Medicare Part (D)isaster: A $3.7 Billion Boondoggle for Pharmaceutical Companies

LATImes:
Medicare Part D a boon for drug companies, House report says
Taxpayers pay up to 30% more for prescriptions under the privately administered program than under Medicaid, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform finds.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. drug manufacturers are reaping a windfall from taxpayers because Medicare's privately administered prescription drug benefit program pays more than other government programs for the same medicines, a House committee charged in a report Thursday.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that taxpayers are paying up to 30% more for prescription drugs under Medicare's privatized Part D program for seniors and the disabled than under the government's Medicaid program for the poor.

"Medicare Part D has given the major drug companies a taxpayer-funded windfall worth billions of dollars," said committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills).

[]

In the two years Medicare Part D has been in effect, drug manufacturers have taken in $3.7 billion more than they would have through prices under the Medicaid program, committee investigators found.

"The drug companies are making the same drugs. They are being used by the same beneficiaries. Yet because the drugs are being bought through Medicare Part D instead of Medicaid, the prices paid by the taxpayers have ballooned by billions of dollars," Waxman said.

He said Bristol-Myers made an additional $400 million from higher prices for a single drug, the stroke medication Plavix.

Does Lipitor Turn Women's Brains to Mush?

I have steadfastly refused my doctor's call to go on statin drugs for lowering cholesterol. Along with recent research showing that the drugs may have no effect on cardiac health, now doctors are reporting that the most popular cholesterol-lowering drug, Lipitor, may be causing memory loss in women. Can't find a word? Foggy brain? It may be your Lipitor prescription.

WSJ Online: Can a Drug That Helps Hearts Be Harmful to the Brain?

Cognitive side effects like memory loss and fuzzy thinking aren't listed on the patient information sheet for Lipitor, the popular cholesterol-lowering drug. But some doctors are voicing concerns that in a small portion of patients, statins like Lipitor may be helping hearts but hurting minds.

"This drug makes women stupid," Orli Etingin, vice chairman of medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital, declared at a recent luncheon discussion sponsored by Project A.L.S. to raise awareness of gender issues and the brain. Dr. Etingin, who is also founder and director of the Iris Cantor Women's Health Center in New York, told of a typical patient in her 40s, unable to concentrate or recall words. Tests found nothing amiss, but when the woman stopped taking Lipitor, the symptoms vanished. When she resumed taking Lipitor, they returned.

"I've seen this in maybe two dozen patients," Dr. Etingin said later, adding that they did better on other statins. "This is just observational, of course. We really need more studies, particularly on cognitive effects and women."

Pfizer Inc.'s Lipitor is the world's best-selling medicine, with revenues of $12.6 billion in 2007. The company says that its safety and efficacy have been demonstrated in more than 400 clinical trials and 145 million patient years of experience, and that the extensive data "do not establish a causal link between Lipitor and memory loss." Pfizer also says it draws conclusions about adverse events from a variety of sources "as opposed to anecdotal inferences by individual providers with a limited data pool."

hat tip to Suburban Guerrilla

Lowering Cholesterol: A $40 BIllion a Year Boondoggle

I have been suspicious of cholesterol-lowering drugs for years now. My doctor keeps trying to prescribe them to me because my cholesterol numbers are less than 1% higher than what is considered "normal". Years ago I read a story on the internet (which I cannot find despite many google searches today) about how a pharmaceutical industry representative was behind the lowering of the acceptable high total cholesterol number from 250 to 200, and as a result cholesterol-lowering pharmaceutical drugs became an $8 billion a year industry. But I am behind the times. According to this article in the New York Times, cholesterol-lowering drugs are now an astounding $40 billion a year industry. And there is very little scientific evidence that lower cholesterol actually leads to improved cardiac health.

And that doesn't even get into the "side effects" of these drugs, a side effect being a direct effect of the drug that isn't the one the doctors are looking for. Memory loss and muscle wasting aren't things I want to cause myself. This article has a good summary of the anti-statin-drug arguments.

I'm sticking with whole foods and no drugs.

Share the Wealth: Bad News About Statins

NYTimes: New Questions on Treating Cholesterol

For decades, the theory that lowering cholesterol is always beneficial has been a core principle of cardiology. It has been accepted by doctors and used by drug makers to win quick approval for new medicines to reduce cholesterol.

But now some prominent cardiologists say the results of two recent clinical trials have raised serious questions about that theory — and the value of two widely used cholesterol-lowering medicines, Zetia and its sister drug, Vytorin. Other new cholesterol-fighting drugs, including one that Merck hopes to begin selling this year, may also require closer scrutiny, they say.

“The idea that you’re just going to lower LDL and people are going to get better, that’s too simplistic, much too simplistic,” said Dr. Eric J. Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, Calif. LDL, or low-density lipoprotein, is the so-called bad cholesterol, in contrast to high-density lipoprotein, or HDL.

For patients and drug companies, the stakes are enormous. Led by best sellers like Lipitor from Pfizer, cholesterol-lowering medicines, taken by tens of millions of patients daily, are the largest drug category worldwide, with annual sales of $40 billion.