By: Jon Walker
Today’s vote in the Senate to pass their health care reform bill was a big win for many people. It was a big win for the drug companies, the biologics industry, the hospital companies, and the for-profit health insurance corporations. They will all get billions of government dollars piled on to their ledgers, and and millions of Americans now forced to buy their products. The vote was also a huge win for the lobbyists who just saw their profits jump thanks to this great opportunity to show their clients just how powerful their hold on Washington really is.
This vote was also a political win. It was a big deal for politicians-like Barack Obama, Max Baucus, Rahm Emanuel, and Harry Reid-who cared more about putting up a “W” on the scoreboard than about the policy. It was also a big day for senators like Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, and Joe Lieberman. The incredibly broken rules of the Senate gave them an absurd amount of anti-constitutional power that allowed them to hold reform hostage for pork and industry favors.
It was loss for the country. Our broken health care system will remain broken and costs will continue to rise at an alarming rate. Things like drug re-importation and a robust public option, which would have helped bring down prices for millions of Americans, were stripped from the bill at the request of powerful industry lobbyists.
It was also a big loss for the progressive movement. We were out-gunned by industry lobbyists, and many of our movement “allies” failed us. A woman’s right to choose was thrown under the bus just to get something passed. The supposed “progressives” in the Senate refused to go all-out and use every tool to achieve the most progressive reform. Lawrence O’Donnell is right, most importantly, this bill will give liberalism a very bad name. read more
Whenever anything is on the line and Progressives are involved, it always seems to wind up benefiting the biotech industry. The highest priority for progressives is to keep research funding going full speed ahead, even if it means throwing sick people and poor people and same-sex couples and women under the bus.
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p>Your post either reflects sincere confusion or regret, because it still seems to be demanding a “robust” public option, which means a blank check for biotech in practice. Until progressives start actually advocating for limits on research, which if you ask me is going to be never because that’s the main motivator for progressives, they’re going to be throwing people under the bus.
Why would you ever want to stifle or otherwise discourage research? I absolutely want research and development of new and better drugs and medical technology to advance full steam ahead. We should never hold ourselves back in that regard, which is a different discussion than might arise from the ethics of their use. Biotech is one of the areas it seems both out nation and state have a potential for a competitive advantage. Let’s not squander it. I don’t know what you have against biotech, but it is not mutually exclusive to other aspects of reform. The poor and sick will ultimately benefit from better care and treatment as researched and developed by biotech just like everyone else. That is precisely WHY we must continue.
Leaving aside that many areas of biotech research and use are unethical and would be ultimately bad for society, there is the obvious question of priority. Progressives have no higher priority than biotech research, apparently. Hence they are perfectly willing to enact laws like this that throw people under the bus and leave them still uninsured but now penalized if they do not purchase private insurance. Progressives don’t mind that “full steam ahead” means stifling taxes and premiums, harms the envrionment, etc etc.
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p>I’m not saying bring medical research funding down to zero, but maybe cut it in half at least, and make sure that insurance premiums are not paying for medical research.
I want R&D AND full coverage. I prefer single-payer remember and also keep in mind that there are plenty of progressives that aren’t too happy about the mandated purchase or deals cut with Pharma. Ethical concerns about actual use are valid, but that’s not part of this particular discussion. Progressives are also first in line to make sure that industry does not harm the environment. The assumptions you make lead me to wonder frankly how closely you’ve been following this discussion.
would trade the mandated purchases or deals cut with Pharma for single payer/universal coverage. They will pretend to complain that they also want single payer and universal coverage, but when they are faced with a choice (and of course all spending bills are nothing but mutually exclusive choices of how to spend a finite amount of resources, “guns and butter” is never an option) they will side with the biotech industry and the pro-business republicans and the result will be the bill we’ve got.
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p>They could agree to cut funding for biotech and cut mandates for research and technology investments in exchange for universal access for less robust coverage, but they simply do not.
Politics is all about choices and the “art of the possible”. I for one would absolutely rather have single-payer rather than mandated purchases or deals with Pharma, and I KNOW I’m not the only person on BMG who has said as much. Ultimately the question has to be is the proposed bill on balance better than the status quo. There are going to be different answers to that of course, but your choice is false and I’m starting to resent your aspersions you’re casting on people’s sincerity and resorting to litmus tests.
It puts monetary interests ahead of people interests.
More news about big pharma,depopulation.
http://solari.com/blog/?p=3532
…that the link you provide is to another conspiracy theory, but on your point of banning direct ads I think there is merit to that and I think there used to be such a ban.
they definitely increase the number of prescriptions written. I’d like to ban vehicle ads too, or at least ones that depict a vehicle in motion or in an outdoor off-road setting. Or at least tax all advertising. I think ads violate my Constitutional right to free expression, because they don’t ask my permission to come before my eyeballs and influence my mind, which is the very source of my free expression. I don’t think people have a right to stick their message in front of other people, especially if it is a commercial message that they simply pay money to put in front of people. Political non-commercial messages like this comment have more of free speech claim to go and violate other people’s rights, but commercial ads do not.
If anything it’s the banning that’s more likely to raise constitutional objections. If you don’t like ads walk away, mute the TV, or change the channel, but they’re not hurting you. Drugs are a little different because it should be up to your doctor to tell you what you need.
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p>It seems to me you are quite the Luddite. You’ve come out against biotech, against organ transplants, for taxing video games an internet use at extraordinary rates, and holier-than-thou on veganism. I’m glad you don’t run my world!
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p>The drug regimen is now and always has been up to your doctor. Well-trained physicians can and do have authoritative conversations with their patients about whether or a not a particular pharmaceutical is indicated in their treatment. I think you overestimate the influence of these commercials on most people. Most people trust their doctors more than their television sets. If a patient sees a drug on TV and wonders if it’s right for them, it’s often a short conversation with the doctor on the next visit. Often these patient inquiries give docs a chance to further explain the rationale for the drug regimen the patient is already on and to establish a better, more trusting relationship. If docs cave to patient demands to change meds because of a television commercial, then there is something seriously wrong with the physician’s decision-making that is far worse than appears. In other words, bad doctors have always been with us–remember 50% graduate in the bottom half of their classes (lol)–so whether or not these ads truly adversely affect outcomes is debatable. If these ads are adversely affecting outcomes, then the solution is to better train physicians to have these difficult conversations, not ban the information to the consumer.
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p>Providing information to patients about current pharmaceuticals is not a bad thing. The ads themselves, however, are incredibly annoying and even silly. Information, however, should not be “banned” even when it comes in the form of an insipid commercial. Patients as consumers can and should be encouraged to participate in their care. The days of paternalistic medicine fashioned after “Father Knows Best, you dumb shit” are mostly gone–thankfully.
Unfortunately I’m not as optimistic. Drug manufacturers market aggressively to the doctors themselves too, even to the point of handing out perks from time to time. There’s something to be said for being your own advocate, but sometimes I think the ads contribute to more prescriptions being written than necessary and patients insisting on name brand when a generic often manufactured in the same plant would do just fine. I would be interested to see any studies regarding how often prescriptions were written before and after the previous ad ban was lifted.
I can tell you that before drug ads pharmaceutical companies were handing out perks with abandon. The “incentives” to prescribe a particular drug were obscene. All that changed with inurement laws, however.
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p>So don’t be pining for the days before ads. I can tell you from experience that they were far worse than the days we have now.
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p>And again, a weak physician is going to cave to patient demands with or without ads. You underestimate the need to retain patients (patient panels anyone???) over the need to behavior entirely responsibly. Patients talk to one another about their issues. Print ads in magazines also impart drug information, not just TV ads. Again, withholding information is not a solution to any problem.
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p>In short, the issue is FAR more complicated than you appear to realize. The pressure on docs is not to prescribe, it’s to cut costs while retaining sizable patient panels and over a hundred visits per week. To the extent a doc can please a patient with a comparable drug that doesn’t impact the doc’s “profile” with the managed care insurer s/he may do that. But if it means prescribing the more expensive drug for no clinical gain, it’s not likely to happen, not when the doc’s compensation is tied to a cost structure that demands s/he stay within certain average parameters per capita.
However, your third paragraph appears to make my point. It sounds like you’re saying doctors need to retain patients so the incentive is to please them regardless of merits. With ads that means patients come in thinking they know better than their doctor about what they really need. A patient should certainly raise concerens with a physician, but the doctor needs to base a prescription on need not just demand. I’m not really sure what patient panels and profiles are. Doctors need to be able to serve their patients, not insurers or drug companies.
because the physician’s compensation, in most managed care environments, is directly tied to his/her ability to control costs. Prescribing the more expensive drug when it is not clinically indicated hurts physicians in the pocketbook. What I’m trying to convey is that there is a balance between maintaining high patient panels (numbers of patients who select you has a PCP, meaning they like you and stay with you) and maintaining a physician cost profile that pleases both the physician’s paycheck and the insurer (lower costs per patient seen). Having patients beg for the exorbitantly expensive drug they saw during the commercial break on “American Idol” is not likely to impact a physician’s decision making unless that drug is going to provide a tangible clinical benefit that is demonstrable and defensible to utilization review at that patient’s insurance company. Physicians who habitually choose the most aggressive workups (as seen by patterns of diagnostic testing) and the most expensive drugs (ditto) are punished in a managed care environment that is interested in reducing cost–like here in Massachusetts.
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p>Physicians have generally prescribed on need versus demand with the exception of some egregious examples that have come to light lately (Fosamax anybody?). Physicians should be serving patients only but that is completely and utterly unrealistic when someone else is paying the bill and providing a paycheck. A balance of patient care and cost is attainable and advantageous. That is what we should be striving for.
Ask your doctor for
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p>Your disease, yes you own it, there is no cure just chemicals that manage the symptoms
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p>The unknown,unspoken of and never researched processed foods issue.
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p>GMO frankenfoods
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p>Codex Alimentarius
Yes, control of your health is not yours anymore.