FDA warning public of risks of online pharmacies
By LINDA A. JOHNSON/AP Business Writer
The Food and Drug Administration is warning U.S. consumers that the vast majority of Internet pharmacies are fraudulent and likely are selling counterfeit drugs that could harm them.
The agency on Friday launched a national campaign, called BeSafeRx, to alert the public to the danger, amid evidence that more people are shopping for their medicine online, looking for savings and convenience.
Instead, they're likely to get fake drugs that are contaminated, are past their expiration date or contain no active ingredient, the wrong amount of active ingredient or even toxic substances such as arsenic and rat poison. They could sicken or kill people, cause them to develop a resistance to their real medicine, cause new side effects or trigger harmful interactions with other medications being taken.
Health care reform — what do physicians think?
Posted Sept. 27, 2012, at 4:10 p.m.
Physicians agree on — maybe — two things. First, they agree they don’t agree on anything. Actually, some probably disagree about that. Second, they usually agree that everyone who disagrees with them is wrong. It should therefore come as no surprise that physician opinions about health care reform cover more territory than a bad rash.
That is reflected in physician opinions about President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, or ACA, in particular. Talk to five physicians and you get five opinions that sometimes overlap, sometimes don’t, and are almost always strongly held. And as we know, opinions are like bacteria — everyone has them and some of them are nasty. That’s why a Florida urologist who probably had a big prostate clouding his thinking put a sign on his office door telling Obama supporters to seek care elsewhere.
The difficulty understanding what physicians think about all of this is compounded by the fact there are few really good surveys of them on these issues, and results of them seem contradictory. One of those — a survey of 2,694 physicians commissioned by the Jackson Healthcare System — found 55 percent felt the ACA should be scrapped, but one-third of respondents felt the act did not go far enough and a single-payer health system was needed. That means some of those who felt the law should be scrapped did so because they thought it went too far, and others thought so because it did not go far enough.
On the other hand, a 2009 survey of 2,130 physicians found 62.9 percent supported universal insurance through public (government-sponsored) and commercial options. They differed on how to achieve that universal insurance, with 25 percent supporting commercial insurance as the only option, and less than 20 percent supported government-sponsored insurance as the only option.
Despite this diversity of opinion, general patterns of physician perspective have emerged. Perhaps two-thirds support some kind of insurance for all Americans, because most recognize that lack of insurance puts their patients in jeopardy. Just as there seems to be an emerging consensus among physicians, there is also one among their professional associations (such as the American Medical Association and the American Osteopathic Association) that all Americans need access to comprehensive, affordable health care, and that some kind of insurance is required to ensure that access. That evolution is part of what brought the AMA from its position in the 1960s opposing the formation of Medicare to its position in 2011 in support of the ACA.
ACOs are another distraction from universal single-payer health care
By Peggy Anna Carey, M.D.
Vtdigger.org, Sept. 26, 2012
Fletcher Allen Health Care and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center have formed their new accountable care organization (ACO) called OneCare Vermont. The stated vision is “a statewide network with a coordinated clinical model and toolset … to enhance the quality of the care provided to Vermont’s Medicare beneficiaries while remaining good stewards of health care expenditures …”
The first question should be what exactly does this statement mean? Am I mistaken, or hasn’t the Vermont Legislature created the Green Mountain Care Board to establish the statewide infrastructure to create our universal single-payer health care system called Green Mountain Care? Does not Green Mountain Care model both high quality and cost-effectiveness by eliminating the morass of administrative waste created by the present health care situation that is virtually run by for-profit corporations?
ACOs such as “OneCare” are a ruse for hospitals, insurers and providers to consolidate more of their clout to control their turf of profits. The Medicare Shared Saving Program that is encouraging the formation of these ACOs is based upon pilot studies that showed little savings and little improvement in care. Amy Goldstein, medical reporter for The Washington Post, wrote over a year ago:
“The five-year test enlisted 10 leading health systems around the country and offered financial bonuses if they could save enough by treating older patients more efficiently while providing high-quality care. In 2010, the final year, just four of the 10 sites, all long-established groups run by doctors, slowed their Medicare spending enough to qualify for a bonus, according to an official evaluation not yet made public. Two sites saved enough to get bonuses in all five years, the evaluation shows, but three did not succeed even once. The uneven progress is significant because the experiment involves ‘accountable care organizations,’ one of the hottest trends in health policy and an idea included in the year-old federal law intended to overhaul the nation’s health-care system.”
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2012/september/acos-are-another-distraction-from-universal-single-payer-health-care
Vtdigger.org, Sept. 26, 2012
Fletcher Allen Health Care and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center have formed their new accountable care organization (ACO) called OneCare Vermont. The stated vision is “a statewide network with a coordinated clinical model and toolset … to enhance the quality of the care provided to Vermont’s Medicare beneficiaries while remaining good stewards of health care expenditures …”
The first question should be what exactly does this statement mean? Am I mistaken, or hasn’t the Vermont Legislature created the Green Mountain Care Board to establish the statewide infrastructure to create our universal single-payer health care system called Green Mountain Care? Does not Green Mountain Care model both high quality and cost-effectiveness by eliminating the morass of administrative waste created by the present health care situation that is virtually run by for-profit corporations?
ACOs such as “OneCare” are a ruse for hospitals, insurers and providers to consolidate more of their clout to control their turf of profits. The Medicare Shared Saving Program that is encouraging the formation of these ACOs is based upon pilot studies that showed little savings and little improvement in care. Amy Goldstein, medical reporter for The Washington Post, wrote over a year ago:
“The five-year test enlisted 10 leading health systems around the country and offered financial bonuses if they could save enough by treating older patients more efficiently while providing high-quality care. In 2010, the final year, just four of the 10 sites, all long-established groups run by doctors, slowed their Medicare spending enough to qualify for a bonus, according to an official evaluation not yet made public. Two sites saved enough to get bonuses in all five years, the evaluation shows, but three did not succeed even once. The uneven progress is significant because the experiment involves ‘accountable care organizations,’ one of the hottest trends in health policy and an idea included in the year-old federal law intended to overhaul the nation’s health-care system.”
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2012/september/acos-are-another-distraction-from-universal-single-payer-health-care
Big Firms Overhaul Health Coverage
September 28, 2012
Sears Holdings Corp. and Darden Restaurants Inc. are planning a radical change in the way they provide health benefits to their workers, giving employees a fixed sum of money and allowing them to choose their medical coverage and insurer from an online marketplace, says the Wall Street Journal.
- The companies say the change isn't designed to make workers pay a higher share of health coverage costs.
- Instead they say it is supposed to put more control over health benefits in the hands of employees.
The approach will be closely watched by firms around the United States. If it eventually takes hold widely, it might parallel the transition from company-provided pensions to 401(k) retirement savings plans controlled by workers and funded partly by employer contributions. For employees, the concern will be that they could end up more directly exposed to the upward march of health costs.
Real ways to fight the obesity epidemic
The state and country must do more to address today’s most significant public-health problem: obesity. When researchers know that, if current trends continue, more than half of all adults in Maine will be obese by 2030, policymakers and health professionals cannot stand still. Lowering the obesity rate will take many specific steps — and time. Nothing about it will be easy, not just because a person’s weight is affected by many different factors, but because it will require a new way of thinking and a reworking of how the food industry operates.
Increasing sedentary lifestyles and greater access to fatty, sugary foods, which often cost less per calorie than fruits and vegetables, have led to the obesity epidemic. A lack of incentives for both consumers and the medical profession to address the health threat have contributed to the problem. Studies of molecular genetics have helped the country understand eaters’ short- and long-term motivations and could help researchers develop drugs to fight obesity.
But the biggest changes will not come from a medicine for ending obesity. To effectively reverse the obesity rate, policies must address the principal causes.
One main cause of obesity has its roots in the overproduction of food. With the U.S. food supply generating about twice the number of calories the average adult needs each day, food companies compete for a greater share of the market through advertising, more “appealing” products and larger portion sizes, according to Marion Nestle, a professor of food studies and public health at New York University. The food companies prosper when people eat more.
The government can make it easier for people to make healthy choices and help structure the market to be more health-based. It can subsidize commodity crops less and fruit and vegetables more. It can require that foods bought and distributed in federal programs are healthy. It can work with schools to serve nutritious meals and snacks, as the National Prevention Council Action Plan proposes. It can place more restrictions on food marketing to children.
Big Pharma Medicaid Fraud Penalties at Record High
Major pharmaceutical companies undeterred as profits continue to rise
Settlements between pharmaceutical companies and state and federal governments over cases of Medicaid fraud are at an all time high, with financial penalties for major drug companies on the rise, according to a new report by Public Citizen. However, as Public Citizen urged Thursday, much still needs to be done in order to curb big pharma malpractice, as major profits still largely outweigh the costs of legal penalties, making it difficult to deter future violations.
The charges against major pharmaceutical companies accused of defrauding their Medicaid programs, include overcharging health programs, largely in the form of drug pricing fraud, as well as unlawful promotion of 'off-label' drugs (promoting drugs for unapproved uses).
2012 has already broken the record for financial penalties and court settlements against the pharmaceutical industry, with $6.6 billion recovered by mid-July.
The big pharma corporations associated with the largest penalties include GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and Abbott. These companies were responsible for two-thirds of the financial penalties paid out to the federal and state governments over the course of the study period. GlaxoSmithKline topped the list with $3.1 billion in settlements.
Federal grants boost Maine health centers
Fourteen community health centers in Maine will be awarded $55,000 each in federal grant money to improve care and increase the number of screenings for cervical cancer.
The Maine health centers are among more than 800 nationally to receive funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The grants will help the health centers to become “patient-centered medical homes,” a model in which primary care doctors lead a team of health providers to coordinate patients’ care, including managing chronic diseases and hospital admissions.
The caper is the un-opened flower bud employed for centuries in Mediterranean cuisine, where it imparts a salty tang and ornamental flair to a number of meats, salads, pastas along with other foods. Mediterranean diet have gotten lots of attention for their health benefits of Capers, however, happen to be largely overlooked so far.
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