My colleagues and I recently measured daily energy expenditure among the Hadza people of Tanzania, one of the few remaining populations of traditional hunter-gatherers. We found that despite all this physical activity, the number of calories that the Hadza burned per day was indistinguishable from that of typical adults in Europe and the United States. [...]This is from today’s Krugman column: Mr. Ryan’s big lie — and, yes, it deserves that designation — was his claim that “a Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare.” Actually, it would kill the program…The Republican Party is now firmly committed to replacing Medicare with what we might call Vouchercare… It ends with this [...]Sometimes the findings indicate that unexpected treatments might help. In a newly published federal study of 224 gene sequences of colon cancers, for example, researchers found genetic changes in 5 percent that were the same as changes in breast cancer patients whose prognosis is drastically improved with a drug, Herceptin. About 15 percent had a [...]Aaron Carroll: there is no difference between ObamaCare’s plan for non-seniors and Romney’s plan for Medicare. Good news: Americans really aren’t more polarized. Keith Hennessey explains the Medicare war of words.
Republicans at the national convention insist they’ll have a mandate to reshape Medicare if their guys win the White House in November, but that doesn’t mean Paul Ryan’s ambitious reform plan will become law. In fact, the Republican ticket has been left plenty of wiggle room to dodge the proposal that made Ryan a hit [...]Overall, we find no significant effects of the offer of a school voucher on college enrollment. However, we find evidence of large, significant impacts on African Americans, and fairly small but statistically insignificant impacts on Hispanic students. A voucher offer is shown to have increased the overall (part-time and full-time) enrollment rate of African Americans [...]The Social Security Administration is planning to purchase 174,000 hollow point bullets. Hospital complaints about insurers: Denied claims. Low reimbursement. Late reimbursement. Thickets of red tape. The easiest way to rein in Medicaid costs: don’t pay the hospitals anything. Almost everyone is worse off.
Erin Mullen wrote a great post about lessons learned in Hurricane Andrew, and stopped by my office yesterday to talk about what’s been going on with Rx Response in light of Hurricane Isaac this week. The storm has been on the forefront of many people’s minds here at PhRMA, since it seems we all have [...]Hospitals are acquiring physician practices and integrating them into hospital services. The stated goal is to improve care coordination, eliminate duplication of services and boost efficiency. However, Medicare and private insurers pay more for hospital services than the same service if done outside the hospital, such as in a doctor’s office. According to the Wall [...]
Charges and countercharges here. They all have to do with whether Ryan in being hypocritical in his criticisms of Obama. My take: Ryan’s budget also cuts Medicare spending by the same $716 billion that ObamaCare takes out of Medicare, as Tom Saving and I explained in USA Today. (WSJ runs all the budget numbers and [...]
I’ve read many interesting Forbes.com blog posts by John LaMattina, formerly the president of Pfizer R&D, but today’s post about Alzheimer’s research really stood out. Maybe it is because I’ve been busy highlighting PhRMA’s upcoming Research and Hope Award ceremony focusing on Alzheimer’s or perhaps I was simply inspired by all of the thoughtful questions [...]
Earlier this month, I traveled to China to meet with public and private sector officials working to address the global counterfeit drug epidemic. On the day I arrived, Chinese police, led by the China Ministry of Public Security, seized more than $180 million worth of counterfeit drugs to help treat illnesses ranging from diabetes to [...]
Yesterday, I highlighted a nice video produced by PhRMA on the prescription drug life cycle. Today, I’d like to talk a bit more about the prescription drug life cycle concept portrayed in that video – a concept with which many people are unfamiliar. Every approved prescription medicine has a life cycle. It starts with the [...]
If you haven’t had a chance to see Eli Lilly’s CEO Dr. John Lechleiter speak, I strongly encourage it. Dr. Lechleiter is a wonky, funny and brilliant former chemist who is a passionate stalwart on the issue of counterfeit drugs. In Forbes.com yesterday, he wrote an informative piece about the dangers of counterfeit medicine, and [...]
…that I was huddled in an interior bathroom in South Florida with my fiancé, my sister’s roommate and two golden retrievers. We had the radio tuned to hear local meteorologist Bryan Norcross’ voice through the dark hours, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the howling wind and random thumps and crashes against the [...]
“Understanding the prescription drug life cycle and how it should affect public policy.” That sounds like the title of an obscure 2:00pm, four cup of coffee on a Friday afternoon industry seminar. The thing is, it really is pretty important and policy makers in particular need a better grasp on the drug life cycle concept [...]