A concerning shortage of Adderall, one of the drugs commonly used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), is putting patients at risk. What caused it, and how can we fix it? The EPA has set new guidelines to keep PFAS out of drinking water. There's a problem, however: the agency's standards are absurd.
Big Pharma
Virtue signaling, how deadly are the new variants, Metaverse?, and medicine is an art.
Though politicians and the public love to hate Big Ag and Big Pharma, everybody comes begging for help when the going gets tough. The arguments against biotechnology have been made exponentially weaker by the success of the coronavirus vaccine.
It is difficult to overstate the potential damage that an ineffective or unsafe coronavirus vaccine could inflict on confidence in public health institutions. Conspiracy theories already abound and would multiply further.
Children's Health Defense says governments and corporations are using the coronavirus (SARS-COV-2) to advance a "global immunization agenda." The anti-vaccine group claims that our leaders just needed the right pandemic as a pretext to goad us into getting vaccines. This is a clever story. It's also false.
The cost of pharmaceuticals is high for a number of reasons. A new study considers our out-of-pocket spending and increased use of medications, rather than more expensive surgery or hospitalization as a driver we can control.
The protection of intellectual property is vital to innovation. If anyone can just take something you created -- be it a song or a drug -- without proper compensation, there would be little reason to develop anything new. That, however, is predicated upon innovators playing fairly. In other words, they cannot seek patent protection for things that are not patentable. Yet, some pharmaceutical companies are doing just that.
Predictably, Big Pharma is resisting the call to include pricing information to their advertisements. A lawsuit and the testimony of the expert make a good case ... for not running the ads at all.
Is it possible that patient advocates have hidden conflicts of interest? That they accept funding from Big Pharma, the du jour villains of healthcare? Further, was the ever-cynical Television Doc right in his assessment of patients' ability to tell the truth?
When pharmaceutical companies jack up prices, it irritates everybody. And when people are irritated, politicians take the opportunity to do some grandstanding to win votes. Just a few days into its term, the House Oversight Committee in the new Congress has already launched an investigation into drug pricing. Is that justified? Not really.
The Trump Administration believes that TV ads for pharmaceutical drugs should display the list price. This helps toward lowering the cost of healthcare. However, officials might want to consider banning direct-to-consumer advertising altogether.
The gloves are off in a battle to control the sector. Nearly 83% of hospitals are charging over twice the cost for medicines, with a majority of mark-ups between 200 and 400%. Will any fixes in store actually help patients?