HPHWD

Williams reports on what oncologists say about cancer drugs in “The Price of Drugs for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML); A Reflection of the Unsustainable Prices of Cancer Drug.” The article, which was published in the journal Blood, includes candid comments from more than 100 experts They tell us that:

• Many costly treatments aren’t worth the money
• New treatments with tiny orno benefits often cost a multiple of existing therapies
• Despite their reputation for penny-pinching, health plans are often not aggressive in negotiating price
• Patients are already suffering mightily from high costs –and it impacts quality of life and survival as well as financial health
• Society as a whole cannot afford to pay the high prices charged for so many of the new therapies

(I’m reminded of “A Very Open Letter from an Oncologist published on HealthBeat in 2009.) It’s encouraging to see more oncologist stepping forward to telll the truth about cancer drugs…).

As Williams observes these insights “come from people who know what they’re talking about and who have traditionally been sympathetic to drug makers and unperturbed about costs.”

Via HuffPost/Pollster, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman offers his overview of where public opinion currently stands on the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). Mellman cites figures of roughly 30% (Fox News poll) and 33% (CBS/New York Times poll) of Americans favoring full repeal of the ACA. These percentages, though far from a majority, are higher than the 25% of U.S. voters who favored repealing “all of it” in the 2012 exit polls.

So, where does this leave us with regard to the Oregon Health Study? I have no idea, actually. I am no expert on the bowels of Medicaid, and as I live and work in an extremely underserved region with devastating health inequities, far be it from me to claim that access to Medicaid in insignificant. In fact, as I argue at length, we need to be very careful in the implications we draw from the above evidence. First, it does not imply the moral insignificance of expanding access to health care services. No matter how we structure society, people will fall sick, and I have no hesitation in saying that we ought to care for them. But we should not confuse this ethical proposition with an empirical counterfactual, viz., that in a world in which we did expand such access we would see significant improvements in overall population health. Second, beware the false choice fallacy. There is no contradiction between collective action on the SDOH and expanding access to basic health care services.

If you thought U.S. doctors would never accept evidence-based medicine, consider this: Just last week, in a stunning about-face, the American Urological Association(AUA) announced that it no longer recommends routine annual PSA testing for men under 55.

Launch of the ACA’s controversial Independent Advisory Board– a panel charged with recommending ways to curb Medicare inflation — has been delayed until 2016. Does this means that the IPAB’s critics have won?