Tag: Merrill Goozner

Patent Pools Pushed To Make Drugs Affordable in Developing World

Merrill Goozner

Published 5/9/12 in The Fiscal Times

Amid a growing crisis in financing treatments for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in the developing world, an arm of the World Health Organization will meet in Geneva later this month to consider alternative ways of producing lower-cost drugs, vaccines and diagnostic tools to fight the those diseases in poor countries.

A background report issued last month by a working group of the World Health Assembly called for establishing a global research and development treaty that would beef up research into cures for so-called neglected tropical diseases. It also called for the treaty to create mechanisms for ensuring the next generation of drugs for fighting those diseases could be produced by generic firms at prices barely above the cost of manufacturing.

Continue reading “Patent Pools Pushed To Make Drugs Affordable in Developing World” →

Critics Pounce on Cancer Care Costs Study

Merrill Goozner

Posted 4/12/12 on Gooz News

From Reuters: With the United States spending more on healthcare than any other country — $2.5 trillion, or just over $8,000 per capita, in 2009 — the question has long been, is it worth it? At least for spending on cancer, a controversial new study answers with an emphatic “yes.”

Cancer patients in the United States who were diagnosed from 1995 to 1999 lived an average 11.1 years after that, compared with 9.3 years for those in 10 countries in Europe, researchers led by health economist Tomas Philipson of the University of Chicago reported in an analysis published Monday in the journal Health Affairs.

Continue reading “Critics Pounce on Cancer Care Costs Study” →

Rationing Redux: The Dog That Didn’t Bark

Merrill Goozner

Published 4/10/12 in The Fiscal Times

Last week, physician groups representing nearly half of America’s doctors issued guidelines that would limit Americans’ access to allegedly unnecessary medical tests and procedures. The public reaction was noticeable for the one thing that was missing – a public outcry against rationing.

That was reserved for the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on a completely separate issue. The Republican majority last week cast another symbolic vote against what it calls rationing in the health care reform law better known as Obamacare.

Continue reading “Rationing Redux: The Dog That Didn’t Bark” →

Day Three – The Wrap Up

Merrill Goozner

Posted 3/29/12 on Gooz News

This is what conservative justices will do if they strike down or cripple the health-care law … A court that gave us Bush v. Gore and Citizens United will prove conclusively that it sees no limits on its power, no need to defer to those elected to make our laws. A Supreme Court that is supposed to give us justice will instead deliver ideology. now  – E.J. Dionne, The Washington Post

The insurance mandate was effectively reduced to a bumper sticker by the opponents in their constitutional challenge, and the entire law reduced to little more than an appendage to the mandate. . . The fate of the mandate should not determine the survival of the other elements of the law — like prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or charging them higher fees — which can operate without the mandate. – New York Times editorial

Overturning the whole law would be an act of judicial restraint. – The Wall Street Journal editorial

Continue reading “Day Three – The Wrap Up” →

The Mandate May Fall, But Not Reform

Merrill Goozner

Posted 3/24/12 on Gooz News

Opponents of health care reform, whose case will be heard next week by the Supreme Court, base their complaint against the Obama administration’s signature domestic achievement on the claim that its individual mandate to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional.

Challengers, including state attorneys general and governors in a majority of states, say it represents an unwarranted extension of the constitution’s commerce clause into the personal realm of individual choice. If people do not want to buy a particular product – in this case health insurance – the government has no right to make them.

Continue reading “The Mandate May Fall, But Not Reform” →

The Legal Strategy To Defend Health Reform

Joe Paduda

Posted 3/15/11 on Managed Care Matter

There’s a seemingly intractable conflict facing the Obama Administration – how can they argue – simultaneously – that the mandate is crucial to the Affordable Care Act, while also arguing that the rest of the Act should and can survive if the Supreme Court rules the mandate is unconstitutional?

That’s the Hobson’s choice facing lawyers arguing for the Administration, and while the two positions seem irreconcilable, they may not be.

Merrill Goozner is convinced the two positions can comprise a reasonable and legally logical argument. He cites a recent article in the NEJM, to wit:

Continue reading “The Legal Strategy To Defend Health Reform” →

Defending the Affordable Care Act

Merrill Goozner

Posted 3/14/12 on Gooz News

What will they do? The Supreme Court (more or less) that gave us Bush v Gore in 2000 will later this month hear arguments by states challenging the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. health care reform. The heart of the legal challenge raised by conservative state attorneys general is whether the individual mandate is constitutional. What happens if the Supremes say no? Does the entire law fall, or just the mandate?

The issue for lawyers is called “severability.” Did Congress when passing the law believe the mandate was necessary to the smooth functioning of the rest of the law? Clearly there are large swaths of the law for which the mandate is largely irrelevant: the physician payments sunshine act (disclosure of drug company payments to doctors); the creation of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute to conduct comparative effectiveness research; the numerous payment pilot projects; and more.

Continue reading “Defending the Affordable Care Act” →

Inflating the Deficit with Futile Health Therapies

Merrill Goozner

Published 2/27/12 in The Fiscal Times

Cynics say Washington is the city where good ideas go to die. A promising strategy for holding down health care costs in the Obama administration’s reform bill – providing patients and doctors with authoritative information on what works best in health care – should provide a classic test of that proposition, assuming the law survives the next election.

Experts estimate anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of the health care that Americans receive is wasted. It is either ineffective or does more harm than good. To put that in perspective, waste costs anywhere from $250 billion and $750 billion a year, or as much as three-fourths of the annual federal deficit.

Continue reading “Inflating the Deficit with Futile Health Therapies” →

Raise Medicare’s Age? That’s Cost-Shifting, Not Cost Savings

Merrill Goozner

Posted 2/27/12 on Gooz News

Mitt “Two Cadillacs” Romney in his Detroit speech on Friday said he’d like to raise the age on Medicare eligibility to 67 to save the taxpayers money. A Congressional Budget Office report released last month found raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67 from 65 would reduce Medicare spending by $148 billion over the next decade, but people in that age group would pay more for their health care.

Continue reading “Raise Medicare’s Age? That’s Cost-Shifting, Not Cost Savings” →

The Fiction Behind the Cost of New Drugs

Merrill Goozner

Published 2/16/12 in The Fiscal Times

The drug industry usually defends the high price on drugs – the latest cancer therapies are tipping the scales at $100,000 a year – by pointing to the large sums it spends on research and development. It is true that drug firms spend alarger share of their revenue on R&D than most other industries, typically anywhere from 15 to 20 percent of sales. And Eli Lilly ran a Super Bowl ad claiming the cost of developing a new drug has now risen to more than $1.3 billion.

Continue reading “The Fiction Behind the Cost of New Drugs” →

The High Price of New Cancer Drugs

Merrill Goozner

Posted 1/24/12 on Gooz News

Julie Gralow, an oncologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, recently prescribed an exciting new therapy for a 60-year-old woman with metastatic breast cancer. Three-and-a-half years into her battle against the disease, the patient had already exhausted three different anti-estrogen therapies, each of which only put a temporary check on the spreading tumors.

The newly prescribed drug, Novartis’ Afinitor, is one of the recently approved targeted therapies that have generated a lot of excitement among cancer patients and oncologists in recent years. Drugs that target just the cancer cells promise the same or better results as toxic chemotherapy, but with far fewer side effects.

Continue reading “The High Price of New Cancer Drugs” →

A Theory on Why The FDA Hid Conflicts of Interest

Merrill Goozner

Posted 1/13/11 on Gooz News

Much has been made of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ decision last month to overrule Food and Drug Administration scientists and prohibit the over-the-counter sale of themorning after pill to minors. Many observers blasted the move as a blatant political move by the White House, which didn’t want to antagonize social conservatives ahead of this year’s election.

Now there is the possibility politicians on Capitol Hill are also influencing some choices being made at the FDA. It involves the agency’s decision last month to appoint at least three scientists to a high-profile drug safety advisory committee without disclosing they had conflicts of interest with the company – Bayer – whose product – birth control pills – was up for review.

Continue reading “A Theory on Why The FDA Hid Conflicts of Interest” →

The War on Health Care Fraud Needs a Champion

Merrill Goozner

Posted 1/09/12 on Gooz News

My regular readers know how much importance I attach to the war on waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicare and Medicaid programs (see posts here and here). Anyone who cares deeply about providing health care for all our citizens needs to make this a high priority, since taxpayers won’t long support those in need if the programs that deliver services aren’t protected from theft. That’s why Roy Poses over at the Health Care Renewal blog has done us a big favor by digging up this report from a 2007 Boston Globe profile on Mitt Romney.

Bain Capital’s 1989 purchase of Damon Corp., a Needham medical testing firm that later pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal government of $25 million and paid a record $119 million fine.

Continue reading “The War on Health Care Fraud Needs a Champion” →

Final Thoughts from a Dying Cancer Researcher

Merrill Goozner

Posted 1/02/12 on Gooz News

I recently received word that Alessandro Liberati, the Head of the Italian Cochrane Network, passed away from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow. The Cochrane network is a worldwide collaboration committed to conducting comparative analyses of medical interventions. In a recent letter to The Lancet, Liberati noted his own experience in searching the medical literature in hopes of identifying what would be the best treatment for his own disease. He noted:

I looked at the “epidemiology” of myeloma studies on ClinicalTrials.gov. On July 31, 2011, a search using the term “multiple myeloma” identified 1384 studies. Of these, 107 were phase 2/3 comparative studies. However, in only 58 of these studies was overall survival an endpoint, and in only ten of these was it the primary endpoint. No trial was a head-to-head comparison of different drugs or strategies.

Continue reading “Final Thoughts from a Dying Cancer Researcher” →

Wyden Covers Ryan’s Retreat on Medicare Vouchers

Merrill Goozner

Published 12/16/11 in the Fiscal Times

Last spring, the House passed on a straight party-line vote Rep. Paul Ryan’s mandatory Medicare privatization plan, which the Congressional Budget Office said would force future seniors to pick up two-thirds of their health care costs with no guarantee that those costs would come down.

On Thursday, Ryan, R-Wis., with a bipartisan boost from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., offered a revamped version of his plan, dubbed premium support because the government gives beneficiaries cash or a voucher to help them pay for plans sold by private insurance companies. The changes from his earlier plan were stark.

Continue reading “Wyden Covers Ryan’s Retreat on Medicare Vouchers” →