> Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snippage> > http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4571136/ > Medicare is a clearer > example of dishonesty and corruption at high levels
> ...But the most shocking deception > took place in the run-up to the signing of the > Medicare prescription-drug benefit on Christmas Eve. > > ...The bill was > priced at the time at $400 billion over 10 years. > After the deed was done > (the specifics of which amounted to a huge giveaway > to the pharmaceutical > and health-care industries), it came out that the > real cost will be at > least $551.5 billion—a difference of $150-plus > billion that will translate > into trillions over time. Now we learn that the Bush > administration knew > the truth beforehand and squelched it. Rick Foster, > the chief actuary for > Medicare, says he was told he would be fired if he > passed along the higher estimates to Congress...
This is going to be a disgrace (as well as a health-care disaster) if it is not redressed. While drug companies ought to make a tidy profit, the public should strenuously object to paying for their aggressive and misleading advertising -- IIRC from prior discussions/cites, money budgeted to R&D was roughly 16%, while over 30% was spent on advertising. Public health would be better served by getting people off their gluteus maximae and cutting down on their massive over-eating. I can't give you a figure on how much of the drug budget goes to antihypertensives, heart medications, diabetes drugs, stroke therapy, and treatment of obesity-related cancers, but these conditions are among the top seven causes of death in the US (2000).
http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/83/97784.htm?printing=true "Over the next decade, America's unhealthy lifestyle is expected to cause more premature deaths than smoking, a new report shows. "We believe diet, inactivity, and obesity -- that constellation - will be the leading cause of death if things don't change," says study researcher James S. Marks, MD, MPH, a CDC epidemiologist..."With sedentary lifestyle and obesity, we see higher rates of hypertension and diabetes, which are risk factors for stroke or heart attack," says Joseph Miller, MD, a preventive cardiologist with Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta..."
Debbi Beads And Rattles Maru
Which is why one is suspicious when one reads reports such as this one from last Wednesday's news:
STATIN NATION: DO WE ALL NEED TO LOWER OUR 'BAD' CHOLESTEROL? from The Boston Globe
The study wasn't supposed to be a blockbuster. Bristol-Myers Squibb had funded the Harvard Medical School research in hopes of proving that its cholesterol-lowering drug was just as good as a more-potent rival. Some cardiologists even scoffed at the boldly named PROVE-IT study, suggesting it was rigged to favor Bristol-Myers' product.
But PROVE-IT may turn out to be the biggest advance in the war against cholesterol in a decade. In patients hospitalized with heart attacks and other coronary conditions, the researchers found a rapid and stunning difference between Bristol-Myers' Pravachol and a dose of Lipitor eight times more powerful. After a month, the patients taking Lipitor were less likely to be sick and, after more than two years, they were 30 percent less likely to be dead.
The Harvard research suggested that the current treatment for people at serious risk of heart disease is not nearly aggressive enough -- shattering the idea that there's little benefit to lowering levels of "bad" cholesterol much below the current target of 100 milligrams per deciliter. The Harvard researchers showed a healthier, longer life for the Lipitor patients, whose LDL or low-density lipoprotein cholesterol averaged 62.
Full article at <<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2004/03/16/statin_nation/>>.
or reports that claim that 10% of the nation suffers from depression (and therefore presumably needs drugs such as Prozac, or at least expensive psychotherapy)
(Ever wonder how many people are depressed and heading for a heart attack because they are trying to afford everything that someone tells them they need . . . ?)
Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe Maru
-- Ronn! :)
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