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Medications

Insurance Firms Are Hiring Middlemen To Deny Medications

December 15, 2024 Mike Ludwig, Truthout. , , ,
Amid an outpouring of frustration with for-profit health insurance sparked by the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4, much of the media coverage has focused on the alleged shooter, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, and the industry’s nasty habit of maximizing profits by denying claims and leaving sick and vulnerable patients with massive medical bills. There’s plenty of data to back up the anger over private health plans expressed online since the shooting. Insurance costs are far outpacing inflation, leaving patients with soaring out-of-pocket costs.

The Final Nail In Psychiatry’s Antidepressant Coffin

January 18, 2024 Bruce E. Levine, Counter Punch. , , , , ,
Historically, there have always been some patients who report that any treatment for depression—including bloodletting—has worked for them, but science demands that for a treatment to be deemed truly effective, it must work better than a placebo or the passage of time without any treatment. This is especially important for antidepressant drugs—including Prozac, Zoloft, and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), as well as Effexor, Cymbalta, and other serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs)—because all of these drugs have uncontroversial troubling side effects.

Public Pharma Is The Best Solution To The Problem Of Drug Shortages

August 13, 2023 Dana Brown and Christopher Morten, STAT. , , ,
Drug shortages in the United States are at a record high. At least 14 essential generic cancer drugs are currently in shortage, forcing patients and doctors to make difficult decisions to delay or ration first-line treatments, or accept second-best treatments. ADHD treatments, antibiotics, children’s acetaminophen, and many other critical medicines are also in short supply. But most of the solutions being discussed are just Band-Aids on a broken system. They would do nothing to transform the incentives that routinely produce shortages and other market failures. What we really need — for the health of our economy and society — is a robust public option in pharmaceuticals that produces and distributes essential medicines, such as cancer treatments.