Guest guest Posted May 23, 2007 Report Share Posted May 23, 2007 Thanks very much, Dana. Those articles are very interesting. It's comforting to hear of research that may help us. Jim (TX) --- danapreis <danapreis@...> wrote: > > These articles from s Hopkins are interesting. Dana > > https://hopkinsnet.jhu.edu/servlet/page?_pageid=1730 & _dad=portal30p & _sch\ > ema=PORTAL30P > <https://hopkinsnet.jhu.edu/servlet/page?_pageid=1730 & _dad=portal30p & _sc\ > hema=PORTAL30P> > > > > http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2006/09_06_06.html > <http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2006/09_06_06.html> > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted May 23, 2007 Report Share Posted May 23, 2007 I think it's only a matter of time.....Jim Brown <jim747@...> wrote: Thanks very much, Dana. Those articles are very interesting. It's comforting to hear of researchthat may help us.Jim (TX)--- danapreis <danapreis > wrote:> > These articles from s Hopkins are interesting. Dana> > https://hopkinsnet.jhu.edu/servlet/page?_pageid=1730 & _dad=portal30p & _sch\> ema=PORTAL30P> <https://hopkinsnet.jhu.edu/servlet/page?_pageid=1730 & _dad=portal30p & _sc\> hema=PORTAL30P>> > > > http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2006/09_06_06.html> <http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2006/09_06_06.html>> > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted May 31, 2007 Report Share Posted May 31, 2007 Dana, Thanks for sharing this information.danapreis <danapreis@...> wrote: These articles from s Hopkins are interesting. Dana https://hopkinsnet.jhu.edu/servlet/page?_pageid=1730 & _dad=portal30p & _schema=PORTAL30P http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2006/09_06_06.html No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go with for Mobile. Get started. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 21, 2007 Report Share Posted October 21, 2007 Some good articles there. Thanks for them. Though he most often has very good things to say, I don't swallow or believe everything Dr. Mercola says, and I am somewhat concerned that he has become so very commercial, even though he has as much right, (more than some!), to make money as anyone else. " Dr. Mike, " whose articles often gives us links to, often states in his articles about particular health supplements that he makes no money off the product about which he is writing. Perhaps my main qualm is that at least some of what Mercola sells has for me turned out to be considerably more expensive than buying the same thing elsewhere. Anyway, some very good articles there. Thanks for them! I have saved several of them. > > http://www.mercola.com/forms/carlsons.htm > http://www.mercola.com/2002/jun/12/cancer.htm > http://www.mercola.com/2002/mar/23/omega3.htm > http://www.mercola.com/article/sugar/sugar_cancer.htm > http://www.mercola.com/2001/oct/13/vitamin_d.htm > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted November 27, 2009 Report Share Posted November 27, 2009 Here are the steps to take in applying for disability social security payments. http://cms.carepages.com/permalink/ec323c51-d911-11de-a675-6bd9677d6ed6.html ________________________________ How to find Senior Housing http://www.revolutionhealth.com/senior-housing?xid=nl_EverydayCaringFromCarePage\ s_20091126 _____________________________________ Why Medicare Has Not Been Able Rein In the Cost of Cancer Drugs If you want to understand why U.S. health care is so expensive, take a look at the chart below. It illustrates how the price of cancer drugs has levitated in recent years, revealing how, in our largely unregulated for-profit health care industry, the seller is the price-maker and the patient is the price-taker. In other advanced countries, the government intervenes with an eye to protecting desperate patients from being gouged. In the U.S. the law specifically prohibits Medicare from trying to negotiate for discounts. In an article titled “Limits on Medicare’s Ability to Control Rising Spending on Cancer Drugs,” published in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine Dr. B. Bach, a physician and epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, uses this chart to demonstrate the steep rise in Medicare spending on cancer drugs in just the past ten years. Figure 1. Monthly and Median Costs of Cancer Drugs at the Time of Approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), from 1965 through 2008. Note that the chart tracks the monthly cost of cancer drugs (vertical axis) from 1960 to 2009 (horizontal axis). What is extraordinary is how the price of the most expensive bleeding edge treatments has jumped, since 1990, from $2,000 a month to $5,000, $10,000 and finally $25,000 a month. Meanwhile, the fine red line traces the rise in the median price of cancer drugs—from well under $1,000 a month in the late 1960s to $6,000 to $7,000 a month today. Note that the chart tracks the monthly cost of cancer drugs (vertical axis) from 1960 to 2009 (horizontal axis). What is extraordinary is how the price of the most expensive bleeding edge treatments has jumped, since 1990, from $2,000 a month to $5,000, $10,000 and finally $25,000 a month. Meanwhile, the fine red line traces the rise in the median price of cancer drugs—from well under $1,000 a month in the late 1960s to $6,000 to $7,000 a month today. Overall, the amount that Medicare shells out for drugs administered in a doctor’s office--— a category dominated by drugs used to treat cancer —has spiraled from $3 billion in 1997 to $11 billion in 2004 (an increase of 267%),” Bach notes. Over the same span, total Medicare spending rose from $210 billion to $309 billion (an increase of 47%). Meanwhile, even patients who have prescription coverage under Medicare Part D face high co-pays. More Part D insurers have put brand-name drugs, including Gleevec (imatinib), Sutent (sunitinib), Tarceva (erlotinib), Thalomid, and Tykerb (lapatinib), on specialty tiers that require cost sharing of 26 to 35 percent for each prescription. Insurers begin picking up 95 percent of the drug’s cost, only after a patient’s annual out of pocket spending reaches $4,350. And many patients don’t even have Part D. As a result, “Patients who face life-threatening illnesses are also facing out-of-pocket costs for cancer therapies that can threaten their family's financial security,” Bach observes. “Health economists are concerned, too . . . .because the prices of cancer drugs appear to be rising faster than the health benefits associated with them, at least in some cases,” writes Bach, pointing to studies published here and here. Big Pharma’s Eureka! Moment How and why did this happen? In 2006 the New York Times made an announcement: “Big Pharma has discovered cancer.” That was the first sentence of a story headlined: “New Drugs for Cancer Could Soon Flood Market.” In the past, large, traditional pharmaceutical companies such as Glaxo, Pfizer and Wyeth had shown relatively little interest in selling potions for cancer patients,, the Times explained, preferring to “make drugs for chronic diseases” rather than “treatments for cancer, where patients often die within months.” (There is a saying in the pharmaceutical industry: “a pill that cures is good; a pill that you have to take every day is better.” Moreover, the Times pointed out: “while cancer as a whole affects many people, the market is divided into different types of cancer.” In other words, a drug that targets a particular type of cancer is limited to a small niche market made up of patients who often don’t have long to live. From a drug-maker’s perspective, this is not an enticing group of customers. But then, a year or so before the Times article appeared, the pharmaceutical industry’s marketeers had an Eureka! moment. Looking around, they realized that Gleevec, which had been developed by Novartis. to treat two obscure cancers — chronic myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumor —enjoyed sales year of $2.2 billion in 2005. Had the pool of patients suffering from these diseases expanded? No, But companies like Novartis were beginning to discover that there is virtually no limit to how much you can charge when you are peddling pills to dying patients. “Some patients will tolerate prices of tens of thousands of dollars a year, making drugs for even rare cancers into big moneymakers,” the Times observed. By 2006, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association reported that about 400 cancer drugs from 178 companies were in clinical trials. “Competition could also bring down prices, which are now reaching $100,000 a year for some cancer drugs,” the Times speculated. But, of course, as the chart above reveals, that didn’t happen. As I have explained in earlier posts, while competition brings down the cost of new technologies in most sectors of the economy, the rule doesn’t hold for healthcare. Unlike most consumers, seriously ill patients are not looking for bargains. They don’t want the cheapest product; they want the best. And they are quite easily persuaded that what is newest and most expensive must be top-of-the-line. In addition, a patient cannot wait until “prices come down.” He needs the medication immediately. (Keep in mind: 80 percent of our health care dollars are spent when the patient is very ill.) Thus, when it comes to healthcare, consumers have very little power over pricing. A year after the Times announced that Pharma had finally figured out that cancer drugs could be blockbusters, the Wall Street Journal picked up the story. In a piece headlined “From Wall Street, a Warning About Cancer-Drug Prices,” the Journal focused on Dr. Steve Harr, an analyst at Stanley who was cautioning drug-makers that greed could lead to price controls. Congress “will get involved when its constituents can’t get drugs,” Harr told Genentech, which was charging $47,000 for ten months of Avastin, a drug used to treat colorectal cancer. Is the Drug Worth the Price? Avastin does not “cure” cancer; it slows the progress of the disease. It won approval from the FDA following a trial showing that the patients who both took the drug and followed a chemotherapy regimen lived an average of 20.3 months, versus 15.6 months for patients treated with chemotherapy alone. Genentech hailed the extra 5 months as a leap forward: “This is one of the largest improvements in survival ever reported in a randomized, Phase III study of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.” At the same time, the company acknowledged that patients might experience numerous side effects including Gastrointestinal (GI) perforation--which can be fatal. Researchers also have discovered that use of Avastin can lead to deep vein blood clots, increasing the risk of heart attack or stroke. Just last October, the ish Medicines Consortium (SMC) advised the National Health Services (NHS) that Avastin “is not recommended for use within NHS Scotland for the treatment of patients with metastatic carcinoma of the colon or rectum” because “the manufacturer did not present a sufficiently robust economic analysis to gain acceptance.” http://www.healthbeatblog.com/2009/04/why-medicare-has-not-been-able-rein-in-the\ -cost-of-cancer-drugs.html FYI, Lottie Duthu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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