Author Archives: Richard Meyer

About Richard Meyer

Passionate, award-winning Marketing and Media Executive with an MBA and 15+ years success implementing cutting-edge strategies. Career highlights include driving development/launch of a groundbreaking e-Marketing branding initiative for Eli Lilly product Cialis that led to Website becoming #1 online pharma destination (and #1 in prescription conversions), increasing leads 30% and ROI 38% for $1B manufacturer Medtronic

Healthcare: Americans are paying more for less

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  • The American healthcare system is a hellish tangle of bureaucracy, with various  inefficiencies and injustices.
  • A sensible healthcare system would have done something about for-profit drug companies who continually raise prices.
  • America already pays enough to fund two generous universal healthcare systems for its citizenry.

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The poor reliability of online health information

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  • Many popular YouTube videos about prostate cancer contained biased or poor-quality information.
  • There was a significant negative correlation between scientific quality and viewer engagement.
  • The comments section underneath some videos contained advertising and peer-to-peer medical advice.
  • A total of 115 videos (77%) contained potentially misinformative and/or biased content within the video or comments section, with a total reach of >6 million viewers.
  • For online health seekers there is too much invalid health information and they are pretty much left to determine what’s based on medical knowledge and what’s garbage.

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Office visits to primary care physicians declined 18 percent

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  • Office visits to nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) increased 129 percent.
  • Office visits to primary care physicians (PCPs) declined 18 percent from 2012 to 2016 for adults under 65 years old with employer-sponsored health insurance.
  • From 2012 to 2016, office visits to NPs and PAs increased each year.

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The focus on drug prices ignores the real issue for healthcare costs

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  • The overall diabetes rate in the U.S. adult population is growing, up from 10.8% in 2008-2009 to 11.5% in 2016-2017.
  • The rate increase has resulted in about 1.7 million more Americans with diabetes diagnoses now than would have been the case had the rate not changed since 2008-2009.
  • Even more alarming is that obesity, a key risk factor in the development of type 2 diabetes, has climbed by 2.3 points since 2008-2009, to reach 28.3% nationally in 2016-2017.

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How is Pfizer employee morale?

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  • 41 of Pfizer’s drugs have been picked for a price hike on January 15, averaging 5%.
  • Pfizer noted Friday that the increases will be offset by higher rebates and discounts offered to insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers.
  • Pfizer had the highest profit total ($4.1 billion) of any publicly traded health care company in the third quarter.

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How to screw up a clinical trial

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  • Amarin’s clinical trial of fish oil may be tainted because of suspicions that the placebo group received mineral oil which could affect the absorption of statins. This “anti-statin” effect could raise “bad cholesterol” levels, enhancing the separation of major adverse cardiac events (MACE) between Vascepa and control.
  • Cardiologists who reviewed the data see a big problem with the study that could mean that it exaggerates Vascepa’s benefits.
  • Mineral oil may not not behaved as a placebo at all.
  • Will insurers recommend OTC fish oil?

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