Today’s front page news features a Philippines typhoon victim who died from not getting an antibiotics shot; for five days he lay with a mangled leg, untreated on a hospital gurney, and by the time doctors got to him, the infection was too far advanced. Here in the U.S., tens of thousands of Americans die….
Continue ReadingArchives for November 2013
Get a Flu Shot, Protect Your Heart
It’s difficult to escape the multimedia call these days for people to get a flu shot. It’s sound advice for virtually everyone older than 6 months, especially young children, older adults and anybody with compromised immune systems or cardiovascular disease. At some health-care facilities, flu shots are compulsory for employees. It’s not a 100% guarantee,….
Continue ReadingJohnson & Johnson Settles Risperdal Case Involving Fraud and Kickbacks
Fraudently promoting drugs. Paying kickbacks to the providers who pushed them. Sounds like the storyline for a premium cable TV series, but it’s just Big Pharma behaving badly. Again. Last week Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, agreed to pay $2.2 billion in criminal fines and civil penalties for illegally promoting the drugs….
Continue ReadingA Case Study of Tort Reform’s Misleading Claims
The essence of a long and fascinating examination of a lawsuit over a newborn’s brain damage by Steve Cohen on Forbes.com was distilled nicely on PopTort.com, the civil justice site of the Center for Justice & Democracy. It concerned tort reform, which, as regular readers of this blog know, is the misguided movement to restrict….
Continue ReadingHospital Suspends Black Lung Program Under Black Cloud
A multipart story investigating how Johns Hopkins Medicine assessed coal miners’ claims of suffering from black lung disease has prompted suspension of its program. “Breathless and Burdened,” a yearlong effort by the Center for Public Integrity (Center), examined how doctors and lawyers, allegedly at the behest of the coal industry, helped to deny benefits claims….
Continue ReadingThe Cost Creep of Pap Smears
Among other things, the Affordable Care Act, and its mandatory insurance coverage provision, is supposed to slow the rising cost of health care. A story last month in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) called “The Thousand-Dollar Pap Smear” is pretty clear evidence why everyone needs to pay attention to fees for services rendered…..
Continue ReadingDefendant in Unnecessary Heart Stent Lawsuits Loses Again
Last month, we wrote about a fraud investigation showing the extreme degree to which stents are implanted into heart patients who don’t need them. The overuse and/or inappropriate use of stents has been in the news a lot lately, and late last month a notorious abuser of this procedure was busted-again-by a jury of his….
Continue ReadingSuggested Reading—More Reasons to Be Wary of Spinal Fusion Surgery
Regular readers of this blog understand that back problems are not only common, but commonly misdiagnosed, overdiagnosed and overtreated. And that some practitioners are less than ethical in treating back issues (see our blog, “The Going Rate for Compromising a Surgeon’s Principles and Patient Safety: $16 Million.”) A recent investigative story in the Washington Post,….
Continue ReadingUrologists Who Own Radiation Equipment Use it More … and Probably Unnecessarily
A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about urologists who, according to clinical guidelines, use too much radiation to treat prostate cancer pain. Here’s some related have-you-no-shame prostate cancer news brought to you by your local urologist. According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, (NEJM) an awful lot of urologists are….
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