Nothing that you haven’t already seen on THCB many time before, but in taking on (and slightly misrepresenting but not much!) the Mass concept that we should just tell all the uninsured to buy into the individual market, veteran commentator Emily Friedman has created a wonderful blistering critique of the individual market and the parasites that dwell in it.
Above the Fold
PHARMA: But this is how it’s done
The NY Times has an article about how a biotech drug that basically is no better than a generic is selling off the shelves at $4,200 a Dose. Doctors think it’s better, patients believe it’s better and payers are too wimpy to stand up to them. Of course they haven’t got a government agency to help them, as exists in the UK.
Interestingly enough this is exactly what happened nearly twenty years ago with one of the the first major biotech drug, Genetech’s Activase (tPA) for the immediate treatment of heart attacks. it cost about ten times what the competing drug (streptokinse) cost, and basically had no better results. At the time there was lots of murky stuff including a positive NEJM article written by scientists with close (and undisclosed) ties to the company. (If you want to know much more about that ugly debate, look at the debate starting at page 3 in this link and particularly the far right column of page 9). And then after a study showed incredibly small relative and absolute benefits in survival from using Activase, allegedly Genetech sent lawyers to lots of hopsitals explaining what a jury might say now that a lawyer could "prove" they weren’t using the best possible drug. Pretty soon everyone switched over.
Sounds like despite lots of talk about cost-benefit analysis, cost controls, and pharmaco-economics, nothing has changed.
POLICY/POLITICS: Personal angst on research
There are sometimes when two contradictory thought streams start charging through my brain and I can’t cope. This is one.
I got an email from a PR person for this website http://www.yourcandidatesyourhealth.org/ which tells you your local candidates record essentially for or against embryonic stem cell research. As you might guess, the idea from Research!America and the Lasker Foundation is to encourage people to vote against candidates opposing stem cell research (or at least get them to change their mind. The Research!America folks are a cross-section of business and academic types who like medical research.
And honestly how can any rational person be against them? When the choice is between them and the creationists who were only happy when we all lived in the dark ages, and don’t believe in the Enlightenment, personal liberty, the scientific method, et al. (Not of course that they won’t use the technological fruits of the movements they despise, particularly Talk Radio!).
But on the other hand, any really rational assessment of the health care system shows that we are spending way too much on medical research. The NIH alone is $30 billion a year, and that’s about doubled by private industry. Now we’re adding billions more at the state level. The problem is that the application of the products of that research is downright shoddy, and we’re spending almost nothing comparatively to figure out how to make it better.
It would be much better for the country and the health care system if we took the $30 billion spent on the NIH and the $300 million spent on AHRQ and flipped them. Then we’d really figure out how to apply the stuff we already know evenly and appropriately. We just don’t need more me-too cancer drugs at $4,000 a pop, when we can’t figure out how to get an Rx for aspirin in to the hands of discharged cardiac care patients (or whatever the appropriate cheap therapy is).
I’m convinced that if we put a ten year moratorium on all new medical research today, and spent all the money figuring out how to apply—and then actually applying—our medical knowledge across the board, we’d be much better off. Of course that’s never going to happen, and we need to save science from the hands of the anti-Enlightenment Philistines. But I remain to be convinced that the Research!America folks are applying their scientific resources in the most appropriate way possible.
Meanwhile, Steve Parker tells me about the launch of a new site called www.BreastCancerAwareness.com which is pretty self-explanatory and looks like it’ll be a useful resource.
BLOGS: Is the AMA getting angry?
When THCB started I lived two buildings down in the same block where this happened in SF yesterday.
I assume that my change of address wasn’t picked up in Chicago and that this is a word of warning from the Capos at the AMA to tone it down a bit.
(Just kidding, guys…)
PS I dont want to denigrate local journalism, but the pictures in the SF Chronicle were clearly taken from their office building at 5th and Mission (the one on this page was taken by a friend of a friend). Was the Chron photographer too busy to walk 3 blocks for a better one?
JOBS: Product manager health IT, SF Bay Area
And in today’s job announcement. A SF Bay Area company is looking for a Product Marketing pro to work at the intersection of technology and healthcare—Think improving the supply chain within the hospital.
The ideal candidate will have direct clinical/hospital setting experience as a nurse or other direct practitioner in the setting, but will have moved on from that environment to a track record in marketing, product and brand management. The company is not a start-up – they’re public, profitable, and have a substantial installed base of customers using and loving the systems.
If you’re interested *******@*********lt.net“>email me and I’ll pass it along.
QUALITY/THE INDUSTRY: DM powerhouse nixed by spreadsheet error
First the merger was delayed for some vague reason. Now it’s off. LifeMasters and Healthways nix $307M merger basically because of over-reported value of a certain contract — presumably one of the larger ones, and my guess would be a Medicaid one (But that is just a guess). And the difference was important enough that they couldn’t get to a new price
The termination followed a data and reporting error made by the unidentified actuarial firm regarding a LifeMasters’ contract, the companies said. That error “was unknown to LifeMasters at the time the parties entered into the Merger Agreement.” But the correction of the error “materially impacted period revenues” and financial projections that Healthways relied upon when it entered into the agreement.
“We are also disappointed that the merger could not be completed,” said David Strand, LifeMasters’ president and CEO.
Disappointed? I suspect that’s putting it mildly!
TECH/CONSUMERS: Privacy and electronic records
Jane Sarasohn Kahn brings you up to date on Being Transparent About Privacy.
BLOGS: PRSA Health Academy Panel
Dimitriy has a report on the PRSA Health Academy Panel that we were both on last week. Fun panel, but a little too early in the morning for my taste!
PHARMA/POLICY/POLITICS: November comes after September
Interesting article in the WaPo about the impact of the donut hole in Part D on the Senior vote. I think it will matter, it will hurt the Republicans and the signs seems to be point that way in one House race in Florida. Of course whether it will matter enough to push the House over to the Democrats is another matter. But the most interesting stat in the article is buried on the second page.
Perhaps playing in Klein’s benefit: More seniors are finding themselves
in the doughnut hole as the election approaches. The Institute for
America’s Future, a group calling for the closure of the gap,
calculated that, on average, seniors who enrolled in the benefit at the
beginning of the year would have fallen into the doughnut hole on Sept.
22.
So this problem will get worse all the way up to election day, and the greed fest known as the Medicare Modernization Act (of which to be fair the greed of big Pharma was only one small part) may play a factor. And if it does, the obvious change that the Democrats would now put in the bill would be negotiated pricing.
That was not what Pharma wants, but of course it’s a maybe and the CEOs of big Pharma who pushed the bill through are leaving their posts and leaving the potential consequences to their successors. My guess is that those successors will wise up and figure out how to cut a more reasonable deal so that they are not so squarely in the gun sights when the nation has a real debate about health care costs in a few more years.
TECH/INDUSTRY/POLICY: Out with the trash
Just some quick Friday cleaning up of stuff I never got to but you should look at.
- Intuit’s Dan Levin on how they’re going to fix the mess of medical billing et al.
- The head of the AMA bitching (with no little justification) about Health Insurers Profits
- Craig Barret CEO of Intel, bitching about the cost of health care in the US
- And the continuing irrational belief that a patchwork of state-based solutions can fix any national health care problem, this time in relation to the EMR infrastructure. Goal Is Electronic Health Records. Path Is State by State
As you may have gathered I was crazy busy yesterday and am playing ubber catch-up on about 5 fronts today. Hopefully will have a little more insight for you on Monday. Have a good weekend!
