Monthly Archives: March 2019

American’s blame everyone but themselves for high healthcare costs

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  • Most Americans are focused on what they’re being charged for health care, not how much they or an aging population are consuming, according to a new POLITICO/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health poll.
  • Respondents blamed drug companies, insurers, providers and even the federal government for surging costs while dismissing overuse as a central issue.
  • 54 percent of respondents believe that high health costs are a serious problem. Asked about the reasons, nearly 80 percent said the prices charged by drugmakers were a major factor, while 75 percent held insurance companies responsible and 74 percent held hospitals responsible.
  • Our high cost of care and modest health outcomes will remain stubbornly fixed unless our behavior changes.
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Some healthcare facts we all should know

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  • In a partisan political climate, leaders on both sides of the aisle have identified an urgent challenge: the price of prescription drugs. The average American pays approximately $1,200 a year for prescriptions – and that figure represents out-of-pocket costs alone.
  • Here are some facts and stats that sometimes get overlooked in the debate.
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The craziness of pharma drug pricing

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  • Lilly says the net price for its Humalog insulin—the price after discounts and rebates—fell to an average of $135 a patient a month in 2018, from $147 in 2014. During the same period, the product’s average list price rose 51.9% to $594 per patient monthly.
  • Lilly hasn’t raised the U.S. list price for Humalog since May 2017. U.S. sales of the drug rose 4% to $1.79 billion in 2018, which Lilly said was primarily driven by demand.
  • Dug middlemen continue to take a huge chunk of prescription drug profits.
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The correlation between ​Theranos and digital health

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IN SUMMARY: According to the HBO documentary on Theranos “there’s a lot of lying in Silicon Valley.” The lying is still going on when it comes to digital and mhealth, and the venture capital money is again flowing. The internet has allowed the hype to take root and there aren’t enough people asking the hard questions.

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Biogen dupes us all

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KEY TAKEAWAY: “We still believe that amyloid beta hypothesis is potentially the right approach for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease,” an Eisai spokesman told Reuters. What made Wall Street and everyone else, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Merck, and Roche — have reported out decisive late-stage failures over the last year that all point to one conclusion: Targeting amyloid-beta alone in symptomatic patients may hit your biomarkers on effect, but it doesn’t delay the ruthless march of the disease.

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