- Study: Wegovy lowers the risk of heart attack, stroke or death from cardiovascular issues by 20 percent, independent of weight loss. (NYT)
- A centimeter of hair captures about a month’s worth of biological data, so doctors can test hair for drug use, poisonings, chronic stress and even medication adherence.
- Is the FDA creating new obstacles to the approval of promising new drugs? (WSJ)
- Physician “overcoding”: BCBS of Massachusetts suspects 1% to 2% of primary care physicians and 3% to 4% of specialists in its network.
- Bill Gates: Climate change is not an existential threat.
Category: Consumer-Driven Health Care
Should Drugmakers Have to Prove Their Drugs Work?
New drugs benefit American patients. Increasing the number of drugs in the pipeline will likely boost drug spending but also increase the number of new or improved drug therapies. It will also increase the number of generic drugs 20 years down the road. Shortening the length of time it takes new drugs to gain approval would also boost competition with earlier drugs that are still under patent protection.
Wednesday Links
- At 6 percent of GDP, the deficit of $1.8 trillion is unlike anything we’ve seen during times of relative prosperity.
- Krugman: the food stamp program is most important to overwhelmingly white rural counties that strongly supported Trump.
- Was there really a Our Lady of Fatima miracle in 1917?
- The Pharmaceutical Derangement Syndrome (PDS) explained.
- 14 reasons to like the big beautiful tax bill.
The Cost of Pet Cancer Care Rivals a Car, Yet Texas Limits Competition
This topic became an issue for me because of my dog Clementine. I recently wrote about her experience at the veterinarian. She had surgery for bladder stones, but the surgery did not resolve her problems. We took her back twice more, finally getting a referral to a specialist. A veterinary internal medicine specialist did a very thorough examination costing nearly $1,500. The pathology report found cancer that had metastasized.