Highlights of the important and the interesting from the world of health care:
Tallying Big Pharma’s reform wins: In the wake of the health reform law passing last week, many pundits came up with lists detailing the winners and losers by industry. In many cases, industries experienced a little of both, but in reality, no industry could really be seen as a big loser, in no small part because most reform advocates simply didn’t want to pick fights–declining to ask for hard sacrifices is usually the path of least resistance, especially in Congress. Looking back, though, the biggest winner may be Big Pharma. At least that’s what one health policy analyst told the Associated Press:
“Pharma came out of this better than anyone else,” said Ramsey Baghdadi, a Washington health policy analyst who projects a $30 billion, 10-year net gain for the industry. “I don’t see how they could have done much better.”
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Not a bad haul for the industry, which spent $188 million on lobbying last year. Big Pharma’s policy wins include getting 12 years of patent protection for biotech drugs, instead of possibly half that length of time, but more important to drugmakers could be what the law didn’t include. For example, drugmakers defeated a proposal that would’ve allowed for importation of low-cost drugs, a provision that would’ve allowed Medicare to use its huge market power to negotiate drug prices down, and another proposal that would’ve provide drug rebates for people on both Medicare and Medicaid. Those wins should help secure big profitability for pharmaceutical firms for years to come. Clearly the lobbying was worth the expense. Pharmaceutical executives should throw a huge going-away bash for Billy Tauzin, leader of the PhRMA trade group, who plans to step down in June.
It’s the beginning of a new age: The man credited with coining the phrase “junk food” says America is about to embark upon an age of “food consciousness” that will greatly improve the nation’s health, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. Michael Jacobson is a co-founder of Center for Science in the Public Interest, an apparently accomplished wordsmith and a microbiologist. He says a number of factors are converging to create a climate in which Americans will be much smarter about what they eat. Those include: the realization that diet can be a driver of disease, the country’s obesity epidemic, buy-in from doctors who realize they have a role to play in helping prevent–not just cure–disease and spiraling health costs that have touched nearly all American in recent years.
Jacobson, who also is credited with pioneering the term “empty calories,” says things have come a long way since the Center for Science in the Public Interest was founded in 1971. Even in this age of quadruple-patty hamburgers and McGriddles, Jacobson’s description about the bad old days is enough to make a skeptic feel optimistic with how far we’ve come in at least recognizing the importance of diet’s impact on health. In the early 1970s …
There was little agreement that diet affected health, Jacobson said. People were simply urged to eat from four basic food groups. “People were happily chomping on their hot dog on a white bun, their french fries and ice cream to get the basic four,” he said.
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The limits of personal responsibility: Cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar’s essay in the New York Times called “No matter what, we pay for others’ bad habits” should be required reading for anyone who believes health is simply a matter of personal responsibility. Chances are, if you’re in good health, it’s not merely your own intellect, discipline and talent that got you there. And the same is true for those in poor health. Of course, personal responsibility is an important factor, but much more goes into health than that, Jauhar writes. Social status, income, family dynamics, education and genetics are all important considerations in determining how healthy a person is, so it’s important to keep these in mind if you’re ever feeling angry at having to pay for other people’s poor health.
“It’s the context of people’s lives that determines their health,” said a World Health Organization report on health disparities. “So blaming individuals for poor health or crediting them for good health is inappropriate.”
Photo from flickr user blmurch