Recently in Business of health Category

What will Pharma do to maximize profits? The answer isn't theoretical. It's happening right now.

Duff Wilson of the NYT reports:

Even as drug makers promise to support Washington's health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation's drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.

In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation's drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.

The story includes input from Prof. Steve Schondelmeyer of the University of Minnesota, who, for 6 straight years, has given of his time to come and speak to my undergrad and graduate health journalism students on pharma and pharma pricing issues.

Leave me alone, LifeLine Screening!

They're at it again, with their direct-mail disease-mongering, telling me I need to have their screening tests if I want to be proactive about my health.

I don't want your tests.

I don't want your mailings cluttering my mailbox. Especially when this letter didn't even come from Peggy Fleming, whose name was on the last one.

Scott Hensley reports on another low point in health industry marketing efforts.

Here's a glaring, classic example of how health care industry public relations is taking advantage of a weakened news media to get its story - and only its story - across.

For free.

As if it were independently vetted news.

Which it isn't.

Last month we alerted you to news that the American Academy of Family Physicians had a six-figure deal with Coke to "develop consumer education content on beverages and sweeteners for its consumer-oriented website, FamilyDoctor.org."

Well, that deal doesn't sit well with all docs. One has started a Facebook petition to end the deal. His stated mission:

Coca Cola does not deserve to be in a partnership with family medicine, when their marketing and business practices promote obesity in our patients. I want my Academy to end this agreement.

In the circles I run in, there's been a buzz about an announcement first made last December about a "partnership" between the FDA and WebMD. Yesterday the two entities announced an expansion of that partnership "to provide increased access to FDA's consumer health information."

I can appreciate the FDA's interest in reaching the public more directly with its messages.

But WebMD has turned over its "channel" - some of it marked "news" - to a government agency. Should journalists "partner" with a government agency for news and information?

And they boast that "Since the launch, over 150,000 consumers have accessed the FDA destination on WebMD ... The FDA's consumer information is also available through WebMD the Magazine, distributed ten times a year and reaching an additional 11 million consumers with each issue."

And I would remind the FDA that, while there may not be any ads on the FDA pages of the WebMD site, users are just a link away from ads on WebMD material. I just visited and quickly found myself viewing ads for drugs for fibromyalgia, depression, coronary artery disease and others. Is that appropriate for the FDA?

Something doesn't feel right about this - for either party - or for the public.

Sandy Szwarc of the Junkfood Science blog looked at this in greater detail when the partnership was first announced in December.

AP story on a new study in JAMA:

A new study suggests less-invasive keyhole surgery for prostate cancer may mean a higher risk for lasting incontinence and impotence when compared with traditional surgery.

Laparoscopic, or keyhole, surgery is increasingly chosen by men having a cancerous prostate removed. And often it involves the highly marketed da Vinci robotics system. Da Vinci's popularity has been rising even though there's never been a rigorous head-to-head comparison between it and standard surgery.

"There's been a rapid adoption of this relatively new technique," said the study's lead author Dr. Jim Hu of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. The results add to confusion around prostate cancer treatment. It's not clear that either surgery is superior to radiation alone or watchful waiting, which means simply monitoring the prostate for changes.

Details in Katie Hobson's column in US News & World Report.

....is promoting drugs for drugmakers.

Read Dan Carlat's latest on how Lilly is pushing its fibromyalgia drug through CVS Caremark.

See this Sunday Boston Globe magazine article. Excerpt:

This month, like every October, a sea of pink ribbons washes over products from sneakers to snacks. While the effort raises research dollars, it leaves some breast cancer survivors feeling that companies are profiting from their pain.

I've written about this before, with breast cancer advocacy groups mounting a "think before you pink" campaign - what some call pinkwashing.

Image from the Globe:

A Madison, WI television station has offered to showcase doctors who pay for advertising as the top experts in their fields, according to the AP. Excerpt:

WKOW 27, an ABC affiliate, sent letters to doctors and clinic managers last month soliciting help to create "a local source for credible, consumer information on health specialties." The letter describing the "unique marketing initiative" didn't specify when the programming would run, which left some readers believing it would be on news shows.

Great piece of local health policy journalism by the Dallas Morning News. Excerpts:

"There's a lot of money to be made in owning imaging machines," said Dr. Richard Strax, president of the Texas Radiological Society. "You can buy a relatively inexpensive second- or third-hand MRI machine for a few hundred thousand dollars and make millions on it."

"Today we can't even tell you how many MRI machines are in Texas, who owns them, what condition they're in and what quality of scans they're turning out," Ron Luke, health policy chairman of the Texas Association of Business, told state lawmakers this year. "That doesn't sound like we're very bright, does it?"

For three sessions, radiologists and doctors have fought in the Texas Legislature over the issue of self-referral. This year's legislation, backed by radiologists and business lobbyists, would have required licensing and accreditation of imaging machines, along with a year-long state study of the extent of self-referral by physicians. But it failed.

Proponents of the legislation say opponents are driven by financial motives. Imaging has become a "lifeline" for many doctors, said Dr. Cynthia Sherry, past president of the Texas Radiological Society.

"It's all about the money, OK? Those very doctors opposed to this are the ones participating in it," Sherry said.

An 1,800-word story on a vital health policy topic. Wow, do we need more like this. Ten gallon hats off to the Dallas Morning News.

That's a question the ECRI Institute asks in a story reported by the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Excerpts:

The ECRI report argues that physicians develop preferences for certain medical device brands as they gain familiarity with the product. Other factors might also inform brand loyalties, said the nonprofit group's president, including the influence of sales representatives as well as paid consulting relationships between manufacturers and doctors.

The ties become so strong that when hospitals recruit orthopedic surgeons and heart specialists to their medical staffs, they find they also have "generally 'recruited' the vendors those MDs favored," the report states. "Exacerbating the situation are device manufacturers' sales representative inside the surgical suite during procedures 'assisting' the physicians as they learn how to use new products."

For hospitals trying to negotiate discounts with suppliers, physician preference items can be a problem when doctors' allegiances limit a medical center's ability to shop around for the best price. Hospitals have been reluctant to push back against doctors on these decisions, the report says, because unhappy doctors can threaten to move their practice to another hospital and take their patients with them.

The solution, according to ECRI Institute, is for hospitals to work cooperatively with physicians to make purchasing decisions that incorporate scientific evidence about the relative merits of devices as well as the value a particular product delivers.

In another fine example of its dedication to important health care journalism, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel published a piece, "Debate on MRI payments just one hurdle for reform."

Gems in this piece include:

• Information on the Access to Medical Imaging Coalition, a group backed by the major manufacturers of imaging equipment, including GE Healthcare. The paper reports: "That industry backing goes unmentioned by the innocuously named group. The Access to Medical Imaging Coalition, which includes cardiologists and radiologists, is just one of the myriad special interest groups that often oppose cuts in what Medicare pays for medical services."

• "The reality is the status quo puts a lot of money in a lot of people's pockets," said Alwyn Cassil, a spokeswoman for the Center for Studying Health System Change, a policy research organization in Washington, D.C.

  Another reality is groups such as the Access to Medical Imaging Coalition often succeed in persuading Congress to protect their interests.

Read the entire piece. It includes local angles on local industry affected and about Wisconsin legislators' activities in this area. A fine example of local journalism on a national issue.