Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
“Why is there so much controversy about drug testing? I know plenty of guys who would be willing to test any drug they could come up with”– George Carlin The New York Times published two articles this week about prescription drugs. The first deals with generic drugs (“More Generics Slow Rise in Drug Prices“); the…
Most health care scholars–whether they are scientists, doctors or economists–believe that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the best means by which one can test whether or not a drug is efficacious. Despite its high cost, RCTs are able to abstract from confounding factors by randomly assigning similar patients to both a treatment and a placebo-controlled…
There is an interesting article in the NYT Magazine (“Self-Nonmedication“) about the anti-depressant drugs pharmaceuticals. The author stops taking Effexor and experiences anti-depressant withdrawl discontinuation syndrome.
The Washington Post (“Senate likely to Back…“) reports that the Senate will support a plan to remove the legislative barriers against the importation of pharmaceuticals from other countries. According to the article: “The provision would allow consumers to buy prescription drugs from Canada and permit commercial distributors to obtain them from Canada, Japan, Austria, Switzerland…
“…in a similar way, the slow growth of the coloring industry in the U.S. before the First World War was largely due to patent protection: most patents were held by the large German companies, such as Bayer, BASF, Hoechst and IG Farben. The chemical industry in the US was so underdeveloped, that during the First…
There is a very interesting series of blog posts at the Economist’s Free Exchange blog. Part I: Me too! Me too! Part II: More on me-toos Part III: We talk back Here’s a quotation from part I: “In what other industry does anyone under the age of sixty still believe that each product category should…
Most economists believe that increasing the price of an item will decrease demand for the item. Health care is no different from any other good. If you increase the copayment or coinsurance rate, people will consume fewer medical services. The famous RAND Health Insurance Experiment (HIE) demonstrated that higher coinsurance rates discourage medical care consumption.…
Courtesy of Kevin, M.D. blog: an interesting interview with a former drug rep at Eli Lilly employee who sold Zyprexa between 1998 and 2000.
The Manhattan Institute’s Center for Medical Progress has some interesting articles on health care policy. The Center “…is dedicated to articulating the importance of medical progress and the connection between free-market institutions…” One paper of note is by Vernon, Santerre and Giaccotto (“Are Drug Price Controls good for your Health“). The authors examine the Medicare…
In June of 2005, a pharmaceutical named BiDil used to combat heart failure was approved by the FDA. While this is not a notable event—there are many drugs to treat heart failure—the approval is novel since it was only approved for African-American patients. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the FDA “…approved BiDil for use…