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Import Canadian drugs

Import Canadian drugs – another half-baked idea that won’t work

That old Senate gadfly, Bernie Sanders, tried to win points as the self-proclaimed leader of the Democratic party by proposing a naive and impractical amendment to the Senate health care law to allow Americans to import Canadian drugs. The amendment specifically stated that it would “establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to lower prescription drug prices for Americans by importing drugs from Canada.”

The Amendment failed but not in the way you could imagine. Actually, 12 Republican Senators supported it, which in this environment of politics is nearly a miracle. You’d think that it would have passed, but it didn’t. Thirteen Democrats voted against the Amendment, which caused it to fail.

The liberal internet decided to come down hard on Senator Cory Booker of NJ, because just a day before he had the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the nomination of the backwards Jefferey Sessions for Attorney General, so how dare the perfect liberal not be perfect on everything. Senator Booker voted against the amendment for good reasons, though the crazy liberal media is fairly angry at him. And of course, the meme-makers had to pull out the old Big Pharma Shill Gambit, accusing all thirteen Democrats of being pawns of Big Pharma.

To be fair to Senator Booker, his office issued a statement to the media after the vote. It said he supports the importation of prescription drugs but that “any plan to allow the importation of prescription medications should also include consumer protections that ensure foreign drugs meet American safety standards. I opposed an amendment put forward last night that didn’t meet this test.”

In other words Sen. Booker and others are saying that, before we import Canadian drugs, let’s make sure they are safe. Yes, Canada’s drug distribution is fairly safe, but it’s not perfect. There are a lot of issues of safety that should be considered (and Sanders did not, because I’m beginning to be convinced his analytical skills are weak). But there’s a bigger concern – would Canada allow this to happen, and why would they? And that is the concern that Sanders failed to acknowledge.

Let me be absolutely clear. The USA needs some sort of drug pricing regulation, although I doubt it will happen under the Trump administration for lots of reasons.

Setting aside the positives and negatives of this amendment, let’s take a look at whether we can or should import Canadian drugs.Read More »Import Canadian drugs – another half-baked idea that won’t work

Tom Price HHS nominee

HHS nominee Tom Price and a radical right-wing physician organization

Recently, president-elect Donald Trump nominated Georgia congressman Tom Price to be Secretary for Health and Human Services (HHS). Price is a medical doctor whose impact on politics has been almost exclusively based on his unwavering opposition to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.

Once Trump was elected, along with a Republican Senate and House, most of us in healthcare knew that Obamacare was probably doomed. I don’t think it will be easy for the Republicans, now that they’re in power, to actually dismantle Obamacare, especially some of the more popular provisions such as elimination of the pre-existing conditions as a disqualification for receiving health insurance.

Also, there are over 20 million Americans who have taken advantage of health insurance from Obamacare, and I think it would be almost impossible for the Republicans to cut them off. But I may be delusional about the limits of Republican dislike of poorer Americans.

Setting aside healthcare insurance, what else may be impacted by Tom Price? Well, the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for many of the important health care institutions that matter to me and my readers. Some of the major institutions under the HHS umbrella are:

  • The National Institutes of Health (NIH) – the nucleus of biomedical and health-related research in the USA. Much of the research at NIH, which has an impressive world-wide reputation, serves as the foundation of much of what we know about human health and disease.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – if you are a reader of this website and blog for the past 5 years, you know I, and many others, have tremendous respect for the CDC. It functions as the frontline, first responders if you will, for any disease that appears in the world. It is made up of some of the leading scientists, public health specialists, and thought leaders in healthcare, who give their careers to help humanity. And, of course, they set vaccine policy for this country. The CDC has tremendous influence on public health across the globe.
  • The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – the primary regulator of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, food, diagnostics, supplements, and many other areas, it is one of the most powerful agencies in the world for protecting the health of consumers.
  • The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) – the federal agency that administers the Medicare program along with advising the states on Medicaid and other public health care programs.

Tom Price will have significant influence on much of the science of medicine, let alone the financing of health care in the USA. There is one thing in Price’s background that give us some significant insight as to how he’ll run his department – let’s just say, it’s not good. Yeah, none of us of would have predicted this.

Read More »HHS nominee Tom Price and a radical right-wing physician organization

vaccine profits

Big Pharma vaccine profits – a myth easily debunked

Note – this article has been updated and published here.

One of the ongoing memes, tropes and fabrications of the vaccine deniers is somehow, somewhere, in some Big Pharma boardroom, a group of men and women in suits choose the next vaccine in some magical way, and foist it upon the world just to make billions of dollars. And while magically concocting the vaccine brew, these pharmaceutical execs ignore ethics and morals just to make excessive vaccine profits from hapless vaccine-injured victims worldwide.

The Big Pharma vaccine profits conspiracy trope ranges across the junk medicine world. Homeopathy, for example, claims that Big Pharma suppresses the data that shows water cures all diseases. Like Ebola.

A new article published in Health Affairs (pdf) examined the actual costs of vaccine-preventable diseases. The Big Pharma vaccine profits conspiracy is still one of most amusing myths of the antivaccination world, because clearly the best economic choice for Big Pharma would be to provide medications and devices for those who are stricken by these diseases.Read More »Big Pharma vaccine profits – a myth easily debunked

another flu vaccine myth

Another flu vaccine myth – Big Pharma profits

There is a more general article – about the myth of Big Pharma vaccine profits – which has recently been updated and republished. 

The 2015-16 flu season is upon us, and that means it’s flu vaccine time again. And flu vaccine myth time. There is another flu vaccine myth – Big Pharma profits – that needs to be debunked.

Despite the availability of several flu vaccines, many people think that the flu is a painless, harmless disease, a belief belied by evidence. Wrong.

To put flu in perspective, in the USA, depending on the severity of the flu season, from 3,000 (which happened 25 years ago, and hasn’t been that low since) to 49,000 people die every year. Worldwide, about 250,000 to 500,000 people die from the flu every year. A flu pandemic, like the one in 1918, killed 50-100 million humans, much more scary than Ebola.

Of course, a fairly large group of people, including some who are pro-science (read, pro-vaccine), will fall into the arms of their favorite flu vaccine myth, and then refuse to get the flu vaccine. Given the dangers of the flu, and given the loss in productivity, income, and lives, you’d think that the flu vaccine would be near the top of health care needs for the average person.

My fellow blogger, Tara Haelle, spent numerous hours putting together the Top Myths about the flu vaccine. She debunks these myths completely out of the water. But antivaccination myths are never static, there’s always a new variant.Read More »Another flu vaccine myth – Big Pharma profits

Prices of vaccines–an uncomfortable discussion

Injection of FundsSuddenly, there has been a lot of noise about the price of vaccines. Well, there’s always been over-exaggerations and outright misinformation about vaccine prices and profits from the antivaccination gang, and they must be embarrassed by the quality of their arguments. OK, I doubt that. But there is noise out there.

But when the criticism comes from the “pro-vaccine” world, I needed to stand up and see what was being said. In my world of vaccines, I believe that anyone, especially children, who needs vaccines should get them for free. This is true in the USA (which leads the world in this one facet of healthcare), thus, any argument about vaccines costing too much falls rather flat to me. I hate dropping anecdotal data on my readers, but the fact is my health insurance plan, by no means some corporate executive level concierge plan, pays for all vaccines. In fact, I asked for one vaccination out of indication (meaning I was about 10 years too young to receive it), and the insurance company paid for it immediately and without question.

In the USA, the Affordable Care Act (best known as Obamacare) mandates vaccinations for adults and children with no out-of-pocket costs. Medicaid pays for vaccines. Medicare pays for vaccines, though the rules for payment are unnecessarily bureaucratic and confusing, unless the member is in Medicare Advantage. Maybe not as of today, but certainly soon, the cost of vaccines shouldn’t matter to the average rich or poor or middle-class American. And considering the number of lives saved by vaccines, this is an incredible and modern aspect of the USA health care system.Read More »Prices of vaccines–an uncomfortable discussion

Physicians get rich from vaccinating children–refuting another myth

vaccines-moneyOne of myths promulgated by the antivaccination cult (and there are so many of these myths) is that through some mysterious financial system, physicians make boatloads of money from vaccinating kids. Like almost all of the myths pushed by these vaccine denier, it does not even have a kernel of truth. In fact, in this case, I’m not even sure it’s in the same planetary system as the truth.

In an article by O’Leary et al., published recently in Pediatrics, we see that there is no evidence that vaccines are a major profit center for primary care physicians (which are usually pediatricians in the case of children). In fact, the article seems to indicate that vaccinations are a financial burden for many pediatricians.

The cost of vaccinating each child from birth to age 18 is around $2500, depending on the vaccines used. Multiply this by the 100’s of patients each practice may manage, and you’re looking at several million dollars in vaccines, all of which has to be purchased by the private physician, then given at cost or even below cost, depending on reimbursement, to patients.Read More »Physicians get rich from vaccinating children–refuting another myth