Doctors, Legislators Resist Drugmakers’ Prying Eyes

In the letter, the salesperson wrote that Thakkar was causing his patients to miss more days of school than they would if he put them on Vigamox, a more expensive brand-name medicine made by Alcon Laboratories.

Talk about gall! Telling a physician what he should be subscribing to his patients!

Now the issue is bubbling up in the political arena. Last year, New Hampshire became the first state to try to curtail the practice, but a federal district judge three weeks ago ruled the law unconstitutional.

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“In this case commercial interests took precedence over the interests of the private citizens of New Hampshire,” Rosenwald said. “This is like letting a drug rep into an exam room and having them eavesdrop on a private conversation between a physician and a patient.”

The April 30 ruling by U.S. District Judge Paul Barbadoro, nominated to the federal bench in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush, called the state’s pioneering law an unconstitutional restriction on commercial speech.

How typical of a REPUGNican judge! To place the interests of Big Pharma over the interests of the patients! This is an unequal contest — Big Pharma has more resources to lobby physicians than states do.

A drug company might use the database to help determine whether physicians prescribing a particular high-risk drug have undergone required training about the medicine, said Marjorie E. Powell, senior assistant general counsel for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade association.

“If you don’t have that information, then you are in a very difficult situation,” Powell said. “There is no way you can implement the risk-management plan that the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] is requiring you to implement in order to allow the drug to be on the market.”

To me, this sounds like a threat; but judge for yourself — here’s the link to the article.

Teen Who Killed 2 Fairfax Officers Had Reached for Help
I just cannot believe that the Rockville Police released him even though they had been warned that he had spoken about “suicide by cop”. Just what in god’s green earth were they thinking???!!!

In his lucid moments, Michael W. Kennedy longed to have his mental health back, saying he felt tortured by strange delusions and might kill himself to find peace, say teenagers who were close to him and an adult who has spoken with Kennedy’s parents.

They said that when Kennedy, 18, fired more than 70 shots outside a Fairfax County police station last week, mortally wounding two officers, it marked the end of a half-year descent from normalcy to homicidal madness. His decline began suddenly in the fall, they said, with the unexplained onset of chronic severe headaches and bouts of sleeplessness.

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Insurance Required Of All Residents, but Funding Isn’t Final

But, even amid the pomp, the bloom on Massachusetts’s first-of-its-kind policy was wearing off. Some observers have charged that the plan promises a huge array of low-cost, state-subsidized health-insurance policies for the uninsured to buy — but provides few details about how this will be done.

Specifically, the bill leaves much of the detailed work of creating these policies, including setting premiums, co-payments and the required state subsidies, to a “Connector” agency now being created.

That has left state officials with only a rough guess as to how much the system will cost — perhaps $600 million — and how much government will have available to pay. The money is supposed to be drawn from funds that are now used to pay for free care for the uninsured, a total estimated by the state at $1 billion.

Alan Sager, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health, said this week that this kind of financial estimation isn’t good enough for a project with such high stakes.

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The bill, intended to extend coverage to Massachusetts’ estimated 550,000 uninsured, is being touted as a national model, thrusting the state to the forefront of the national debate about how to provide near-universal health care coverage without creating a single government-controlled system.
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Romney used his line-item veto power to strike eight portions of the bill, most significantly the $295 fee. Administration officials say the fee could actually discourage registration for the new health program, since some employers might consider it cheaper to pay the fee than to insure workers.
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Leaders of the heavily Democratic House and Senate said they would override any changes made by the governor.

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Here’s yet another argument for a single, centralized, and nationalized health care system.

Startling research from the biggest study ever of U.S. health care quality suggests that Americans _ rich, poor, black, white _ get roughly equal treatment, but it’s woefully mediocre for all.

“This study shows that health care has equal-opportunity defects,” said Dr. Donald Berwick, who runs the nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Mass.

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A Cancer Drug’s Big Price Rise Disturbs Doctors and Patients

On Feb. 3, Joyce Elkins filled a prescription for a two-week supply of nitrogen mustard, a decades-old cancer drug used to treat a rare form of lymphoma. The cost was $77.50.

On Feb. 17, Ms. Elkins, a 64-year-old retiree who lives in Georgetown, Tex., returned to her pharmacy for a refill. This time, following a huge increase in the wholesale price of the drug, the cost was $548.01.

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Charles Parents Find Few Openings as Providers Grow Reluctant to Accept Medicaid

When Shenna Foster called the 800 number to find a dentist for her teenage son, Maryland’s health care program for the poor offered three options: Greenbelt, New Carrollton and Fort Washington. Foster lives in Waldorf, 15 miles from the nearest location.

She does not drive, and public transportation is spotty for the journey. Six months later, her son’s teeth remain a problem, with on-again, off-again pain.

There is only one general dental practice within Charles County that routinely accepts patients covered by the state, and that office won’t accept new patients until summer.

“I called and asked for the dentist closest to me, and I’m still trying to find one,” said Foster, a mother of four. “I’ve been calling for over a year.”

Foster’s struggle to find a local dentist is a dramatic example of the statewide and national shortage of dentists who treat patients covered by government-run Medicaid. The 8,000 children who qualify in Charles have the lowest rate of access to dental care in Maryland, according to the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The shortage is particularly trying in this emerging Washington suburb, because of the relatively small pool of private dentists — 63 for 137,000 people — and the limited public transportation to reach offices beyond the county’s borders.

The two community clinics in Charles each have one dentist available one day a week for both adults and children.

“It’s especially brutal here,” said Cheryl DeAtley, the coordinator of an early childhood program that pays for dental care for about 75 of the county’s youngest children from low-income families. “If they are on medical assistance, chances are they don’t have the transportation, either. It’s a domino effect.”

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Efforts to Get Medicine To Poor Children Falter

One vaccine, which protects against a life-threatening form of pneumonia, has been available to children in the United States for five years and has had a dramatic impact on disease here. The other, a vaccine that protects against a deadly form of diarrhea, is poised for a rollout soon among middle-income countries in Latin America.
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But the efforts have faltered amid a dizzying array of snafus, misjudgments and business difficulties. One company cannot produce enough vaccine, and studies needed to support widespread use of another have been slowed by behind-the-scenes squabbling. The problems have proved so vexing that the vaccines are expected to take an additional three to five years to reach the poorest villages.
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Most people have never heard of rotavirus, but every child in the world contracts it early in life. In such places as the United States, some children are hospitalized with rotavirus diarrhea, but they get good care and do not die. In countries with poor health systems, children often progress to catastrophic dehydration and an estimated 440,000 die of rotavirus every year.
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Some public-health doctors, although regretting that the original goal will not be met, urged a sense of perspective, noting that the vaccine might reach poor children just a few years after it reaches those in rich countries. “If we can cut the lag time from 30 years to a decade or less, that’s 20 years of lives saved,” said Nils Daulaire, president of the Global Health Council, an advocacy group in White River Junction, Vt.

The sentiment, however valid, is a measure of the degree to which the public-health world has become accustomed to death on a mass scale.

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In The Right Nation: Conservative Power In America Adrian Woolridge and John Mickelwaite argue — among other things — that the conservative movement does a much better job of publicizing it’s ideas than the left does. Therefore, I urge the reader to click on this link and read a New Yorker article (”The Moral Hazard Myth”) on the uninsured in the U. S.