As a physician, I want to offer my perspective on the “sticker shock” problem in the pharmacy. I am very conscious of the fact that my patients may not be able to afford medications I prescribe.
medicine
Your Doctor Might Want To Save You Some Money
By 2.9.07
What’s A Girl Got To Do To Get An HMO To Help Her?
By 9.28.06
What lengths do you have to go to to get good coverage from an HMO? Being sick obviously won’t do it. So what about starving yourself? Well, not if your HMO is Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Merck’s Vioxx Replacement Still A Heart Risk
By 9.15.06
Merck’s getting in on the arthritis market again with a new drug, called Arcoxia. You might remember their previous offering, Vioxx, which was discontinued two years ago after octogenarians countrywide lifted their contorted, claw-like hands to a withered chest and let out a rattling gasp under the influence of a massive, Vioxx-induced heart attack. Lawsuits abounded.
Popeye Gets E. Coli
By 9.15.06
And millions of small children all across America suddenly break out into one collective peal of delight: a massive outbreak of E. coli in bagged spinach has federal health officials warning consumers not to eat the foul-tasting weed.
FDA Says Plan B Causes Teen Sex Cults
By 4.28.06 — Updated: 10.25.12
What the hell? The Manhattan-based Center for Reproductive Rights is grilling FDA officials on their failure to approve the Plan B pill as a drug that can be distributed without a prescription. Why might they not have approved it?
Experts Say Cough Syrups Don’t Work
By 4.26.06
My skull a steadily expanding hydrocephalic sack of mucus, I’ve been swigging a lot of cough syrup lately. I’ve spent a hundred euros on the stuff over the last couple of days, which — roughly translated into America’s currency, the U.S. Cowboyo — is a hell of a lot of money. You empty your wallet on the counter of the local pharmacist, but even in your feverish daze, you know cough medicines don’t really work: it just makes you feel more proactive about your chances of fighting off your body’s alarmingly rapid decomposition into a jell-o monster made of phlegm.
Diseasemongering: Pharmaceuticals Path To Riches
By 4.12.06
As a hyperactive and gibbering youth, it was once suggested by a teacher that I might benefit from being treated for ADD. Upon hearing this advice, my father — sage and saturnine — said this: “We had kids with ADD back in the 50’s. The way the teacher treated them was by walking to the back of the class, opening the sufferer’s desk, inserting the kid’s cranium into it and them slamming it over and over and over again until the child was subdued. You do that a few times to a ten year old’s noggin, he quickly learns to pay attention, psychological imperatives be damned.”
Stem Cells Attained From Mice Testicles
By 3.31.06
A team of German scientists have developed a new source for embryonic stem cells: your taint.
How Healthy is Advertising Drugs to Consumers?
By 3.28.06
- “Only two industrialized countries, the United States and New Zealand, allow direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription medicines.”
Study: Herbal Supplements Turn Kids Into Crack Fiends
By 3.24.06
Back when I was in high school, there was only one kind of ‘herbal supplement’: the magic jay bone. Quizzing me and my horde of giggling compatriots in the back of senile Mrs. Johnson’s fourth period Remedial English class, any researcher who cared to have asked would have found that the ratio of herbal supplement takers to illegal drug users was one to one.
Supreme Court To Decide Whether Facts Can Be Patented
By 3.22.06
As follow-up to our recent post on the patenting of scientific facts and products of nature, here’s a decent article on the issues at stake in the B Vitamin Case currently being argued by the Supreme Court.
China’s Executed Supply Japanese Ill With Organ Transplants
By 3.22.06
In Japan, organ donation is almost entirely unheard of, due in large part to a taboo associated with it according to traditional Buddhist beliefs. An organ transplant supposedly makes the body less clean and perfect — an odd mentality to take when you’re talking about replacing a black and diseased kidney with a functioning one. Nevertheless, those who are in dire need of organ transplants tend to die in Japan because there aren’t enough organs to go around.
Wal-Mart To Begin Stocking Morning-After Pill
By 3.21.06
Wal-Mart, finally caving to opposition, will start selling the Plan B morning-after pill at its pharmacies across the nation this week. The decision comes after the Massachusetts Pharmacy Board determined that Wal-Mart was required to sell the pill in its 44 Massachusetts pharmacies, after a similar ruling in Illinois.
Michael Crichton On Companies Owning Products Of Nature
By 3.20.06
Michael Crichton has an excellent essay up over at the New York Times concerning medical company Metabolite’s efforts to defend its patent of a scientific fact before the Supreme Court tomorrow. There’s a lot of interesting commentary on the negative ramifications of companies owning ideas, associations, scientific theories, surgical procedures, products of nature… and, in the case of the Human Genome, the building blocks to human life itself.
The Fragmented Status Quo of US Health Care
By 3.7.06
We got a lot of mostly thoughtful point/counter-point in the comments section of our anecdotal post about Socialized Health Care the other day. Many of them pointed out that the US Health Care system is certainly not without its long wait lines, and that this is symptomatic of a health care system in which millions of uninsured can not afford to treat minor ills until they finally have to go to the ER as a venue of last resort, for the sort of stomach aches and flus that is easily treated in more nascent stages by antibiotics or a quick doctor’s visit. It’s a different spin on the same problem: in Ireland, the system is taxed by the universally insured, whereas in the States, the uninsured jam up the cogs with what should be trivial ailments that have spiraled out of control.
