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| Letters: From Our Readers |
Sensible Healing
05/01/2007
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Dear Editor:
In "Heal Thyself", Maggie Mahar is
absolutely correct when she says that patients cannot be left to make their own
decisions regarding the value of certain medical procedures and choice of
medications. The high cost and the ineffectiveness of healthcare is the result
of too much input by too many special-interest groups and their lobbyists. As
you can see below, it really is a case of too many cooks spoiling the
broth.
 Pharmaceutical companies
spent more than $4.5 billion on direct-to-consumer advertising in 2005. They
spend billions to promote drugs to the medical professions, and most of their
sales reps do not have a medical background. They are schooled in their
companies’ products and parrot the benefits, but often soft peddle adverse
effects.
Physicians are provided with
enticements, pharmaceutical firms own drug studies, and patients pressure
doctors to write prescriptions for drugs they see advertised. One big problem is
the fact that physicians don’t know the costs of these drugs—and if they did,
they couldn’t remember all the dollar figures for the number of drugs out there.
The government put its foot
in its mouth with Medicare Plan D for prescriptions. It did not allow bidding
for low-price drugs and permitted more than 500 profit-making insurance
companies to write the policies for all the different coverages. They had
different formularies that were based on the efforts of pharmacy benefit
managers to get drug contracts (large hospitals use a formulary that saves them
millions). Total confusion by seniors and financially challenged consumers
ensued.
The public is also to blame
for the high cost of healthcare. They want a pill or a cream to take care of all
their ills. Their co-pays of $5 to $20-plus are like the use of casino chips—and
they use more medications than they really need.
Sam Schiffman, past president, New Jersey Society of Healthcare Pharmacists, Wayside,
N.J.
Dear Editor:
Maggie Mahar’s "Heal Thyself" article misses the mark in
addressing the causes of and solutions to healthcare costs. Mahar concludes that
consumers’ inability or unwillingness to make sound healthcare choices is
exacerbating cost pressures, and therefore they should rely on others to do so
for them.
Mahar cites a June 2006 study in the New
England Journal of Medicine of patients with
capped medical plans being no more compliant in taking their medicines than
those with uncapped plans. Hence, placing some financial onus on patients does
not change behavior. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it examines
behavior after patients get sick—but ignores the benefits to those who expend
the effort to stay healthy.
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