To understand the high cost of prescription medicines we should "follow the money." With apologies to Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan, it's time to "watch the river flow."
Drugs & Pharmaceuticals
Flight operations for the F-35 fighter jet were suspended until further notice due to multiple episodes of apparent oxygen deprivation to pilots. Aviation physiology is quite complex. Here's the impact of hypoxia, gravitational forces and altitude.
One of the many responses to the opioid crisis has been the development of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs. These are databases containing the drug utilization of patients based upon physician prescriptions. The question is: Do they help?
There's been enough devastation on the street caused by fentanyl replacing heroin. Now there's a new twist to the story: Fentanyl, with or without other drugs, is showing up in the form of copycats of Vicodin and Percoset. They're coming from Mexico, manufactured by cartels, which have reportedly produced overdoses and deaths.
Though pneumonia and infection are among the litany of known complications after water birth, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just reported two cases of Legionnaires’ Disease in newborns in Arizona born this way. Further investigation identified an infant death in 2014 in Texas from Legionellosis.
Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs is one of the world's most influential public intellectuals. His war against global poverty is commendable, if not always congenial. His expertise is rightly sought by national and international media outlets.
It's strange, then, for someone of his knowledge, accomplishment, and reputation to repeat verifiably untrue claims. A recent exchange on Twitter reveals that, at times, Dr. Sachs has merely a casual relationship with the truth.
Jeffrey Sachs's War on the Pharmaceutical Industry
Childbirth is an unpredictable, sometimes traumatic event – in even the best of situations. Fortunately, most babies do quite well. Now, imagine having a condition where the act itself causes innumerable bones to break, making it life-threatening.
A few recent studies with weak design gave birth to the notion that Cesarean Delivery could be associated with later obesity. But a new study in Pediatrics undermines this belief.
The CDC's war against Americans in pain has been terrifying ever since this foolish crackdown began. As states begin to limit daily opioid dose, this is about to get much worse. This "one size fits all" maximum dose really fits none. That's because of your genes, since people metabolize opioids differently. It's bad policy based on bad science.
Death rates for Alzheimer's Disease have risen 55% between 1999 and 2014. That's according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Here are the reasons why this is occurring, and the trend's implications.
In Part 1, we considered "the spread," which is the difference between the cost of a product or service and the price charged for it. Here it Part 2, we examine the factors and pressures that create this difference.
The difference between the cost of a product or service and the price charged for that product or service is the spread. The pharmaceutical industry, more of a pharmaceutical industrial complex (PIC), has been responsible for many miraculous things. Harvoni, a medicine that has a greater than 95% efficacy in eliminating Hepatitis C, for example. But there is no more extraordinary feat by the PIC than for a manufacturer to price a medication at $10 a pill, receive $5 a pill as payment and along the way they and five or six intermediaries profit – and profit hugely. This ‘miracle’ of market forces, regulation and brokers are the ‘secret sauce’ behind the increasingly frequent distress over the high cost of drugs. The spread drives and often best describes these forces.