Anyone who watches TV has been bewildered/amused/confused/annoyed by pharmaceutical ads that begin by explaining how your life can be perfect if you take this drug, and end with a rushed recitation of all the things that can go wrong if in fact you do take the drug. Drug companies, of course, are obliged by the….
Continue ReadingArchives for August 2011
Hospitals Prove Infection Control Works
It’s an unfunny truism that if you want to avoid getting sick, stay out of the hospital. But that may be starting to change for the better. The unacceptably high number of hospital patients who contract an infection after admission has long been in the news. We have covered the topic frequently. According to federal….
Continue ReadingFor Medicare Advantage Plans, an Over-Abundance of Choices
Another clarion call to simplify a program so critical to the welfare of so many Americans was sounded earlier this month in a report published online by Health Affairs. It concluded that when faced with numerous Medicare Advantage plans, older Americans were less likely to enroll than if their choice of plans was more limited…..
Continue ReadingIs Tobacco Promotion an Issue of Free Speech, or Protecting the Public Health?
Last November, the FDA ruled that tobacco manufacturers must include on their packaging graphic depictions of the horrors smoking can wreak. The new packaging was to take effect in autumn 2012. Five tobacco companies now have taken the FDA to federal court, challenging the regulations. Among other things, they claim that the depictions: would unfairly….
Continue Reading“What’s It Worth?” — the Impossible but Necessary Calculus of Suffering in Medical Malpractice Suits
When a previously healthy unborn baby dies from a medical error during birth, what should the grieving mother be paid for her suffering? That is the difficult but necessary calculation that must be made in any malpractice lawsuit where the clock cannot be turned backwards to restore the baby to life, and the only justice….
Continue ReadingHip Implant Complaints Flood FDA
The Food and Drug Administration has received more complaints about defective metal-on-metal hip implants in the last six months than in the total previous four years combined, according to a report in the New York Times. The defect complaints mainly concern the DePuy (Johnson & Johnson) A.S.R. hip implant device but also include the Zimmer….
Continue ReadingBladder Cancer Alleged in Actos Lawsuits
In 1999, the FDA approved the drug Actos for Type 2 diabetes. Its popularity grew substantially after its primary competitor, Avandia, was linked to increased risk of heart attack. In 2010, the drug generated $3.4 billion in sales for its manufacturer, Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Now, Actos is under fire, too. The drug was recalled this summer….
Continue ReadingMore Generous Insurance Coverage for Preventive Care for Women
The news that health insurers will be required to cover contraception and related counseling, courtesy of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed last year, received a lot of media attention and political blowback. Because some people find that provision of preventive care for women objectionable, it overshadowed other elements of the new guidelines, which pertain….
Continue ReadingShortage of Vital Drugs Shows Another Free Market Failure in Health Care
The U.S. faces a growing shortage of the low-profit but vital generic drugs that cancer patients and other desperate folks rely on. These drugs are made in places like India and China in plants that the Food and Drug Administration lacks power to inspect. Meantime, Big Pharma focuses on new high-profit but low-benefit drugs. The….
Continue ReadingAwake by Mistake During Surgery: a Patient’s Nightmare
No surgical patient wants to experience, or remember, the details of their operation, and the drugs given to put patients to sleep generally work nicely to create a blank slate in the mind for anything that happened after the anesthesiologist told the patient to start counting backward. But not always. As many as 1 in….
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