Nowadays more than four-in-five drugs granted accelerated approval are oncology drugs (85%). How well is it working? That depends. The program to grant patients early access to promising new drugs does just that: it is used a lot. Since it began in 1992, 290 drugs have been approved through the accelerated program. That works out to more than nine a year, on average, or nearly one a month. By any measure that accelerated access to new drugs.
Category: Health Reform
Tuesday Links
- Tax Day remembrance: The top rate was once 91%. The corporate rate was 52%. The capital gains rate was 25%. The tax on top estates was 77%. But the tax take was only 16% of national income.
- Why is there a shortage of Adderall?
- How the DEA is creating drug shortages.
- Missile defense: Beginning in the Reagan administration and right up through the GW Bush administration, many experts and many more nonexperts claimed it couldn’t work. “You can’t hit a bullet with a bullet,” was a popular catchphrase. But on Sunday, that is exactly what US/Israeli defense forces did – with incredibly accurate precision.
Psychiatrist: The FDA Should Approve Sales of OTC Antidepressants
Why should antidepressants be switched from Rx to OTC? Because there is a severe shortage of mental health professionals. Access to mental health specialists and therapists is difficult for many people. Most therapists don’t accept insurance and psychiatrists are booked out far in advance.
Monday Links
- Penn Wharton on Biden’s latest student loan plan: it will cost taxpayers $84 billion and roughly “750,000 households making over $312,000 in average household income” will benefit.
- 400,000 to 480,000 children were born each year prenatally exposed to drugs or alcohol, based on an estimate for 2009–14, before the current drug epidemic began.
- The average resident of New Jersey will pay almost $1 million in lifetime taxes. No wonder the Garden State has lost more residents to out migration than any other state.
- CDC on why women avoid mammograms: feeling socially isolated, loss of work or reduced hours, dissatisfaction with life, the cost to access health care, a lack of transportation, and receiving food stamps.