Healthcare Outsider

The numbers are in, and it looks like there’s going to be even more coal in the stockings of physicians come Christmas. According to modernhealthcare.com, the Federation of State Medical Boards reports disciplinary action against doctors is up 6% from last year to over 5,700 total cases nationwide. This prompts the question: why this sudden trend? read more »

As our national health system gears up to enter a post health bill era where we hope to cut costs by reducing inefficiencies in the system, there’s nothing like some good, old-fashioned moral hazard to make it really feel like home again. The New York Times Reports that last month, the FDA approved AstraZeneca’s cholesterol drug Crestor to be used as preventative medicine for people without existing heart problems.

Besides the fact that there are some actual health risks involved with taking the drug on a regular basis (a potential 9% increase in likelihood for type-2 diabetes, for starters) there’s also that boring little problem that people are now going to be picking this stuff up like hotcakes every time their heart skips a beat or they have a mild cardiac arrest. And now that millions more of our paranoid population are going to be covered, thanks to the aforementioned health bill, guess who’s going to be paying for the fact that people will be popping the not-cheap drug like its Aspirin? The taxpayer, that’s who. Thanks, Socialism.

-Michael B. Sauter

After the health care bill passed last week, Attorneys General in 14 mostly Conservative states filed lawsuits intended to show the legislation to be unconstitutionally coercive. Not so in Georgia, where Democratic Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Thurbert Baker has roundly rejected any such action, despite urgings from angry citizens and lawmakers. Baker’s rationale is that the lawsuits are frivolous and a waste of the state’s valuable time. Now, according to the New York Times, 31 members of the Georgia State Legislature are threatening to impeach the attorney general. It’s as if they’re trying to say “you think THAT’S a frivolous lawsuit!? we’ll show YOU a frivolous lawsuit!”
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An article in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that 50 – 70% of health care costs in the United States are preventable. This cost manifests in the form of higher premiums, fees and taxes. If there is one group that stands to gain the most from a national lifestyles adjustment, it is the businesses whose lofty employee insurance budgets are eating away at their earnings. If only there was some way to encourage people to live healthier lives…

Believe it or not, the New York Times Reports, there actually is a revolutionary new method to motivate people to behave in a certain way without forcing them. It’s called “money” (pronounced: mun-ee.) Several companies, including General Electric and Safeway, have implemented experimental “pay for prevention” programs in which employees are offered premium discounts, special benefits, and sometimes even cash in exchange for adopting healthy habits such as regular exercise, good nutrition, and quitting bad habits such as smoking.

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So the health care bill has passed. Now what?

Many of the Americans who kept up with the politics of the debate without understanding the actual measures of reform it included are slowly coming to the realization that they actually have no idea what they were so passionately railing against/for. If you’re one of these people, don’t be ashamed (ok, be a little ashamed.) by reading the rest of this post, you can learn, in 60 seconds or less, the essential parts of the bill. CNN lists the five most important elements of the bill for your lazy self to digest while you wait for “Lost” to come back from commercial break:
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The New York Times reports that a group of disgruntled scientists in the FDA are planning on testifying that their superiors ignored their reports on the dangers of using CT scans – a common form of diagnostic radiation – in place of colonoscopies. The members claim that they had determined there to be a significant carcinogenic risk of the scan, and believe that roughly 14,000 people die each year from tumors caused by the controversial treatment. The FDA, they assert, chose to ignore and bury their reports as they sought to approve the G.E. manufactured scanner for usage in diagnostic imaging of the colon.

After reading this, anyone who thinks the FDA’s first priority will always be our health may need to get their head examined… with a dangerously radioactive scanner.

-Michael B. Sauter

When warnings about the deadly new H1N1 virus first began to circulate, the disease quickly became the hippest thing to be afraid of since Avian Flu and West Nile Virus. The media wouldn’t put the story down long enough to let us run to the store and buy protective masks, and someone uttering the words “swine flu” in casual conversation was enough to close schools down. Despite the fervor much of the world experienced at the onset, there was still that skeptical part of the population – jaded by previous disease scares – that said “been there, feared that before.” Swine flu seemed destined to be a trending topic on twitter for about a week, kill a few thousand people in Southeast Asia and ten people in Nebraska, and that would be that.
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The BBC reports that China now surpasses the U.S. in total number of diabetics. Nearly one in ten citizens of the people’s republic have the metabolic disorder. This rate is comparable  to U.S. figures, but having that extra billion or so people puts their numbers over the top. There are about 32 million American diabetics compared with the over 90 million Chinese with the disorder.

China’s propaganda department is citing the diabetes numbers as proof of Chinese national superiority to the states. Google is trying to take credit for the whole thing.

-Michael B. Sauter

Healthcare Outsider’s series on the lesser-known parts of the brand new bill arrives at a newly-instated tax on tanning. CNN reports the legislation includes a law which taxes tanners ten percent for each visit they take to the salon. Why the tax? Evidence suggests that people who use the beds regularly (especially people under the age of 30) nearly double their risk of developing skin cancer. Paying the new tax, and the increased risk of developing melanoma and dying is almost certainly worth paying someone 45 dollars to put you in an oven and make you look like an oompa loompa.

The tanning tax measure is part of a portfolio of minor laws meant to incentivize healthy behavior and reduce medical costs. This also includes a clause which requires restaurant chains to prominently display calorie information.

-Michael B. Sauter

GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s second-largest drug maker, just can’t seem to catch a break.

It appears the Swiss pharma giant can do nothing right these days. First, there was Advair, the asthma drug that worsened the condition with prolonged use, then there was Avandia, the diabetes drug which has been shown to cause heart attacks. Now, there is GSK’s vaccine for the diarrhea-inducing virus Rotarix. The vaccine was found to contain traces of the supposedly innocuous pig disease called porcine circovirus.
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