures as many people as possible and does as much good as possible,” said Jay Angoff, director of the Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). “I think it’s premature to say [what happens] when it’s gone.”
Read more here
Sounds like rationing to me, at least according to the definition used by Sec. Sebelius: "We will not allow these companies to insure only the healthy and leave the sick to suffer."
instead, the government will make that happen.
California is the front line in the war over patient-centric care and cost-based controls. And the present battle engagement is over Assembly Bill 1826 and “fail first/step therapy”
According to a report in the Sacramento Bee, insurance interests are lobbying state senators to reject the proposal.
“In letters, insurance associations and companies also contend that step therapy is a good idea because employees of health plans are often in a better position than patients' doctors to know the risks of drug interaction.”
Blue Shield of California also wrote, "step-therapy protocols also act as a check-and-balance to the cozy relationship that exists between many physicians and drug companies."
This from the industry that spiffs physicians with monetary incentives when they switch patients from innovator to generic medicines.
The group's letter says plans consult "expert opinion" and federal research, while many doctors lack a procedure to get "the latest information" about proper drug dosages.
All those in favor of disempowering physicians in favor of insurance companies signify by saying “Oy!”
The complete Sacramento Bee story can be found here.
LETTERS
July 1, 2010
Finger-Pointing Doesn't Provide Care
The financial disaster that will befall doctors and the corresponding lack of access to care that will befall seniors if Congress fails to address scheduled cuts in Medicare ("Doctors Chafe as Medicare Cuts Loom," U.S. News, June 16) isn't a new problem. In fact, the president was only able to claim that his health-reform plan didn't add "one dime to our deficit" by ignoring $371 billion in spending needed to fix Medicare reimbursement rates.
Congressional Democrats claimed that the cost of fixing the Medicare payment formula shouldn't count as part of their health-care reform package because it was a problem they inherited. But now isn't the time to assign blame. Now is the time to solve the problem, for which we all will have to pay.
Peter Pitts
President
Center for Medicine in the Public Interest
New York City
(Mr. Pitts is a former associate commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration.)
Biosensors added to underpants
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide.
A separate safety office?
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit.
Report language in a House appropriations bill for FDA outlines the creation of an independent office within the agency to evaluate a drug's post-market safety profile.
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot.
According to Representative Rosa DeLauro (D, CT), who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee, this new FDA office would (per the Pink Sheet) “avoid the potential for bias that arises when FDA staff who approve a drug are the same people who make decisions when a marketed drug's safety is called into question.”
This is a bad idea for many reasons, let me mention two:
(1) How can you determine a drug’s “safety” without also understanding its real world concomitant benefit?
(2) The more-than-implied accusation that FDA staff that worked on a drug’s ultimate approval cannot be trusted to view safety issues without “bias” is entirely untrue and highly insulting. Who can be trusted? FDA's own "Bard of Safety" -- David Graham? Shame. Shame. Shame.
Representative DeLauro did not provide specific language on a separate safety office during the subcommittee markup, but noted that she developed it with assistance from Senator Charles Grassley (R, IA), and Representative Maurice Hinchey (D, NY). Mr. Hinchey introduced H.R. 4816, the FDA Improvement Act of 2010, which would establish within FDA an independent Center for Post-Market Drug, Device and Biologics Safety and Effectiveness.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.
On the DDMAC front, the report calls for $3 million more for Abrams & Associates to review DTC materials and an additional $2 million for professional communications.
Depending on where you sit, that’s either too much or too little.
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger
Check out CMPI's interview Charles Djou
Watch Grover Norquist on Health Care Reform
Bravo.
Medicare and Medicaid patients with a chronic condition will be able to review all their medications in one-on-one sessions with pharmacists under a bill introduced Tuesday by Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.). The Medication Therapy Management (MTM) Expanded Benefits Act would also reimburse pharmacists to follow up and educate patients about their medication regimen.
"This bill will allow seniors with one chronic condition, such as diabetes or heart disease, to bring all of their medications to the pharmacy and ensure they are following doctor's orders," Hagan said in a statement. "If more seniors properly follow their medication regimens, we can save lives and Medicare dollars."
Currently 12.9 percent of seniors in the Medicare prescription drug program — all of whom have multiple chronic illnesses — are eligible to participate in MTM programs. Hagan's bill would allow seniors with only one chronic illness to participate in the program at pharmacies, hospitals and other entities that distribute pharmaceutical drugs and provide MTM services.
Wither comparative effectiveness?
"We are now right on the cusp of an era where we can get all the data we want," but getting the research methods and analytics right "is going to be quite critical," said Carolyn Clancy, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
But data, as the saying goes, is like a bikini – what it shows you is interesting, but what it conceals is essential.
Clancy believes (and appropriately so) that data could help, say, a newly diagnosed cancer patient who wants to know, "What happens to people like me if I choose this path, that path or another path?"
They don’t call it the Critical Path for nothing.
Clancy: "Increasingly we're seeing in legislation the opportunity to inform policy with science, but the details really matter in getting it right."
Indeed. And those details need to lead us towards the “four rights” – the right medicine in the right dose at the right time for the right patient.
And that’s not comparative effectiveness – that’s clinical effectiveness.
Center for Medicine in the Public Interest is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization promoting innovative solutions that advance medical progress, reduce health disparities, extend life and make health care more affordable, preventive and patient-centered. CMPI also provides the public, policymakers and the media a reliable source of independent scientific analysis on issues ranging from personalized medicine, food and drug safety, health care reform and comparative effectiveness.
