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smptnow · 11 months

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QC Kinetix Unmasked: The Dark Side of Commercialized Regenerative Medicine

The healthcare industry, renowned for its potential to bring relief and healing, occasionally witness the emergence of practices that prioritize profit over patient well-being. One such case is that of QC Kinetix, a chain of clinics offering regenerative medicine therapies, often at a steep price. A closer look at their operational tactics, pricing strategies, and patient feedback reveals a concerning emphasis on revenue generation over evidence-based, patient-centric care.

The Business Model: High Stakes, Questionable Practices

QC Kinetix presents itself as a revolutionary provider in the field of regenerative medicine. Launched in 2017 in Charleston, South Carolina, by Justin Crowell, Tyler Vail, and Dr. Richard Schaffer, the franchise promised innovative, non-surgical solutions for musculoskeletal pain. However, beneath the veneer of medical advancement lies a business model riddled with aggressive sales tactics, inadequate medical assessments, and a workforce often lacking the specialized expertise the field demands.

The franchise's rapid expansion, spearheaded by CEO Scott Hoots, raises the first red flag. With a background rooted in fast-food franchising rather than healthcare, Hoots oversaw QC Kinetix's explosive growth from nine corporate clinics with $8 million in sales in 2020 to a staggering $27 million in revenue in 2021, as the number of franchise locations burgeoned. This aggressive scaling, reminiscent of retail rather than healthcare, suggests a priority of quantity over quality of care.

Pricing Outrage: Paying Top Dollar for Dubious Treatments

The financial burden on patients seeking treatment at QC Kinetix is hefty. An invoice analysis reveals not just exorbitant charges but also a cookie-cutter approach to patient care. For instance, a patient seeking help for foot neuropathy was handed a one-size-fits-all treatment plan with no personalized diagnosis or consideration of the patient's unique medical history, such as a significant spinal issue evident on his MRI.

The proposed treatments, including plasma therapy, PRP injections, A2M, and prolotherapy, were scheduled in rapid succession, with little regard for medical necessity or evidence-based practice. This 'conveyor belt' approach to treatment, coupled with the need for more specialist oversight (procedures are often performed by mid-level practitioners rather than doctors), highlights a reckless disregard for patient-specific care. Instead, the focus appears to be on maximizing revenue through a high turnover of standardized procedures.

Misleading Science and Celebrity Endorsements

Compounding the issue is QC Kinetix's promotion of their treatments as scientifically backed, often without substantial evidence. Their claim of safety and effectiveness for musculoskeletal injections lacks solid grounding in comprehensive medical studies. This gap between promise and proof is further widened by the FDA's caution regarding stem cell treatments, with severe restrictions in place due to ethical concerns and reports of patient hospitalizations.

In a classic move of commercialization over credibility, QC Kinetix has partnered with NFL legend Emmitt Smith to promote their services. While celebrity endorsements are not inherently problematic, they can create a veneer of legitimacy and efficacy where the scientific foundation is shaky, potentially misleading patients into believing these treatments are universally recognized and endorsed by the medical community.

Financial Strain and Franchisee Discontent

For those investing in a QC Kinetix franchise, the financial commitment is substantial, with initial fees and ongoing costs that include royalties, marketing fees, and more. However, the return on this investment is uncertain at best. The franchisor's income primarily hinges on equipment and supply sales to franchisees rather than patient care outcomes or clinic success. This revenue model, detached from actual patient service, coupled with numerous franchise resales listed on platforms like BizBuySell, signals franchisee discontent and a shaky financial foundation.

Patient reviews paint a similarly dismal picture, with numerous accounts of subpar treatment experiences, unmet medical needs, and financial exploitation without tangible health benefits.

Ethical Considerations and the Way Forward

The case of QC Kinetix underscores the ethical quandaries arising when healthcare is treated as a mere commodity. The company's focus on rapid expansion, high-volume sales, and aggressive marketing overshadows the foundational medical principles of patient safety, informed consent, and individualized care.

Patients seeking relief from chronic conditions deserve thorough, evidence-based treatment plans administered by qualified professionals, not salespeople. The healthcare community and regulatory bodies must advocate for stringent oversight, ensuring that entities like QC Kinetix prioritize patient well-being over profit. Only then can trust be restored in the sectors of regenerative medicine and healthcare franchising.

Nelle Kyzer

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rmlnowto · 11 months

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QC Kinetix Unmasked: The Dark Side of Commercialized Regenerative Medicine

The Business Model: High Stakes, Questionable Practices

Pricing Outrage: Paying Top Dollar for Dubious Treatments

Misleading Science and Celebrity Endorsements

Financial Strain and Franchisee Discontent

Patient reviews paint a similarly dismal picture, with numerous accounts of subpar treatment experiences, unmet medical needs, and financial exploitation without tangible health benefits.

Ethical Considerations and the Way Forward

Lucy Sickler

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fractured-systems · 3 years

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Drug prices, what goes up must come down.

Breaking down of the cost to develop, manufacture and distrubute pharmaceuticals is a mystifying process. You would think that this would be something that’s transparent. It’s not. “public outcry ensued after a new, blockbuster drug was marketed at a seemingly exorbitant price” “ In the summer of 2015, Turing announced that the drug's price would rise from $13.50 to $750 per tablet-a 5,500% increase.” This is concerning for multiple reasons.

The drug is called Daraprim, it treats protozoal infections in AIDS and cancer patients. These medicines can be an important part of a patients care. Charging this much is similar to price gouging. Which is illegal in cases of emergency. What I want to know is why is it acceptable in the pharmacutical world? The way we have allowed these drug companies to run unchecked is unacceptable. Legislation should be put in place to stop these corporations from taking advantage of consumers. “The reality is that we have pharmaceutical companies raising prices on lifesaving drugs 5,000%. When asked about those outrageous increases, CEOs are literally laughing in front of Congress. That needs to change.”

“As part of their reports, the manufacturers would have had to provide a justification for each price increase, manufacturing and research and development costs for the qualifying drug, net profits attributable to the drug, marketing and advertising spending on the qualifying drug, and other information as deemed appropriate.” Allowing the public to be in the loop about what the increase allows consumers to be informed on what they are paying for. If the public doesn’t agree with the reasoning I believe that they have the right to use legislation to decrease the price. The cost of important drugs shouldn’t be something that we have 0 input on.

Hemphill, Thomas A. "Legislating drug price transparency." Regulation, vol. 40, no. 2, 2017, p. 4+. Gale College Collection, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A499653988/GCCO?u=tihsho_b&sid=bookmark-GCCO&xid=6424f62b. Accessed 10 July 2021.

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Peru coronavirus: Locals cry out for oxygen as disease takes its toll

Oxygen, one of the most important weapons in keeping coronavirus patients alive, is in short supply and has become a powerful symbol of the chaos in Peru. Desperate citizens have turned to a burgeoning black market, with tanks listed for sale at exorbitant prices on social media and e-commerce sites.

One of those seeking oxygen was Carlos Roque Rojas, 41, whose 81-year-old mother developed a fever and breathing difficulties. He looked all over for oxygen for her but was ultimately unsuccessful. “My mother was abandoned,” he told CNN. “The demand for oxygen was too much.”

Roque, who lives in the Loreto region in the Amazon Basin, described people dying right next to him at a hospital, collapsing in front of his eyes. Shortly after, his mother was dead.

Roque’s experience illustrates the chaos the pandemic wrought on the region. Two doctors had told him that his mother had the coronavirus, although tests after she died came back negative and the cause of death was recorded as pneumonia. “I don’t know what to believe,” Roque told CNN, but it was clear to him that finding oxygen would have helped her live.

He said it was “incredible” the country was not prepared for a pandemic. “They need to improve our health system,” he said. “They need to improve the oxygen plants.”

Since Roque’s mother’s death on April 30, the virus has tightened its deadly grip on Peru, which now has the second-highest number of cases in Latin America after Brazil. According to the Johns Hopkins University database, Peru has reported more than 183,000 cases of Covid-19 with more than 5,000 fatalities.

The coastal city of Lambayeque is one of the hotspots, and Marcela Puicón, 30, is struggling to source oxygen for a stricken family member.

Puicón’s 60-year-old father is fighting pneumonia after becoming infected with coronavirus and also has a pre-existing lung condition. Puicón and her six siblings decided to treat their father at home, but none of them have been able to work due to ongoing lockdown measures and it’s a daily struggle to provide medicine and oxygen due to a lack of income.

“I feel helpless, angry and furious, I feel like my hands are tied,” she told CNN. “My father is sick and we can’t afford something that is so essential for him to survive.”

Government vows to help

On Thursday, Peru’s President Martin Vizcarra acknowledged the public outcry and announced emergency measures to increase production and access to oxygen for medical purposes, and declared the gas a strategic health resource.

“We are giving the Health Ministry the resources to buy the amount of oxygen we need at a national level to treat patients, established by our technicians,” said Vizcarra at a press conference. “We are assigning 84 million soles ($24.5 million) to the Health Ministry to buy the oxygen supply needed on a national level.”

Vizcarra also recognized problems with distribution and a shortage of cylinders themselves. “The same decree also establishes the transfer of 11 million soles to build oxygen networks and for maintaining oxygen plants in Lima and the regions,” he said.

Peru was one of the first nations in the Americas to take strict preventative coronavirus measures, such as stay-at-home orders, curfews and border closings.

However lockdown measures failed to hold. Many of Peru’s poor have no choice but to venture outside their homes for work, food or financial transactions, leading to crowding in markets, on public transport and outside banks.

More than 30% of households live in overcrowded conditions, said Kristian Lopez Vargas, a Peruvian economist and assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and 72% work in the informal sector, according to Peru’s National Institute of Statistics and Information, going out each day to earn enough money to survive.

“[Peru] has strengths but also some of the weaknesses we are seeing in other countries in Latin America,” said Marcos Espinal, Director of Communicable Diseases and Environmental Determinants of Health at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

These include under-investment, with Peru historically spending less than the 6% of GDP on public health recommended by PAHO, said Espinal, despite efforts to dedicate more resources to the sector in recent years. The country spent 3.165% of GDP on public health in 2017, according to the World Bank.

Peru also has less than two hospital beds per 1,000 people, which is insufficient, said Espinal, but it’s not clear what has caused the issue of oxygen shortages. “It’s difficult to give you that answer,” he said. “At the end of the day there might be several factors.”

What is clear is that the oxygen shortage is critical, and it’s getting worse, said Javier Gallardo, who runs Oxígeno y Derivados, a Lima-based company that distributes oxygen treatments to patients at home.

“Demand from hospitals and health clinics has multiplied by four or five because coronavirus patients need large quantities of oxygen for their treatment,” he said. Shortages are affecting gas cylinders and oxygen itself, Gallardo told CNN. “Unfortunately we are running out of stock,” he said, and the company is struggling to maintain supplies to coronavirus patients as well as those with other conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pulmonary fibrosis.

Despite the demands, Gallardo’s company hasn’t raised its prices, he said, unlike sellers on the black market.

Gallardo says it’s a “mystery” where the black market oxygen comes from, but he has spoken to clients who say that cylinders that used to sell for 1,200 soles ($353), which is what he charges, now change hands for 5,000 soles ($1,470) each. “It’s outrageous,” he said, adding that severe or critical coronavirus patients can use one cylinder of oxygen every 6-8 hours, or four per day.

“The demand for oxygen is critical, and from the start of the pandemic there was no plan to face this problem, we need to take into consideration that the current demand is around 50% higher than normal,” Leonid Lecca, executive director at NGO Partners in Health Peru and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, told CNN.

Communities organize fundraisers to buy oxygen

In response, communities across the country have been organizing to try to source oxygen.

In Iquitos, the capital of the Loreto region in the Amazon basin, Father Miguel Fuertes, Administrator of the Apostolic Vicariate of Iquitos, launched a fundraising campaign to help those in need. “There were a lot of patients and there was no oxygen for them, hospitals collapsed and you could see desperate people running around in the streets with oxygen tanks,” he said.

Fuertes told CNN his fundraiser has so far received 2 million soles ($588,544) and he has managed to buy three oxygen plants with the money, but there are still shortages in the area.

Father José Manuel Zamora Romero, the parish priest in Lambayeque in northern Peru, also started a campaign called #ResisteLambayeque to provide food for those in need and source oxygen tanks and medicine for those that contracted the virus.

“Hospitals do not have the capacity to treat these patients, there is no oxygen and many of them die due to the lack of it,” Zamora told CNN. “So far we have bought eight oxygen tanks, they are so expensive. None of them cost less than 4000 soles ($1,175).”

Zamora’s campaign has received support from celebrities such as national soccer team star Paolo Guerrero and he donated one of the oxygen tanks to Puicón to help her 60-year-old father to be treated at home, they both told CNN.

But the other issue is paying for refills, that is if there is any oxygen available at all. “We need to fill up the tank every day and these days due to the lockdown we can’t work and provide for the costs,” said Puicón, who would need to pay 170 soles ($50) for a refill. “Oxygen is sold out almost everywhere and the prices keep increasing.”

Gallardo, from the oxygen distribution company, said the main problem is not making more medical oxygen, but a shortage of cylinders themselves. Normally people send empty cylinders to be refilled straight away, but many patients are holding on to them as a precaution given the current shortage, he said. “Step by step we should move to safer and more efficient oxygen supply systems,” said Gallardo.

But people like Puicón need help right now with resupplying her donated oxygen tank. “Every day we call one place, another place and we try to find the money,” she said. “This situation is impossible.”

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dinafbrownil · 5 years

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For Her Head Cold, Insurer Coughed Up $25,865

Alexa Kasdan had a cold and a sore throat.

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The 40-year-old public policy consultant from Brooklyn, N.Y., didn’t want her upcoming vacation trip ruined by strep throat. So, after it had lingered for more than a week, she decided to get it checked out.

Kasdan visited her primary care physician, Dr. Roya Fathollahi, at Manhattan Specialty Care just off Park Avenue South, and not far from tony Gramercy Park.

The visit was quick. Kasdan got her throat swabbed, gave a tube of blood and was sent out the door with a prescription for antibiotics.

She soon felt better and the trip went off without a hitch.

Then the bill came.

Patient: Alexa Kasdan, 40, a public policy consultant in New York City, insured by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota through her partner’s employer.

Total Bill: $28,395.50 for an out-of-network throat swab. Her insurer cut a check for $25,865.24.

Service Provider: Dr. Roya Fathollahi, Manhattan Specialty Care.

Medical Service: Lab tests to look at potential bacteria and viruses that could be related to Kasdan’s cough and sore throat.

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What Gives: When Kasdan got back from the overseas trip, she said, there were “several messages on my phone, and I have an email from the billing department at Dr. Fathollahi’s office.”

The news was her insurance company was mailing her family a check ― for more than $25,000 ― to cover some out-of-network lab tests. The actual bill was $28,395.50, but the doctor’s office said it would waive her portion of the bill: $2,530.26.

“I thought it was a mistake,” she said. “I thought maybe they meant $250. I couldn’t fathom in what universe I would go to a doctor for a strep throat culture and some antibiotics and I would end up with a $25,000 bill.”

The doctor’s office kept assuring Kasdan by phone and by email that the tests and charges were perfectly normal. The office sent a courier to her house to pick up the check.

How could a throat swab possibly cost that much? Let us count three reasons.

First, the doctor sent Kasdan’s throat swab for a sophisticated smorgasbord of DNA tests looking for viruses and bacteria that might explain Kasdan’s cold symptoms.

Dr. Ranit Mishori, a professor of family medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, said such scrutiny was entirely unnecessary. There are cheap rapid tests for strep and influenza.

“In my 20 years of being a doctor, I’ve never ordered any of these tests, let alone seen any of my colleagues, students and other physicians, order anything like that in the outpatient setting,” she said. “I have no idea why they were ordered.”

The tests might conceivably make sense for a patient in the intensive care unit, or with a difficult case of pneumonia, Mishori said. The ones for influenza are potentially useful, since there are medicines that can help, but there’s a cheap rapid test that could have been used instead.

“There are about 250 viruses that cause the symptoms for the common cold, and even if you did know that there was virus A versus virus B, it would make no difference because there’s no treatment anyway,” she said.

(Kasdan’s lab results didn’t reveal the particular virus that was to blame for the cold. The results were all negative.)

Kasdan’s insurance company mailed her family a check for more than $25,000 to cover most of the lab tests, and the doctor’s office said it wouldn’t collect the leftover $2,530.26 from Kasdan. The insurer since has stopped payment on the check it issued and is investigating.(Shelby Knowles for KHN)

The second reason behind the high price is that the doctor sent the throat swab to an out-of-network lab for analysis. In-network labs settle on contract rates with insurers. But out-of-network labs can set their own prices for tests, and in this case the lab settled on list prices that are 20 times higher than average for other labs in the same ZIP code.

In this case, if the doctor had sent the throat swab off to LabCorp ― Kasdan’s in-network provider ― it would have billed her insurance company about $653 for “all the ordered tests, or an equivalent,” LabCorp told NPR.

The third reason for the high bill may be the connection between the lab and Kasdan’s doctor. Kasdan’s bill shows that the lab service was provided by Manhattan Gastroenterology, which has the same phone number and locations as her doctor’s office.

Manhattan Gastroenterology is registered as a professional corporation with the state of New York, which means it is owned by doctors. It may be the parent company of Manhattan Specialty Care, but that is not clear in its filings with the state.

Fathollahi, the Manhattan Specialty Care physician, didn’t respond to requests for comment. Neither did Dr. Shawn Khodadadian, listed in state records as the CEO of Manhattan Gastroenterology.

The pathologist listed on the insurance company’s “explanation of benefits” is Dr. Calvin L. Strand. He is listed in state records as the laboratory director at Manhattan Gastroenterology, as well as at Brookhaven Gastroenterology in East Patchogue, N.Y. We tried to reach him for comment, as well.

“I couldn't fathom in what universe I would go to a doctor for a strep throat culture and some antibiotics and I would end up with a $25,000 bill,” Kasdan says.(Shelby Knowles for KHN)

LabCorp, Kasdan’s in-network provider, said that they would have billed Kasdan’s insurance company about $653 for “all the ordered tests, or an equivalent.” (Shelby Knowles for KHN)

Even though Kasdan wasn’t stuck with this bill, practices like this run up the cost of medical care. Insurance companies base premiums on their expenses, and the more those rise the more participants have to pay.

More From Our Bill Of The Month Series

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“She may not be paying anything on this particular claim,” said Richelle Marting, a lawyer who specializes in medical billing at the Forbes Law Group in Overland Park, Kan., who looked into this case for NPR. “But, overall, if the group’s claims and costs rise, all the employees and spouses paying into the health plan may eventually be paying for the cost of this.”

Marting said this is a common problem for insurance companies. Most claims processing is completely automated, she said. “There’s never a human set of eyes that look at the bill and decide whether or not it gets paid.”

Kasdan did pay her usual $25 copay for the office visit, and a $9.61 fee to LabCorp for a separate set of lab tests.

Resolution: “I made it very clear [to the doctor’s office] that I was unhappy about it,” Kasdan said. In fact, she told them she would report the doctor to the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct. Next, she reached out to “Bill of the Month,” a joint project of NPR and Kaiser Health News.

After a reporter started asking questions about the bill, BCBS of Minnesota stopped payment on the check it issued and is now investigating.

Jim McManus, director of public relations for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, said the company has a process to flag excessive charges. “Unfortunately, those necessary reviews did not happen in this case,” he wrote in an email.

Despite the sophisticated DNA tests and resulting $28,395.50 bill, Kasdan’s lab results didn’t reveal the particular virus that was to blame for her cold. The results were all negative.(Shelby Knowles for KHN)

The Takeaway: Surprise bills often arise when an in-network doctor or hospital involves another provider who isn’t in the patient’s insurance network, without the patient’s consent. But it is often nearly impossible for a patient to detect when that is occurring.

Patients can try to protect themselves from surprise bills by asking for details at their doctor’s appointments.

Bill Of The Month Resources

“I always ask where they’re sending my labs or where they’re sending my images [like X-rays], so I can make sure that’s in-network with my insurance company,” attorney Marting said.

They can also probe why a test is being ordered:

“It is OK to ask your doctor, ‘Why are you ordering these tests and how are they going to help you come up with a treatment plan for me?’” said Georgetown’s Mishori. “I think it’s important for patients to be empowered and ask these questions, rather than be faced with unnecessary testing, unnecessary treatment and also, in this case, outrageous billing.”

If you’re sitting on the exam table thinking, “I won’t ask. … How much could it be?” The answer could be a lot.

New York state has a law to protect patients from surprise bills. The law requires doctors’ offices to warn patients in advance that they are using an out-of-network provider and that patients may be responsible for excess charges. If a patient doesn’t consent to the involvement of an out-of-network doctor, then they must be financially held harmless for the bill. But it doesn’t prevent the out-of-network providers from sending a bill or collecting from an insurer.

Kasdan said she was not told that the throat swab was being sent out of network at the time of her appointment, though it’s possible one of the many papers she signed included a broad caveat that some services might not be in-network.

People who suspect a bill is the result of a violation of law can report that to state authorities. In this case, the New York State Department of Financial Services investigates complaints.

You can contact NPR science correspondent Richard Harris at [email protected].

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by Kaiser Health News and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/medical-bill-of-the-month-head-cold-throat-swab-dna-tests-insurer-coughed-up-25k/

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titheguerrero · 6 years

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Most Americans Across Party ID Favor U.S. Government Negotiation to Lower Rx Drug Costs

There’s little Americans, by political party, agree upon in 2019. One of the only issues bringing people together in the U.S. is prescription drug prices — that they’re too high, that the Federal government should negotiate to lower costs for Medicare enrollees, and that out-of-pocket costs for drugs should be limited.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has been tracking this topic for a few years, and this month, their March 2019 Health Tracking Poll shows vast majorities of Democrats, Independents and Republicans all share these sentiments.

It’s not that patients who take prescription drugs don’t appreciate them – most (58%) say medicines have made their lives better, but most — 8 in 10 people — believe Rx costs are unreasonable.

It’s no surprise, then, that one-half of Americans have spoken with their doctor about whether there is a less expensive alternative to a drug the physician has prescribed.

The biggest culprit/contributor to prescription drug prices? consumers were asked. That would be profits made by pharmaceutical companies, cited by 80% of respondents. Second in line of contributors to prescription drug prices was the cost of R&D, followed by profits of prescription benefit managers (PBMs).

Few Americans — just one in four people — trust drug companies to price products fairly, KFF found. And, less than one-half of people trust that drug manufacturers inform the public when the companies learn of a safety concern with their drugs.

KFF found that most people over 18 years of age in the U.S. take prescription drugs, and over one-half of seniors use four or more different medicines. Those who have difficult affording their prescriptions tend to spend over $100 a month on the meds, take four or more prescriptions, are less affluent and are in fair or poor health.

Thus, due to costs, three in ten people haven’t taken their medicine as prescribed, including not filling the prescription, substituting over-the-counter remedies, and cutting pills in half or skipping doses.

KFF surveyed 1,440 adults 18 and over by phone between February 14th–24th 2019.

Health Populi’s Hot Points: This week, Eli Lilly announced that they would introduce a generic form of Humalog, the company’s insulin product, at a price 50% lower than the brand.

Just weeks before Lilly’s announcement, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) initiated Congressional committee research into insulin prices among Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi. Wyden asked, “why the list price of Eli Lilly’s main insulin drug, Humalog, went from $21 a vial in 1996 to its current list price of $275,” CNN reported the senator saying. “Humalog isn’t thirteen times as effective as it used to be. A vial doesn’t last thirteen times longer than it did in 1996,” Wyden observed.

In this Vantage analysis, Jonathan Gardner observed that Lilly’s action on generic insulin “took a leaf out of Mylan’s book” in their response to public outcry on EpiPen pricing. Mylan eventually approved a generic version of EpiPen, as told through this company press release.

David Lazarus of the LA Times noted that the Lilly move illustrates just “how broken our healthcare system really is.” He explained: “What Lilly and other drug companies are eager to do is keep lawmakers and regulators at bay amid growing outrage over the exorbitant prices charged for name-brand prescription meds. In this case, all Lilly is doing is following the same crisis-management playbook as fellow pharmaceutical pirate Mylan, which introduced an authorized generic version of the EpiPen after being pilloried for having jacked up the price of the life-saving device by 500%….The in-house generic allows them to gain the PR benefits of making a discount version of a drug available to people who otherwise couldn’t afford it.”

Nine in ten consumers in the March 2019 KFF survey – Democrats, Independents, and Republican majorities — said it should be easier for generic

The photograph here was taken during the tobacco industry leaders’ testimony to Congress nearly twenty-five years ago, from April 1994, swearing that “nicotine is not addictive.” drugs to come to market, understanding this dynamic.

Ironic that in this Congressional session, pharmaceutical manufacturers are testifying about the life-saving benefits of their products, but priced to drive about one-third of Americans not to adopt them.

Senator Johnny Isakson, a Republican serving a Georgia Congressional district, has Parkinson’s disease. He said that the cost of one of the medications that manages his condition recently increased by $90. “I can’t explain it,” he confessed, adding that medicines keep him able to work.

That brings us full circle to the value of medicines — about which KFF asked, shown in the last chart. Yes, 58% of Americans said, Rx drugs have made lives better.

But their cost? Unreasonable, most people say.

The post Most Americans Across Party ID Favor U.S. Government Negotiation to Lower Rx Drug Costs appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

Article source:Health Populi

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realselfblog · 6 years

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Most Americans Across Party ID Favor U.S. Government Negotiation to Lower Rx Drug Costs

It’s no surprise, then, that one-half of Americans have spoken with their doctor about whether there is a less expensive alternative to a drug the physician has prescribed.

KFF surveyed 1,440 adults 18 and over by phone between February 14th–24th 2019.

Health Populi’s Hot Points: This week, Eli Lilly announced that they would introduce a generic form of Humalog, the company’s insulin product, at a price 50% lower than the brand.

Nine in ten consumers in the March 2019 KFF survey – Democrats, Independents, and Republican majorities — said it should be easier for generic

That brings us full circle to the value of medicines — about which KFF asked, shown in the last chart. Yes, 58% of Americans said, Rx drugs have made lives better.

But their cost? Unreasonable, most people say.

The post Most Americans Across Party ID Favor U.S. Government Negotiation to Lower Rx Drug Costs appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

Most Americans Across Party ID Favor U.S. Government Negotiation to Lower Rx Drug Costs posted first on http://dentistfortworth.blogspot.com

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maxihealth · 6 years

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Most Americans Across Party ID Favor U.S. Government Negotiation to Lower Rx Drug Costs

It’s no surprise, then, that one-half of Americans have spoken with their doctor about whether there is a less expensive alternative to a drug the physician has prescribed.

KFF surveyed 1,440 adults 18 and over by phone between February 14th–24th 2019.

Health Populi’s Hot Points: This week, Eli Lilly announced that they would introduce a generic form of Humalog, the company’s insulin product, at a price 50% lower than the brand.

Nine in ten consumers in the March 2019 KFF survey – Democrats, Independents, and Republican majorities — said it should be easier for generic

That brings us full circle to the value of medicines — about which KFF asked, shown in the last chart. Yes, 58% of Americans said, Rx drugs have made lives better.

But their cost? Unreasonable, most people say.

The post Most Americans Across Party ID Favor U.S. Government Negotiation to Lower Rx Drug Costs appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

Most Americans Across Party ID Favor U.S. Government Negotiation to Lower Rx Drug Costs posted first on https://carilloncitydental.blogspot.com

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mikemortgage · 6 years

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A political ‘bomb’ over drug prices could threaten NAFTA 2.0

WASHINGTON — The clash over free trade in North America has long been fought over familiar issues: Low-paid Mexican workers. U.S. factories that move jobs south of the border. Canada’s high taxes on imported milk and cheese.

But as Democrats in Congress consider whether to back a revamped regional trade pact being pushed by President Donald Trump, they’re zeroing in on a new point of conflict: Drug prices. They contend that the new pact would force Americans to pay more for prescription drugs, and their argument has dimmed the outlook for one of Trump’s signature causes.

The president’s proposed replacement for the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement is meant to win over Democrats by incentivizing factories to hire and expand in the United States. Yet the pact would also give pharmaceutical companies 10 years’ protection from cheaper competition in a category of ultra-expensive drugs called biologics, which are made from living cells.

Shielded from competition, critics warn, the drug companies could charge exorbitant prices for biologics.

“This is an outrageous giveaway to Big Pharma,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, said in an interview. “The government guarantees at least 10 years of market exclusivity for biologic medicine. It’s a monopoly. It’s bad policy.”

The objections of DeLauro and other Democrats suddenly carry greater potency. The need to curb high drug prices has become a rallying cry for voters of all political stripes. Trump himself has joined the outcry. The revamped North America trade deal must be approved by both chambers of Congress, and Democrats have just regained control of the House.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, the new chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on trade, told The Associated Press that “I don’t think candidly that it passes out of my trade subcommittee” with the biologics provision intact.

“The biologics are some of the most expensive drugs on the planet,” Blumenauer said.

Still, the politics of NAFTA 2.0 are tricky for Democrats and not necessarily a sure-fire winner for them.

The original NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, tore down most trade barriers separating the United States, Canada and Mexico. Like Trump, many Democrats blamed NAFTA for encouraging American factories to abandon the United States to capitalize on lower-wage Mexican labour and then to ship goods back into the U.S., duty-free.

Having long vilified NAFTA, Trump demanded a new deal — one far more favourable to the United States and its workers. For more than a year, his top negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, held talks with Canada and Mexico. Lighthizer managed to insert into the new pact provisions designed to appeal to Democrats and their allies in organized labour. For example, 40 per cent of cars would eventually have to be made in countries that pay autoworkers at least $16 an hour — that is, in the United States and Canada and not in Mexico — to qualify for duty-free treatment.

The new deal also requires Mexico to encourage independent unions that will bargain for higher wages and better working conditions.

Late last year, the three countries signed their revamped deal, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. But it wouldn’t take effect until their three legislatures all approved it. In the meantime, the old NAFTA remains in place.

The question now is: Are Democrats prepared to support a deal that addresses some of their key objections to NAFTA and thereby hand Trump a political victory? Some Democrats have praised the new provisions that address auto wages, though many say they must be strengthened before they’d vote for the USMCA.

Protection for drug companies is another matter. Many Democrats had protested even when the Obama administration negotiated eight years of protection for biologics– from cheap-copycat competitors called “biosimilars” — in a 12-country Pacific Rim trade pact called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP.

Trump abandoned the TPP in his first week in office. But the pharmaceutical industry is a potent lobby in Washington, and Trump’s negotiators pressed for protection for U.S. biologics in the new North American free trade deal. They ended up granting the drug companies two additional years of protection in the pact.

Top biologics include the anti-inflammatory drug Humira, the cancer fighter Rituxan and Enbrel, which is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

The administration and drug companies argue that makers of biologics need time to profit from their creations before biosimilars sweep in, unburdened by the cost of researching and developing the drugs. Otherwise, they contend, the brand-name drug companies would have little incentive to invest in developing new medicines.

They note that a 2015 law authorizing presidents to negotiate trade deals requires American officials to push other countries toward U.S.-level protections for intellectual property such as biologic drugs. (The same law, somewhat contradictorily, directs U.S. negotiators to “promote access to medicines.”)

Supporters also note that existing U.S. law gives makers of biologics 12 years’ protection. So the new pact wouldn’t change the status quo in the United States, though it would force Mexico to expand biologics’ monopoly from five years and Canada from eight years. In fact, supporters of the biologics monopoly argue that the pact might cut prices in the United States because drug companies would no longer face pressure to charge Americans more to compensate for lower prices in Canada and Mexico.

But critics say that expanding biologics’ monopoly in a trade treaty would prevent the United States from ever scaling back the duration to, say, the seven years the Obama administration once proposed.

“By including 10 years in a treaty, we are locking ourselves in to a higher level of monopoly protection for drugs that are already taking in billions of dollars a year,” said Jeffrey Francer, general counsel for the Association for Accessible Medicines, which represents generic drug companies. “The only way for Congress to change it is to back out of the treaty … Does the United States want to be in violation of its own treaty?”

For Democrats, higher drug prices are shaping up as a powerful political argument against approving the president’s new North American trade deal. In December, Stanley Greenberg, a leading Democratic pollster and strategist, conducted focus groups in Michigan and Wisconsin with Trump voters who weren’t affiliated with the Republican Party. Some had previously voted for Barack Obama. Others called themselves political independents. They’re the kinds of voters Democrats hope to attract in 2020.

Greenberg said he was “shocked” by the intensity of their hostility to drug companies — and to the idea that a trade pact would shield those companies from competition.

“It was like throwing a bomb into the focus group,” said Greenberg, who is married to DeLauro. He said the voters’ consensus view was essentially: “The president was supposed to go and renegotiate (NAFTA) so that it worked for American workers. But it must be that these lobbyists are working behind the scenes” to sneak in special-interest provisions.

That perception gives Democrats reason to reject the new pact as the 2020 election approaches.

“Democrats have no incentive to do this,” said Philip Levy, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a White House economist under President George W. Bush. “Before you know it, the presidential election season is going to be upon us.”

U.S. trade rules are designed to force Congress to give trade agreements an up-or-down vote — no nitpicking allowed. Still, there are ways to bypass those restrictions. Congressional Democrats could, for example, push the administration to negotiate so-called side letters with Canada and Mexico to address their concerns. President Bill Clinton did this with the original NAFTA.

“Lighthizer and his team are very creative,” said Blumenauer, chair of the House trade subcommittee. “This is something that can be handled.”

——

Follow Paul Wiseman on Twitter at https://twitter.com/PaulWisemanAP

from Financial Post http://bit.ly/2WZVqo0 via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

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4rhealth · 6 years

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FDA’s Deafening Silence on Ebola Cures

In the midst of another terrible outbreak, why doesn’t the agency discuss natural treatments that can protect us? Action Alert!

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is in the midst of the second largest Ebola outbreak in history (the worst was in West Africa in 2014). Since August 2018, 740 people have been infected—30 percent of whom are children—and 460 have died. In the absence of effective cures one would think that health authorities would turn to natural antivirals that have a proven track record. Unfortunately, there’s no money to be made with these treatments, so the FDA remains silent.

The main driver of this is the Catch-22 of drug economics: no one will spend the exorbitant sums needed to run clinical trials if the product can’t receive full patent protection (which, generally, natural products cannot) and turned into a huge moneymaker. This ensures that natural alternatives are ignored. But there is reason to believe that some of the world’s oldest antivirals could be used to inhibit the transfer of the virus, or perhaps even cure it.

Silver has been used as an antimicrobial for thousands of years. It’s a powerful antibiotic, attacking all kinds of bacteria in a three-pronged attack. More and more research (study 1; study 2; study 3; study 4; study 5) is also heralding silver’s promise as a method of disinfecting water of both bacteria and viruses. Since disinfecting contaminated environments is the most effective method of halting Ebola’s spread, silver could be a potent weapon in the battle.

Silver has also showed great promise as an antiviral, in both attacking the virus and in inhibiting transmission. So far, silver has been tested on HIV (study 1; study 2; study 3; study 4) and herpes (study 1; study 2; study 3). Silver has also been used to clear HPV warts; inhibit the replication of the hepatitis B virus; kill the H1N1 virus; fight ocular infection; and kill the tacaribe virus, which also causes hemorrhagic fever, as well as the bacteriophage viral strain.

Intravenous vitamin C also shows promise for viral infections like Ebola, but would presumably be harder to administer in places where Ebola outbreaks occur. In the words of one doctor, “To date, not a single virus has been tested that is not inactivated (killed) by a large enough dose of vitamin C (ascorbic acid).”

There are even more natural medicines that show promise in fighting diseases like Ebola that we’ve discussed elsewhere.

Of course, even if the evidence demonstrates the power of a nutrient to fight disease, the federal government blocks companies from telling us about it—until drug companies create a drug that costs thousands of dollars a year and the FDA hands them a monopoly.

The status quo in which government creates and protects drug company monopolies was always outrageous. Now with the threat of major and deadly pandemic in sight, it is completely unacceptable. It is essential that voters become aware of what is going on behind closed doors in Washington so they can speak up and move the political system.

Action Alert! Tell the FDA, with a copy to Congress, and tell them to stop gagging free speech about proven benefits of natural medicines. Please send your message immediately.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2TE82iS via Aloe for Health

#The Alliance for Natural Health

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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For the first time ever, we’re living in a moment when many of our most promising medical advances are far out of reach for the vast majority of people who could benefit from them. And nowhere is that truer than for cancer immunotherapy, the fast-moving field of cancer treatment research that was honored on Monday with the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Immunotherapies are a cause for great hope in treating many types of cancer, including melanoma, lymphoma, and lung, kidney, and bladder cancers. They stimulate the immune system to help the body attack cancer from within. And unlike chemotherapy or radiation, which kill off healthy cells in the body, immunotherapies are much more targeted, even in patients with late-stage disease.

With these drugs, doctors have watched deadly tumors melt away, and patients who were supposed to die go into remission for years. And while amazing turnarounds aren’t seen in everyone or for all cancer types, J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, the deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, told Vox that immunotherapies have oncologists using a word they aren’t used to employing: cure.

“When I was treating patients with melanoma in the 1970s, some of those drugs we used back then are still backbones of treatment for metastatic melanoma 40 years later. Then along came the immunotherapies, and they truly changed the landscape of treatment for these patients,” he says.

But these incredible advances and the promise of cancer cures also come with eye-popping price tags that reach well past $100,000 per patient. People who need cancer immunotherapies often hit a cost wall and can’t afford to pay for them — and it’s a problem that’s growing worse, Ezekiel Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, told Vox.

“What we’ve seen over the last two decades is the cost of cancer drugs go through the roof. Every year, the introductory price seems higher and higher and higher,” he said. The rising costs of new drugs not only mean that individuals can’t access them; they’re also unsustainable for our health system.

Getting a cancer immunotherapy treatment costs more than a house in many cities in the US, more than putting a few kids through private college. The average cost of cancer drugs has increased from $50,000 per patient in the mid-1990s to $250,000 today. That’s a fivefold increase on inflation. It’s also four times the median US household annual income.

Immunotherapies in particular often cost more than $100,000 per patient. Doctors now use immunotherapies in combination, which means those costs can quickly double or triple. For some of the newest immunotherapies, the price tag is even steeper: When you include the value of the medical support necessary to deliver the treatments, a price tag of $850,000 per patient is not unheard of, according to Emanuel. “The drug companies say that they offer significant discounts to many patients, but because they won’t release this data, the list price is all that we have to go on,” he wrote.

And the list prices have become staggering. This chart from Peter Bach, a researcher with Memorial Sloan Kettering, says it all.

(Keep in mind that the x-axis here is logarithmic, not linear. Scientists sometimes use logarithmic scales to make big number sets manageable. But if Bach had plotted the prices on the x-axis at a linear interval, the cost curve would look much steeper.)

Patients with health insurance can be denied coverage for immunotherapies, even when it’s recommended by their oncologists. When they aren’t, the list prices are so high that the copays can be exorbitant. A patient might face a 25 percent copay, which means they’re getting the drug at a 75 percent discount. When the price tag is upward of $10,000 a month, that leaves patients on the hook to cover at least $2,500 per month. And that’s prohibitive for many people.

This brings us to the next question: Why do these drugs cost so much? To get to the bottom of it, Emanuel posed an interesting thought experiment in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. Drug companies typically argue that the cost is related to how much they had to invest in research to develop the drug. The CEO of Novartis, maker of the immunotherapy drug Kymriah, said the R&D costs of the drug were about $1 billion. But Emanuel didn’t buy it:

That’s certainly a big investment, but it is much less astounding when compared with the drug’s anticipated revenue. Based on Kymriah’s list price, treating just 2,700 patients would allow Novartis to recoup its entire investment. Even with significant discounts for many patients, it wouldn’t take many treatments to turn a considerable profit.

… Producing the immunotherapy requires more than three weeks of laboratory manipulations for each individual patient.

But according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, the total cost for removing, reprogramming and infusing the cells into each patient is less than $60,000—just one-sixth of the $373,000 price tag. Production costs do not seem to be driving the stratospheric drug prices.

So Emanuel came to the conclusion we have come to at Vox many times: The drugs cost this much because in America, drug companies are allowed to charge that much. And they reap handsome multibillion-dollar profits as a result.

In other countries, governments exert much more influence over the entire health care process. That allows them to negotiate directly with drugmakers. The government sets a maximum price that it will pay for a drug, and if the company doesn’t agree, it simply loses out on the entire market.

The United States, by contrast, has long taken more of a free market approach to drugs. Pharmaceutical companies can haggle over prices with a variety of private insurers as well as selling to the government. What’s more, Medicare, the government program that is the nation’s largest buyer of drugs, is actually barred from negotiating drug prices. That gives pharma much more leverage.

So drug companies here do what any other profit-maximizing company does — they try to get the highest prices possible without going so high that no one will buy them. And that status quo has led to cancer drugs that cost most than homes.

One final disturbing aspect of the cancer cost conundrum: Public money helped pay for many of these drugs that patients can’t afford to access.

In a recent analysis, published in the journal PNAS, researchers found that American tax dollars helped fund the basic research that went into every single one of the drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration between 2010 and 2016 — including several cancer immunotherapies. All told, $100 billion in National Institutes of Health research grants helped advance the science behind those drugs.

So the Nobel Prize this week is a reminder of the great promise of these drugs — and the incredible, lifesaving science that led to their discoveries. But it should also be a moment to reflect on who is benefiting from them and who isn’t. How will the 1.7 million Americans who are diagnosed with cancer per year gain access if prices keep rising and we don’t address this cost conundrum soon?

Original Source -> The Nobel Prize is a reminder of the outrageous cost of curing cancer

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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hellohairtransplantation-blog · 6 years

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5 Benefits of Hair Transplant Surgery

celebrity hair transplant surgeon Mumbai is a restorative system that includes the implantation of hair follicles acquired from a contributor territory arranged on the patient's scalp to a site encountering balding. This implies follicular units or different portions of hair follicles are extricated and after that transplanted (at times one-by-one) to the influenced going bald zone.

A portion of the Main Benefits of a Hair Transplant Procedure:

1. Enhanced looks

The greater part of the general population searching out San Jose Hair Transplant administrations will reveal to you that one of their fundamental purposes behind doing as such is that thinning up top made them feel baffled with the manner in which they look. With this sort of methodology, such people are furnished with the chance to fill their thinning up top fixes and enhance their looks, which will make them feel more alluring and sure.

2. A changeless cure

Not at all like the majority of the topical medicines utilized for going bald issues, or even the extensive variety of all-encompassing techniques offered by various specialists, a hair transplant methodology offers to seek after those miseries from such conditions, with the most solid and changeless arrangement. Once the specialist is through, that is fundamentally it.

3. Gets rid of thinning up top

With regards to hair loss causes Treatments, the best way to totally say farewell to the majority of your thinning up top issues is with a hair transplant method. This is on the grounds that once the specialist is finished with your influenced districts; you will never need to stress over subsiding hairlines or bare spots until the end of time since such a medical procedure gets rid of all that. Likewise, similarly, as the measurements will demonstrate you, hair transplant techniques have a tendency to have a to a great degree high achievement rate.

4. Low upkeep

One of the other primary advantages of experiencing a hair transplant methodology is the reality it requires the negligible upkeep of their dealt with regions after the strategy. This is on the grounds that transplanted hair truly works like standard hair so you won't need to utilize any sort of unique synthetic concoctions or shampoos to keep up the legitimate thickness. It likewise vital to take note of that the method is a one-time process so you won't need to visit your specialist again and again.

5. Cost reserve funds

Despite the fact that a large portion of the notable hair rebuilding methods has a tendency to be very exorbitant, the same can't be said for a hair transplant medical procedure. This is on the grounds that not at all like other thinning up top cures, hair transplant medical procedure is a one-time methodology, which implies you won't need to burn through cash on extra visits and this is something that most patients truly appreciate.

Good and Bad Part of Hair Transplantation Good

Hair transplantation is being well known as a restorative strategy for quick recovery of one's lost hair and the development rate of regular hair. A large portion of the hair transplantation systems and strategies today are all around prepared to create best-wanted outcome as to effectively bring back the characteristic hair. The parts of different sorts of hair transplantation let us see what precisely is implied by the term hair loss home remedies

Male pattern baldness issue being one of the significant worries for many individual experiencing either hairlessness or indications of sparseness or ceaselessly subsiding hairline or gigantic diminishing of hair, hair transplantation is mainstreaming as a restorative technique for quick recovery of one's lost hair and the development rate of common hair. The vast majority of the hair transplantation strategies and techniques today are all around prepared to deliver best-wanted outcome as to effectively bring back the characteristic hair on the uncovered parts of the scalp. The surgery of hair transplantation can be separated into different strategies which we will present here. In any case, before additionally getting into the parts of different sorts of hair transplantation let us see what precisely is implied by the term hair transplantation.

What is hair transplantation?

The careful technique for transplanting hair follicles from one a player in the body to different parts is ordinarily named as the hair transplantation. The parts of the body where from these follicles are taken are called benefactor locales and the parts where these follicles are transplanted are called as beneficiary destinations. This careful treatment ordinarily utilized to fix the hairlessness of men.

One of the outstanding particularities of this treatment is that lone the unions of the hair in the benefactor site where the hair follicles are intrinsically impervious to thinning up top are decided with the end goal of the hair transplantation. The great piece of hair transplantation can be seen in its developing prominence as the quickest and most indisputable treatment for male pattern baldness.

Sorts of hair transplantation

Hair transplantation can be of three sorts which are separate as, follicular unit strip medical procedure, follicular unit extraction, and scalp decrease. The great and awful parts of hair transplantation are remarkably unique as to every one of these techniques which we will find in the short presentation here underneath.

Follicular Unit Strip Surgery or FUSS

This sort of treatment is particularly helpful for outrageous or more than normal going bald cases. The medical procedure of this kind of hair transplantation enables the specialist to expel a few unions of hair from the benefactor site at one purpose of time and the contributor locales are left with a few days to recuperate the injury. This is the most seasoned and most broadly utilized hair transplantation technique to date.

Follicular unit extraction or FUE

This technique is more mainstream and further developed than the last one. The great piece of hair transplantation utilizing follicular unit extraction or FUE strategy is that it takes after the transplantation in the method for our genuine development of hair. It enables the specialist to take the hair follicle from the back of the head and transplant it in a gathering of 1 to four and this looks like the genuine example of typical hair development. In addition, it doesn't cause any significant cuts and scars which would bring days to come into ordinary condition.

Scalp decrease

This sort of hair transplantation is uncommon and does not render as great impacts as alternate techniques specified before. In this technique, the entire bare scalp is required to be expelled and new hair follicle rich scalp is to be transplanted there with a careful task. The terrible piece of hair transplantation following this strategy is that after transplantation happens, there is an awesome probability of fixing of the scalp and coming about diminishing of hair inside a couple of long periods of time and in addition it is costlier than alternate techniques for hair transplantation.

Reactions of hair transplantation

Alongside the great piece of hair transplantation as a careful strategy in quick treating the balding issue, there is some negative criticism with respect to the impact of the medical procedures of hair transplantation which we can call too to be reactions of hair transplantation. The terrible piece of hair transplantation is exemplified I these reactions specified beneath.

Minor symptoms: Minor reactions like hair fall for a brief span after the medical procedure following the awful impact on the scalp, may lessen a touch of your as of now rotting hair. Besides scars or a few injuries coming about out of the transplantation of hair follicles from one, a player in the body to others are outstanding impacts.

Real reactions: Infection is the main conceivable significant symptom of the hair transplant medical procedure. In spite of the fact that it is extremely uncommon to occur, the contamination can prompt other physical issues for which you have to counsel specialist.

The good and bad part of hair loss reasons as a surgical treatment of hair loss problem as explained and exemplified above cannot actually determine the course of decision a person take for a conclusive and convincing treatment of the problem. As dermatology or medicinal as well as surgical treatment in this field are continuously evolving, this problem at any point of time can vanish from the face of the world like other extinguished epidemics of yesteryears, such as plague

#celebrity hair transplant surgeon Mumbai #Male pattern baldness #hair loss causes #hair loss home remedies #hair loss reasons

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takebackthedream · 7 years

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Trump's HHS Pick Alex Azar Is the Worst Pharma Bro of All by Richard Eskow

Nominating Alexander Azar for Health and Human Services Secretary is worse than a fox guarding the henhouse. It’s like pinning a sheriff’s badge on Billy the Kid. For all his polish and small-town charm, when it comes to pharmaceutical predation, the mild-mannered Azar puts blowhard “pharma bros” like Martin Shkreli to shame.

Shkreli is the pharmaceutical exec people love to hate. That’s understandable. He sought out rights to drugs for rare diseases so he could extort outrageous prices from those whose lives depended on these treatments.

Shkreli became wealthy through his shameful strategy for extortion, but was convicted of defrauding investors in August. His smug narcissism and openly corrupt bullying made him an easy target, and a poster boy for pharmaceutical industry greed.The guy’s face tells the whole story. He even reportedly paid $2 million for the only copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album just so that the group’s millions of fans could never hear it.

Photos of Azar, on the hand, usually display a warm and open smile. “Trust me,” it seems to say. This smalltown graduate of Dartmouth and Yale, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Azar doesn’t look or sound like a bare-knuckled capitalist. He might even make a fine dinner companion, capable of navigating both idle chit-chat and philosophical reflection with ease. He almost certainly orders the right wine, knows which fork to use, and never ever commits a faux pas over dessert and coffee.

He was a lobbyist, after all.

But when it comes to public harm, Azar puts Shkreli to shame. As horrible as Shkreli’s misdeeds were, some will dismiss them as the rogue acts of a bit player. Azar, on the other hand, is the ultimate pharmaceutical industry insider: he has gone through the revolving door from government to lobbying several times to ascend to the helm of pharmaceutical giant Lilly USA.

Azar’s face is the industry’s face, not just that of one corrupt fraudster. And his shame is the industry’s shame. And now the date has been set for his Senate nomination hearing: November 29.

Bad Company

Azar is the son of an opthamologist, and grandson of an immigrant from Lebanon. He ascended to partnership at a white-shoe DC law firm after working for Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr on the Whitewater investigation of President Bill Clinton. He then became General Counsel of HHS under President George W. Bush, where he supervised the agency’s $1 trillion operations.

In 2007, he went directly from government service to become the top lobbyist for Lilly, where he could mine his government contacts for the Indianapolis-based drug manufacturer.

Lilly certainly needed friends in Washington at the time. As the Corporate Research Project’s Phillip Mattera reports, Lilly has paid more than a billion dollars in criminal fines and settlements to the federal government and the states, as well as hundreds of millions to settle private lawsuits.

For decades, Eli Lilly has repeatedly been accused of concealing dangerous and even deadly side effects of some drugs and illegally marketing others for unapproved purposes.

In a foreshadowing of today’s opioid crisis, Lilly’s Darvon proved to be seriously addictive, and was eventually pulled from the market. As the New York Times reported in 1983, Lilly knew of at least 29 deaths in Europe caused by its arthritis medication Oraflex before it was approved for use in the United States. But it did not report those fatalities because, it claimed, “federal regulations did not require reporting of foreign deaths.” Lilly eventually pleaded guilty to criminal charges in that case. its former chief medical officer pleaded no contest.

Lilly was also compelled to pay $1.42 billion to settle a raft of lawsuits over misleading marketing of the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa as an anti-dementia drug, a use for which it was not approved. This happened less than a month after it agreed to pay $62 million to settle similar charges regarding its marketing of the medication for pediatric uses. It was apparently equally willing to prey on the young and the elderly.

Under Par

A Lilly sales rep even once placed golf bets with doctors to put patients on Zyprexa, according to documentation in a South Carolina suit. ““I got four pars out of nine holes,” the Lilly rep wrote. “I said I wanted my four new patients.”

Lilly’s greatest marketing triumph may have come with Prozac, the antidepressant that arrived with a massive social impact and the sheen of proven science regarding serotonin, only years later was it revealed that that pharmacological effects of these drugs were “clinically negligible.”

2007, the year Azar joined Lilly, was the same year the drug manufacturer was accused of misleading consumers about its canine version of Prozac. It looks like the company was willing to overhype a cure for depressed dogs, too.

Deadly Greed

Did Azar help Lilly clean up its act, of just sweep its misdeeds under the carpet?

Azar became the head of Lilly’s U.S. division in 2012, and under his leadership — if “leadership” is the right word – the company stands accused of illegally conspiring with other manufacturers of insulin to keep prices high, a practice that reportedly began in 2002 and continued at least until 2013.

As the New York Times reports, prices for insulin have risen in “near lock step” for years, without any apparent increase in costs. The consumer group Patients for Affordable Drugs (P4AD) said in a statement that “Eli Lilly is one-third of an insulin cartel that has driven up prices by more than 300 percent.” A major class action suit accuses the three companies of racketeering, and probes of insulin pricing by attorneys general in multiple states remain underway.

And this isn’t just a case of financial fraud or malfeasance. Lives are stake. Websites like this one offer advice to desperate diabetics struggling to stay alive in the face of sky-high insulin costs. Sometimes diabetics are forced to choose: insulin or food.

As the Times reports, one lawsuit recounted horror stories of diabetics who can’t afford up to $900 per month for insulin and have instead injected expired insulin, or starved themselves in an attempt to control their blood sugar levels. The lawsuit said that other patients allowed themselves to develop a potentially fatal condition in order to obtain insulin in the hospital emergency room.

Lilly has also been accused of making billions by avoiding its tax responsibilities through offshore profits. Lilly reportedly had $21 billion parked offshore in 2013. Lilly reportedly paid an effective U.S. corporate income tax rate of only 14.8 percent from 2008 to 2012. Like other drug manufacturers, it has also been accused of dodging taxes in Australia and Lithuania.

Azar’s Phony Claims

Donald Trump has accused drug companies of “getting away with murder” – an assertion that is, sadly, more than a metaphor – and promises that Azar will be a “star” in reducing drug costs, despite his track record leading a pharma industry giant that has been sanctioned for its price-gouging practcies.

How likely is that?

Not very. Azar is a right-wing ideologue with close ties to Vice President and longtime corporate minion Mike Pence. His public comments about drug prices have blended misdirection and bullshit in roughly equal measure.

“The issue shouldn’t be just to focus on drug prices,”Azar said on the Fox Business show. “The issue is what are people paying when they go to the pharmacy to get their drugs.”

Actually, it’s both. Insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers have sometimes conspired to overcharge customers for medications, as David Dayen reported last March. But Azar’s line is standard drug-company spin. Big Pharma wants Americans to think about the prices they see when they fill prescriptions. That’s why they often offer programs that waive copayments for certain high-priced medications.

But the costs we don’t see are just as important. Overpriced medications are taxing the entire health care economy, and Americans pay for them in a number of less visible ways: in higher insurance premiums, less covered services, and higher copays and deductibles. Azar wants us to forget about those costs, even as the insurance companies pocket undeserved billions.

The High Cost of Low Innovation

Azar also spewed standard-issue Big Pharma doubletalk in 2014 when he said, “The narrow focus of costs of medicine to the exclusion of innovation would be self-defeating in the long run.”

Drug companies love to claim that we need to pay exorbitant drug prices because research and innovation are so expensive. But a recent study of new cancer drugs in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that drug companies have been wildly exaggerating those costs and enjoying huge margins on new drugs.

Nor does the cost of research and development explain Eli Lilly’s excessive charges for insulin, an “innovation” which first came to market in 1922.

Azar also said this last year, at a panel hosted by the right-wing Manhattan Institute:

“When the government gets involved it is more likely than not to create perverse incentives and unintended consequences than when the market players can work together to figure that out.”

This claim has been disproven by every other developed country in the Western world, where government-directed health insurance is the norm and drug costs are substantially lower.

The Player

Azar is a catastrophically bad choice for the government’s top health care job. It’s true that he never bought a Wu-Tang Clan album just so no one besides him could ever hear it. But then again, we now know the album Martin Shkreli bought may not have been the real thing after all. The would-be player may have been played.

Nobody’s played Alexander Azar. Thus far, he’s played the system with cold-eyed ease on a scale Shkreli could only dream of, regardless of the financial or human costs.

And now, unless his nomination is blocked, this unrepentant fox is about to be handed the keys to the nation’s henhouse.

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dinafbrownil · 5 years

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Nothing To Sneeze At: The $2,659 Bill To Pluck Doll’s Shoe From Child’s Nostril

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