Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Assistance’ Category

Judge Rules that Two Hospitals Broke Law by Not Offering Charity Care to Patients, Hospitals Agree to $4.5M Settlement

Posted in Advocacy, Assistance, Consumer Protection, Economics of Health Care, Ethics, Language Access, State of Washington, Translation on 19 February 2017| 1 Comment »

At long last, a favorable ruling  came in December 2016 for former patients at Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center and Toppenish Community Hospital, both in Central Washington, when the hospitals agreed to pay $4.5 million into a settlement fund to compensate those who were wrongly denied financial  assistance from 2007-2014.  Last July, Yakima County Superior Court Judge Susan Hahn ruled that the hospitals had violated Washington’s Consumer Protection Act by failing to notify and screen low-income patients for free or reduced-cost care, as required under another state law, the Charity Care Act which was enacted in 1989. The Charity Care Act applies to all hospitals operating in Washington, and to all patients, insured or uninsured alike, who meet income eligibility requirements: those with incomes at 100% or less of the Federal Poverty Level  (FPL) are eligible for free care, and those whose incomes are at 101-200% of FPL are entitled to discounts.

The legal case on behalf of the patients took slightly over 3 years to be resolved. Due to record-keeping gaps at the hospitals, it is unknown how many former patients are potentially eligible for compensation under the settlement. Deliberate intent by the hospitals to withhold the required notice and eligibility screening was established during the proceedings.

Documents submitted in the lawsuit indicate hospital staff were given incentives and talking points to help them get as much money as possible from low-income patients, and that they were directed not to mention charity care as an option unless a patient knew to specifically ask for it.

In August 2016, the advocacy groups Northwest Health Law Advocates ( NoHLA) and OneAmerica published a report Yakima Regional and Toppenish Hospitals Fail to Provide Sufficient Charity Care   based on their research which revealed the financial hardships suffered by patients who could have been eligible for charity care. Likewise it was found that

Yakima Regional Medical & Cardiac Center

……although Yakima Regional is the most profitable hospital in Central Washington, it provides a significantly lower level of charity care than the regional average.

 

 

 

As a sidebar note since the settlement was announced, the two hospitals are due to soon change hands , for the third time in fourteen years. In 2003, the pair was sold to Health Management Associates and subsequently in 2014 to Tennessee-based Community Health Associates, both for-profit hospital chains. Unlike in other parts of the country, for-profit hospitals are uncommon in Washington. Commitment to upholding the Charity Care Act is one of the conditions for Department of Health approval of a hospital’s conversion from nonprofit-to-for profit.

Across the state, full compliance with the long-standing financial assistance rules can remain still elusive.  In June 2016 a class-action lawsuit against Northwest Hospital in Seattle for Charity Care violations was filed. State legislators seeking a remedy filed HB 1359  and companion SB 5231 early this year, to require that a written notice of the availability of Charity Care be included on all hospital bills. The House bill made it through the first cut-off date, and is moving forward in the legislative process. I will be posting on new developments, including provisions in the bill to ensure that notices are given in the language that patients understand.

 

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

Chinese Man with Leukemia Prosecuted for Buying Medicine from India

Posted in Access to Medicines, Advocacy, Assistance, Cancer, Economics of Health Care, Generics, Glivec, Global Health, Health Care Marketing, Health Insurance, Leukemia, Patient groups, Prescription drugs on 29 December 2014| Leave a Comment »

News from China  gives us even more pause to reflect on the access to medicines scenario. The situation in the US where there are no good excuses for unaffordable medicines, pales in comparison to this chilling tale of a patient whose actions to secure the life-saving drug imatinib mesylate at an affordable price, has resulted in his criminal prosecution.

Veenat400mgTo prosecutors, a leukemia patient named Lu Yong is a criminal involved in credit card fraud and a counterfeit drug scam. But to 1,000 fellow leukemia patients in China, Lu is an unsung hero for helping them get access to cheap, life-saving generic medicines from India.

His crime?  Selling fake drugs and breaking a law about purchase of international credit cards.  What Lu did was considered criminal because any drug  produced in or imported into China without the government’s approval is classified as a “fake drug,”  and Lu purchased international credit cards online to facilitate the transactions. China.org.cn reported that:

The defendant, Lu Yong, was diagnosed with chronic myelocytic leukemia in 2002. He was prescribed Gleevec, a drug produced by Swiss drug-maker Novartis, which cost 23,500 yuan (US$ 3,775) per month, far too expensive for average Chinese families. Lu was even more depressed since the expenses of treating leukemia are not covered by China’s medical insurance system.

Lu later found out that India produced a generic drug which was comparable to Gleevec but which cost only 4,000 yuan, about 17 percent of the cost of Gleevec. He took the medicine himself and found it effective. Later, Lu began helping several thousand fellow patients buy the drug, since the purchasing process was difficult and some patients were not able to fill out the English purchase forms.

Meanwhile, Lu’s trial has been postponed due to his health problems, and some 300 fellow patients with CML have signed an online petition asking for his release.

Also of significance is the astronomical price of Gleevec in China,  said to be the highest in the world, which led  Lu to seek an alternative.  As a point of comparison, Costco’s US online pharmacy is now selling a 30-day supply of the standard 400mg dose of Gleevec for $9022.05.

Glivec400mg

 

Read Full Post »

WA Healthplanfinder Updates

Posted in Advocacy, Assistance, Discrimination, Ethics, Global Health, Health Care Marketing, Health Care Reform, Health Disparities, Health Insurance, Health Literacy, Healthcare Inequalities, Hispanic/Latino, Immigrants, Language Access, Language Services, Limited English Proficiency, Medicaid, Promotions, State of Washington, Translation on 20 December 2013| Leave a Comment »

Consumer info fact sheets  translated into WA’s threshold written languages   (Chinese, Lao, Khmer ( Cambodian), Korean, Russian,  Somali, Spanish, and Vietnamese) were posted on Dec. 16, just one week before the deadline to start an application for coverage to be effective Jan. 1, 2014. In an unrelated development, HBE  decided on this brief extension  for completing applications due to various  problems people have had in being able to use the online forms and or access phone customer services.  Regarding the translated fact sheets, it’s taken almost 6 months for their publication to replace the original problematic versions that were taken down from the site.
However, the new fact sheets are not easy to find as they are not posted on the consumer website,  but located exclusively on the HBE corporate website.  The corporate site features a line at top right-hand side of homepage entitled “Information in Other  Languages” which links to the fact sheets page, plus also links out to the consumer website.  In contrast, the consumer Healthplanfinder site (which is in both  English and Spanish) does not offer any such subject line, nor does it display a link to corporate site.  The Healthplanfinder site likewise does not contain any readily visible clear statement of consumer  language access or disability access rights, except for a message in tiny font on bottom of the homepage that says [sic] : If you need additional language or disability accomodations, you may call 1-855-WAFINDER (1-855-923-4633).   On the Spanish version of the website, this statement illustrates yet another example of  faulty translation, as the term “disability accomodation” is twice translated, and very ungrammatically, as  “discapacidad alojamiento”  which means disability lodging.  Sure enough, a quick check on Google Translate  English > Spanish reveals  “lodging” as the first  translation for “accommodation.”  Since 2012 advocates had been recommending the inclusion of multilingual tag lines and/or translated summaries sections for the website. Interpretersymbol

Information on some metrics for the Healthplanfinder call center became available last week with the release of the  November Healthplanfinder Data Report. On the language access side of things (p.10 of the report)  the numbers are not encouraging: the call center received almost 12,000 calls in Spanish, but handled only some 1600 of them. The call center in Spokane has bilingual Spanish-English staff (reported as 6 out of 80 employees at start-up) on site and routes calls in other languages to a telephonic interpreter service. For calls in all languages besides Spanish combined, 1045 were actually handled (answered)out of 3621 calls attempted. The report does not state if the multilingual calls are included in the totals for approximately 35,000 calls  handled in November or the almost  158,000 calls throttled (deflected from the system, i.e. not put into the queue to await a response).  While the HBE is said to be increasing staffing for the call center,  any increases planned for its language capacity are as yet unknown. Given the demand, it would seem that Spanish-speaking callers too could benefit from immediate access to interpreter services.

Read Full Post »

Foucs on Community Clinics

Posted in Advocacy, Assistance, Children's Health, Community clinics, Economics of Health Care, Health Care Reform, Health Disparities, Health Insurance, Healthcare Inequalities, Medicaid on 6 May 2012| Leave a Comment »

In these times of intense attention to healthcare from all quarters of the US,  a new study by USA Today and Kaiser Health News reporters focused on community clinics.  Over the past 2 decades community clinics have  developed from origins often as volunteer-run efforts, to become a vital part of  what is called the safety-net. Frequently they now are the sole source of care available to over 20 million people, often as the only providers who will accept patients covered by Medicaid,  and for the growing ranks of the uninsured. The sorry state of healthcare access would be far worse if it were not for community clinics.  These centers will play an important role too in the reforms set to start in 2014. It is expected that many who will become newly insured  by Medicaid will be seeking  care at community clinics. Long woefully underfunded, clinics will be eligible to receive help from the $10 billion approved by Congress for expanding their  service capacity.   

The report entitled  Community clinics have odds stacked against them  looked  at almost 1200 community clinics across the country, and ranked them based on the 6 categories of performance quality measures which federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) must report to the federal government.  The categories cover care for patients with diabetes and high blood pressure, rates of screening for cervical cancer and childhood immunizations, plus timeliness of prenatal care and rates of low birth-weight babies.

Using  2010 clinic performance data obtained by FOIA request, the reporting team found wide variations in care by center,  by region of the country, and between specific centers in the same city.  Generally, clinics in the South performed worse that those in New England, the Midwest, and California. Overall, their  survey showed community clinics not performing as well as the national averages for the study parameters .

There is more context to understanding the survey results however, that was not part of the report.  The National Association of Community Health Centers issued a statement about the report which while recognizing the value of examining clinic performance, expressed concern about the wrong impressions that the media study might give:

The article disregards the better quality care that most health centers achieve when compared to care provided to other low-income patients elsewhere.  However, at least the article does reveal what few Americans realize– that every health center reports on the quality of care their patients receive….

<snip>

…When you compare the federal data that is the focus of the USA Today article with national data from the National Center for Health Statistics, health centers performed better than national averages for entering women into prenatal care during the first trimester, childhood immunization rates, reduced low birth rates and hypertension control…..

NACHC recently published its report Health Wanted – The State of Unmet Need for Primary Health Care in America  which takes an in-depth look at the factors behind the consistent and increasing demand for community clinics, the links to social determinants of health and how funding has not kept up to meet population needs.  In FY 2011 for example, only 67 out of some 1900 applications for new health center service sites were funded.

Seattle/Local Health Guide extracted localized  figures from the report to create a Washington State Comparison Chart.  Janna Wilson, Senior External  Relations Officer for the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health shared additional concerns with me  in a personal  communication, about implications and lack of context  for specific data used for the local news article:

The data provided for Public Health represents a small subset of the patients we see—our homeless primary care patients. This is because Public Health’s federal health center grant comes under a targeted program called Health Care for the Homeless. Our federal data report, therefore, is specific to our homeless patients per federal reporting requirements.  As you know, homeless patients face barriers that often exacerbate medical and behavioral health conditions and complicate treatment plans.
 

While most community health center grants and programs are for the general low-income population, some — like ours — target special population groups such as homeless people or migrant workers.  There is nothing in the USA Today article that provides this important context. That said, quality improvement is a big part of our program for all our patients, whether homeless or housed.

Read Full Post »

Pharma Power in the Pacific Northwest

Posted in Access to Medicines, Advocacy, Assistance, Consumer Protection, Economics of Health Care, Environmental Health, Ethics, Generics, Health Care Marketing, Health Insurance, Lobbying, Pharmacists, Prescription drugs on 20 March 2012| Leave a Comment »

Recent developments in Washington and neighboring Oregon are reminders of the clout and lobbying power of Big Pharma on the local level.

Seattle City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen announced that he was working to implement a  discounted prescription drug program for Seattlites , a program of the National League of Cities.  At first glance this might seem like a boon most of us, cash-strapped and increasingly uninsured and underinsured, but in reality the plan is not needed, won’t offer much in the way of bargains, and is linked to a questionable PBM. With all due respect to Rasmussen, who undoubtedly has good intentions , he seems unaware that we already have a drug discount program available at no charge to all state residents, the Washington Prescription Drug Program , which offers discounts up to 60% on generics and 20% on branded drugs, while the NLC program  offers maximum discounts up to 23% of full retail prices.  Another concern is that the NLC card is an offering of CVS Caremark, the mega-PBM which has earned itself notoriety for  unethical business practices, including overcharging government employee health plans ( including the federal plan) for Rx medicines and drug-switching on scripts. The Seattle-only program is due to start next month, so now is a good time to weigh in with Rasmussen and his fellow City Councilmembers , as well as with Mayor Mike McGinn on the issue.  In addition to helping to increase awareness of the WPDP, our city elected officials could really offer a public service by creating a drug price comparison tool that surveys Seattle pharmacies.

And in the Washington Legislature, among several bills dealing with prescription drugs ( look for my comments in the future), for the third year in a row we saw  Drug Companies Fight Take-Back Program for Unused Medicine. They claim that take-back programs, which they would be required to help pay for, would do little to stop  abuse of prescription drugs and that environmental concerns about trashing meds are essentially bogus. Take Back Your Meds, a group of over 260 health organizations, police, drugstores, local governments, environmental groups and concerned individuals vows to keep up the fight.

In Oregon, a legislative defeat with direct negative impact there and for partner WA in the Northwest  Drug Purchasing Consortium , pharma and insurance industry muscle united to make sure that  Oregon Prescription Drug Program Bill Dies a Second Death. SB 1577 would have required all state agencies to purchase medicines for beneficiaries through the Oregon Prescription Drug Program, reversing the current optional  status.  When the OPDP and the WPDP were created in 2005, they formed the Northwest Prescription Drug Purchasing Consortium to achieve better prices through pooled volume purchasing but left participation optional for state agencies. In both states, for example,  the Dept. of Corrections does not participate.  And with efforts to control Rx costs stymied, we are seeing scenarios such as this year’s state budget proposal in Washington to eliminate completely prescription drug coverage for adults in the Medicaid program, only now with some hope of possible mitigation if competitive bidding for generic drugs is approved by the Legislature now in Special Session.

Read Full Post »

And the good news is…

Posted in Access to Medicines, Advocacy, Assistance, Children's Health, Consumer Protection, Economics of Health Care, Health Insurance, Pharmacists, Prescription drugs, State of Washington on 7 November 2011| Leave a Comment »

Now more so that ever, learning of positive developments and new efforts of those working to make a difference, helps me to keep going . I share here with you some news of significance at the local, state,  and national levels.

In Washington State:

State lifts three-visit ER limit for poor patients

Workers’ wellness saving jobs in parks, policing, transit

Poor people win: Judge allows 11,000 to rejoin Basic Health

In New York State:

Medicaid team passes four sets of reform proposals, including Safe Rx  to “Promote Language Accessible Prescriptions”

Governor Cuomo Issues Executive Order to Improve Access to State Services for Non-English Speakers

Nationally:

One Million Young Adults Gain Health Insurance in 2011 Because of the Affordable Care Act

For kids in foster care, law now requires that states create protocols and actively monitor the use of psychotropic medications

Launch of Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency

Read Full Post »

Headline Scan

Posted in Access to Medicines, Advocacy, Assistance, Children's Health, Economics of Health Care, Environmental Health, Ethics, Global Health, Health Care Marketing, Health Disparities, Health Insurance, Health Literacy, Healthcare Inequalities, Language Access, Recession, State of Washington, Workers' rights on 18 May 2011| Leave a Comment »

Can We Afford Personalized Medicine?

Special treatment for ‘high profile’ patients; exasperation for the rest of us

Health Insurers Making Record Profits as Many Postpone Care

People Who Donate Organs For Transplants Can Have Difficulty Getting Insurance

Foundations, Conflicts Of Interest And Drugmakers

Mission Crash: The Intolerable Policy Incoherence in US AIDS Policy, Global and Domestic

 Office of Minority Health Awards Major Project to Support
CCHI’s work on Healthcare Interpreter Certification

WA Governor signs precedent-setting healthcare worker safety laws

Washington is first state in nation to ban toxic pavement sealants

HHS awards $4.9 million to support families of children with special health care needs

Read Full Post »

Spotlight on Industry Ties of Health Advocacy Groups

Posted in Access to Medicines, Advocacy, Assistance, Cause Marketing, Consumer Protection, Economics of Health Care, Health Care Marketing, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Lobbying, Patient groups, Promotions on 17 January 2011| Leave a Comment »

The article Efforts to Undermine Public Health:  Health Advocacy Organizations and the Pharmaceutical Industry: An Analysis of Disclosure Practices in the Jan.13 issue of  American Journal of Public Health focuses some much-needed attention on a serious and growing problem , which directly impacts the creation of rational health policy.  It’s also good to see the wide media attention being given to the study, which has been flagged by venues across the spectrum, including  healthcare sector analysis and investigative reporting blogs to mainstream  business media and news reports.

It’s been interesting too,but not surprising to see, that a number of people are also sending identical comments to multiple venues  which covered the story, some to decry the findings of the study, or  to make  off-topic remarks. The comments from the National Health Council , for example emphasized that it has a policy of requiring member groups to have internal disclosure policies regarding industry support received. The NHC itself  has a listing of funding received in 2009 from its  many “Corporate Partners.”   However, just like with payments to physicians, merely acknowledging industry funding doesn’t mean that it does not influence the actions of the recipient, nor not create conflicts of interest.  Unlike the significant body of research on the topic of influences on the prescribing practices of doctors (which have found that while many  state that they themselves are not influenced by pharma gifts and perks, they believe that their colleagues are) , much less attention has been paid in the US to the phenomenon of  industry support of HAGs and its impact on public policy.

Based on personal observations both as  patient and a healthcare professional , I believe that the “don’t bite the hand that feeds you”  phenomenon  relating to HAGs, contributes to  the present inaction on getting states and federal government to do something about the exorbitant and escalating price of medicines as a public health measure. Until the electorate actively protests what is going on, the lobbying power of the biopharma industry  on Congress will remain in effect. While it is becoming more common to find  media pieces highlighting  complaints by provider and  disease groups  about the price of Rx drugs, along with the unaffordable co-pays for those insured, almost never do we hear patient advocacy groups demand that something be done about the situation.  The only logical conclusions that seemingly can be made about the scenario is either that the public is incredibility naive about how the pharmaceutical  and insurance  industries  function, or else HAGs have been so influenced by their pharma benefactors that recipients actually believe that the prices are justified by R & D costs, and that patient assistance programs ( PAPs) are a genuine access solution.  Likely it’s some combination of factors.  More about this later.

Since a requirement that  HAGs disclose industry funding was dropped from Sunshine Act provisions incorporated in the ACA, it’s time start to address the problem by pressing the IRS to require that all 501(c)3 charities disclose their funders and amounts received from each. At the same time, much more public education  is needed about  “the ties that bind”, to paraphrase the title of a 1999  report on the topic  by Health Action International.

In the meantime, those interested in starting to research  industry links to patient and disease groups will find the following resources of independent organizations helpful:

Essential Action
Pharmafiles database: Patient and Health Groups and Their Corporate Funders
Patients, Patents and the Pharmaceutical Industry

Knowledge Ecology International
Medical professional and patient group funding by drug and medical device companies

Healthy Skepticism


Read Full Post »

Lumps of Coal for Local Health, Buzz and Bucks for Biotech and Global Health

Posted in Access to Medicines, Assistance, DSHS budget, Economics of Health Care, Ethics, Global Health, Health Disparities, Healthcare Inequalities, Language Access, Lobbying, Recession, State of Washington on 3 January 2011| Leave a Comment »

The end of the year with its annual holidays found many  of us here in Washington State feeling anything but in a festive mood, given the imminent decimation of core health and human services, as part of  the Governor’s proposal for balancing of the state’s  budget in the new year and for the biennium.  On September 13th, Governor Gregoire’s Executive Order 10-04 instructed all state agencies to make reductions in their allotments from the State General fund in order to meet the requirement for a balanced  budget. On September 29, DSHS issued its initial plan of how the 6.3% across-the-board budget cuts would be applied to Department programs to meet this mandate. The proposed cuts were aimed at every program and service (included some entirely state-funded and other linked to Medicaid)  not technically defined as “mandatory,” affecting the state’s most vulnerable populations in all age-groups from pre-cradle to grave, and including  primary care delivered at community health centers.

By December, a supplemental budget proposal with even worse news was issued, containing further  proposals for achieving the needed $4 billion in savings to balance the budget. The drastic cuts to almost every aspect of civic life, was driven by outcomes of  ballot measures  from the November elections, which dashed any hopes even of short-term new revenue generation  from snack sales, rejection of a first-ever state income tax to have been levied only on the wealthiest among us, and hamstrung future legislative efforts to raise taxes with the 2/3 majority approval stipulation.  By December 30, the Governor released the latest list of planned budget cuts,and the timeline for their elimination. While some of the worst of the cuts have been staved off or delayed temporarily, it still remains to be seen whether the remaining services will be funded, even in vastly reduced mode, and how many human beings affected by the cuts will even survive.

While at this stage in my life nothing surprises me any more, the discrepancy between what is happening to these most basic of services and the treatment of the high-profile, socially attractive high tech sector by state government should be a wake up call to all of us who value a decent society. While the majority of Washingtonians have not misbehaved, it seems like the most vulnerable among us are being singled out for punishment.

State Dollars > Private Venture

During exactly same time period that the budget cuts were first announced in October, another state agency, the Life Sciences Discovery Fund, gave a grant of $5 million to a private, for-profit business, the Omeros Corporation, a Seattle biopharmaceutical company, for  research into speculative personalized medicines. The grant to Omeros was rolled into a package deal for the firm, that included $25M from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital. Even Xconomy: Seattle‘s biotech reporter Luke Timmerman expressed great surprise at this development in his Dec. 14 article entitled Life Sciences Discovery Fund Debunks Perceptions with Omeros Deal, Shows State Can Bankroll Companies. If the research ever pans out, then there is the possibility of financial returns to the state at some unknown time in the future.

A bit of background: Washington’s Life Sciences Discovery Fund was established by the Legislature in 2005 to disburse the tobacco settlement funds allocated to the state. While the the fund originally had been allocated $350M for a 10-year period, when the State’s budget crisis threatened to shut down the program in 2009, it survived with a budget cut of 41% or $39M in funds for FYs 2009-2011. The LSDF’s  stated mission is as follows:

The Life Sciences Discovery Fund supports innovative research in Washington state to promote life sciences competitiveness, enhance economic vitality, and improve health and health care.

which the  program website further explains as intending to “foster growth of the state’s life sciences sector and improve the health and economic wellbeing of its residents.”

But given the crisis situation we now face–in context of course of the ongoing national recession–emergency measures are needed.  It hardly seems the time for state government to be investing in private companies, purely ethical issues aside for the moment. Obviously, it’s going to take more than redirecting the “mere” $5M given by the LSDF to a private venture to save public health services in Washington State, but those funds certainly could have turned things around for a good number of the axed programs, such as the Basic Health Program insurance plan and so many Medicaid services.  While research is important, without access to care, medical innovations are meaningless.  What good is research, if there is no safety net? Given the LSDF’s mission, it should be part of the logical solution needed  now: making sure that all Washingtonians can benefit from the medical knowledge available today. And the state government can take a leadership role too in education on the need for investment in our human capital. Despite laments over the election outcomes,and grim prognostics, the official ChooseWashington.com website continues to highlight the array of attractive tax incentives, some of which I had commented on previously, for certain types of companies to set up shop here, along with the absence of a personal income tax.

Another part of the Governor’s plan to balance the budget, announced December 14, is to eliminate Boards and Commissions. No mention was made in this announcement, however, about the status of  a brand-new board, the Global Health Technologies Competitiveness Board established in July 2010, after SB 6675 Creating the Washington global health technologies and product development competitiveness program and allowing certain tax credits for program contributions, was approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Gregoire. Per RCW 43.374.010, among the Board’s charges are seeking funding from the private sector, foundations, and the federal government in order to issue grants to local enterprises …to stimulate our economy and foster job creation in the emerging field of global health while improving the health of people in our state and the world. The program is required to be administered by a 501(c)6 tax-exempt nonprofit organization, which contracts with the Dept. of Commerce for administrative services.

The Global Health Technologies Competitiveness Program (GHTCP) was awarded $1M by the Legislature (evidently not subject to the budget cuts) and issued its first RFP in mid-November, with awards expected to be announced early in the new year, along with a second RFP announcement, according to the Washington Global Health Alliance.

Think Globally, Act Locally ?

These new developments beg the question of just exactly what these specific state-funded programs are doing to improve the health  of Washington residents in the here and now. I write these words from the perspective of understanding full well how domestic and  international health are inextricably linked, whether regarding diseases rapidly transcending national borders or concerning the impact of international trade agreements on availability of medicines for US Medicaid programs, just to name a few examples. I myself am alive today partly as a result of medical advances developed here in Seattle, and I am also directly involved with both local and global health equity work, which makes me even more appalled at what is going on. Global health has been described as Seattle’s “next hot industry,” but few are the public voices applying critical thinking skills to analyze what this actually means for local folks. One of the exceptions is that of Seattle journalist Tom Paulson, who now offers insights on his Humanosphere blog.  such as a November 2010 story on a still-vague, 5-year  $1M  Swedish Medical Center pilot project called Global to Local targeting two low-income communities in  South King County.  Tom pointed out the irony  of this program being rolled out at the very same time that well-established and proven-effective, public health services are being slashed. According to the article, G2L is based on a concept that the “best practices” used by local actors in overseas health programs can be applied here at home too, while structural reasons for domestic health and healthcare inequalities are not addressed. And another observer, Steve Gloyd, MD of Health Alliance International and the UW Dept. of Global Health, has opined that there can be an upside to calling global health an “industry”:

“Maybe using the word will shock people into recognizing that when a local biotech firm says it is working on a vaccine to help people in Africa, some will see it is actually just trying to make a few people in Seattle rich.”

Next year, a new nonprofit called Global Health Nexus will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair with a major conference and exhibition showcasing the region’s global-health advancements. One has to wonder if anyone working to improve health at the local level will be invited to present, or if we’ll be able to afford the registration fees. Perhaps advocates can submit an abstract for a session there featuring real-life Washingtonians sharing first-hand accounts of the outcomes of state budget cuts on preventable health problems, such as  a child who has  been experiencing asthma attacks since elimination of the Children’s Health Program; an adult with diabetes who had to get their leg amputated due to lack of non-emergency podiatry care;  or the relative of a patient who died due to a wrong diagnosis resulting from lack of a medical interpreter;  or we could show  videos of overflowing ERs full of patients bumped from the Basic Health Program and unable to be seen at community clinics. Then maybe we could pass the hat among the rich and famous to take to up a collection for local health.

Read Full Post »

Cancer Patients Relapse Because Drugs are Unaffordable But Nothing Can Be Done About It?

Posted in Access to Medicines, Assistance, Consumer Protection, Economics of Health Care, Health Care Marketing, Health Care Reform, Healthcare Inequalities, Lobbying, Recession on 9 August 2010| Leave a Comment »

That might be the conclusion drawn by readers of a recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek. Recession Causing Cancer Patients to Quit Life-Extending Drugs which was the August 4 feature in  the Executive Health column. This news story earned billing as  the Outrage of the Week in  NLARx News from the National Legislative Association on Prescription Drug Prices.  The original article discusses the dire plight of patients  in California with GIST ( gastrointestinal stromal tumor) who lost their jobs and hence insurance, and  are no longer able to afford the Gleevec which has been keeping them alive to the tune of $5000/month.  Or for those who still have insurance, the unaffordable cost of the co-pays, often 50-70% of the Rx retail cost, in accordance with the now-common tiered formulary systems.  Equally outrageous however is that the article completely misses the boat when discussing remedies for the situation.  Author Amanda Gardner describes how patient assistance programs (PAPs) may be available temporarily for some patients as a stop-gap measure, and posits how things should get better  as the provisions of  the Affordable Care Act  roll out.  In the meantime, however,  the very survival of many of the patients  described is in jeopardy  with no solution in sight, if we are to believe such spokespeople as  Stepehn Finan, senior policy director of the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network , who was quoted stating that [the PAPs]

…….. are the only real options at this point for people who are pressed to afford their prescription costs.

Yet the urgent need for something to be done about the exorbitant price of drugs  is not mentioned in this article. Unaffordable medicines are not inevitable. Real remedies exist such as allowing CMS to negotiate for drug prices like the VA does,  instituting price controls, and allowing  prompt development of generics of the most costly drugs. The grip of Big Biopharma  lobbyists on Congress will remain strong if the public continues to believe that nothing can be done.

For the record, the vast majority of funding for the research that led to creation of Gleevec came from government coffers and nonprofit sector sources, and drug’s first US patent expires in 2015.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »