By ALYX STERNLICHT & MATTHEW HOLT

Like I told you, there’ll be a lot more on THCB about what’s going to be happening at Health 2.0 coming up Sept 25-8. Today’s edition–MarketConnect a new program for getting new products into provider organizations, modeled on something we’ve been doing as part of our pilot programs in Health 2.0’s Catalyst group–Matthew Holt

Through vigorous vetting of health technology companies and matching based on prospective buyers’ needs, Health 2.0 is simplifying and expediting the health tech buying and selling process during the 10th Annual Fall Conference on September 25-28 in Santa Clara. Health 2.0’s MarketConnect is an invitation only forum for buyers and sellers to be pre-matched for market compatibility and facilitate technology acquisition. Executives from organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, Cedars-Sinai and UPMC will be looking to connect with technology companies.

The networking program is designed to break down the barriers of technology adoption within large health systems and health organizations to connect tech companies directly with pre-qualified executives that are interested in seeing vetted technologies that are relevant to problems that are trying to solve.

How it works: Health 2.0 works with closely with buyers to identify specific areas where technology is needed and a solution is required within 12 months. Health 2.0 then assess the digital health marketplace and identifies relevant companies aligned with buyer’s’ technology needs and connect buyers with hand-picked companies during our MarketConnect event at Health 2.0’s Annual Fall Conference. During the event, buyers will meet with compatible companies with the intent of purchasing suitable technologies. If you want to know more contact Pa*****@********on.com

By ANISH KOKA, MD

Strokes are the third leading cause of death in the United States. 800,000 people suffer a stroke every year, and the consequences are frequently devastating. Lives are not just lost, but changed forever – speech permanently silenced, arms and legs turned into useless appendages. The brain is very expensive real estate and it is little surprise that a clot the size of a pinhead lodged in a blood vessel feeding the brain is all that is needed to wreak a devastation most fear worse than death.

Most of the time the source of the debris that results in a stroke can be readily identified, but at least one-third of the time no source can be found. These have been termed cryptogenic strokes by the medical community mostly because it is an intelligent sounding phrase when your doctor does not know why something happened. Almost 30% of strokes in patients under the age of 55 are found to be cryptogenic. Until the mid 80’s there was little progress in identifying the cause of these strokes, but around the same time I was wondering why Duran Duran was running through jungles in Sri Lanka on MTV, cardiologists began injecting air into the heart to shed light on this mystery.

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By UWE REINHARDT

Citing a recent report in the Los Angeles Times, an article in FirecePharma entitled “Some generic drug prices soar despite heavy competition” rises questions on the ability of market forces to reign in drug prices – for example, on the idea that the price of Mylan NV’s EpiPen would not have risen to $614 per 2-pack from about $100 per 2-pack or less in 2007 if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not prevented Sanofi’s and a new product by Teva to come on market, leaving Mylan NV in full monopolistic control, of this blockbuster market.

According to data assembled by the Los Angeles Times, prices of generic drugs can rise sharply even if multiple manufacturers compete for market share. As an illustration, the article cites the generic drug ursodiol for gall stones, produced by no less than 8 manufacturers. “Several years ago, the wholesale price ran as low as 45 cents a capsule. In May 2014, Lannett Co. ($LCI) bumped its price for ursodiol to $5.10 a capsule, a price hike of more than 1,000%. Rather than keeping their own generic versions of ursodiol low to steal market share, each competitor followed Lannett’s lead and priced their versions the same or close.”

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By DEVON HERRICK

U.S. Patent No. 4031893, Hypodermic Injection Device Having Means for Varying the Medicament Capacity Thereof                  

Americans throw away unused epinephrine auto-injectors worth more than $1 billion annually. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that Americans waste more than $1 billion annually on $50 million worth of epinephrine auto-injectors that are discarded unused. The devices should only cost $20 a pair. So, why do they cost $608 instead? 

First, a little background. Severe allergic reactions can result in anaphylaxis, including skin irritation, hives and a person’s windpipe can even begin to swell closed. Children allergic to peanuts or tree nuts are especially a concern since their parents are not always there to supervise them. By some estimates, perhaps 4 percent to 6 percent of children have some type of food allergy. Yet, the likelihood of children suffering anaphylaxis is low. Estimates vary, but a study from Washington State back in the 1990s found only 1 kid in 9,524 had an episode in any given year. A similar study from Minnesota found the rate was one in 1,400. The difference in the prevalence had to do with how strict a definition was used.

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By KIP SULLIVAN, JD

In an open letter to President Obama that I posted here on August 24, I stated that his expectation that the Affordable Care Act would have a deflationary effect was naive. I said he was badly misled by the managed care movement, and that he should never have accepted the movement’s diagnosis (overuse) and solutions (shifting insurance risk to doctors and micromanaging them). To help him understand that, I said I would post criticism of three prominent managed care proponents who influenced him: Elliott Fisher and his colleagues at the Dartmouth Institute, Atul Gawande, and Peter Orszag.

I will start with Elliott Fisher and his colleagues at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Research because they have been so influential with the entire health policy elite, not just Obama. I will devote this post and the next to them. I devote this post to demonstrating how influential they have been; I devote the next post to demonstrating how misleading they have been.

The Dartmouth Institute deserves credit for assembling data that shows substantial variation in the rate at which medical services are provided, both within small areas and between regions of the country. This data is very useful for generating hypotheses in need of further research. But the group deserves severe criticism for promoting the conclusion that variation can be explained primarily by overuse and virtually none of it can be explained by underuse, and for promoting “accountable care organizations” and other forms of “integrated care” as the solution that will address their erroneous overuse diagnosis.

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By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE

Discrimination in health care was institutionalized in Independence, Missouri on July 30, 1965 when President Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments of 1965 into law, creating “two moral frameworks for public financing of healthcare”. Medicare was supposedly an “earned” right for the elderly, while Medicaid was framed as a “welfare” program for the poor. It was a necessary political compromise. It was just a first step and bigger and better things would certainly be accomplished in due course. It was better than nothing. But fifty years later, and after taking yet another “first step” with Obamacare, the wasteful, divisive, discriminatory, and ultimately self-defeating direction we chose back in 1965, and again in 2010, has not changed one bit.

After 45 years of tinkering with Medicare and Medicaid, Obamacare in a bold stroke expanded the welfare model of medical care upwards into the heart of what used to be known as the American middle class, the former engine of progress and prosperity.  First, Obamacare expanded the Medicaid program itself to include people who are less poor than current Medicaid recipients. When Medicaid opened its doors in 1966, it provided charity health care to approximately 2% of Americans. Today, over 22% of Americans (72.6 million) and almost half of our children (35.3 million) are receiving their medical care via this welfare program and the numbers are trending sharply upwards.

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