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A ‘No-Brainer’?

July 17, 2019

Calls grow for Medicare to cover anti-rejection drugs

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A ‘No-Brainer’?

Wednesday, July 17th, 2019

On Wednesday, Alexis Conell will mark seven years since she received the kidney transplant that saved her life, but the 53-year-old Chicago woman isn’t exactly celebrating.

Although the federal government paid most of the costs for her 2012 transplant, a long-standing Medicare policy halted coverage three years later for the drugs that keep her body from rejecting the organ.

So when Conell lost her job suddenly last September, she also lost her health insurance — and her ability to afford the 16 daily medications she needs to survive.

“I was terrified,” she said. “All you’re thinking is, ‘I don’t want to lose my kidney.’”

…continue reading “A ‘No-Brainer’?”

Image via KHN/Taylor Glascock

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KHN

The Promise and Perils of Cellular Therapies

July 16, 2019

New “living drugs”—made from a patient’s own cells—can cure once incurable cancers. But can we afford them?

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The Promise and Perils of Cellular Therapies

Tuesday, July 16th, 2019

It matters that the first patients were identical twins. Nancy and Barbara Lowry were six years old, dark-eyed and dark-haired, with eyebrow-skimming bangs. Sometime in the spring of 1960, Nancy fell ill. Her blood counts began to fall; her pediatricians noted that she was anemic. A biopsy revealed that she had a condition called aplastic anemia, a form of bone-marrow failure.

The marrow produces blood cells, which need regular replenishing, and Nancy’s was rapidly shutting down. The origins of this illness are often mysterious, but in its typical form the spaces where young blood cells are supposed to be formed gradually fill up with globules of white fat. Barbara, just as mysteriously, was completely healthy.

The Lowrys lived in Tacoma, a leafy, rain-slicked city near Seattle. At Seattle’s University of Washington hospital, where Nancy was being treated, the doctors had no clue what to do next. So they called a physician-scientist named E. Donnall Thomas, at the hospital in Cooperstown, New York, asking for help.

…continue reading ‘The Promise and Perils of Cellular Therapies’

Thumb image via The New Yorker

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The New Yorker

Pregnant Women in DRC Finally Receive Ebola Vaccine

June 28, 2019

Carleigh Krubiner, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, said, “Hopefully this will set a new precedent for ongoing and future Ebola vaccination efforts, avoiding costly delays in protocol approvals while women face the very real threats of Ebola infection.”

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Pregnant Women in DRC Finally Receive Ebola Vaccine

Friday, June 28th, 2019

WASHINGTON — Earlier this month, pregnant women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo finally started receiving a life-saving Ebola vaccine, but the months-long delay has put hundreds of women at risk.

…

“Pregnant and lactating women in the DRC finally have access to … one of the best prevention tools we have against this deadly virus,” said Carleigh Krubiner, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. “Hopefully this will set a new precedent for ongoing and future Ebola vaccination efforts, avoiding costly delays in protocol approvals while women face the very real threats of Ebola infection.”

…

“While we don’t yet know as much as we’d like to about this vaccine in pregnancy, there is a lot that we do know,” Krubiner said. “We know that Ebola is extremely deadly … We know that in this epidemic, many more women than men have been infected … And we also know that the vaccine is extremely efficacious.”

…

“Communication will be key to explain the change in policy and to offer the best information we have about the benefits and risks of vaccinating in pregnancy,” Krubiner said.

…continue reading ‘Pregnant Women in DRC Finally Receive Ebola Vaccine’

Image via Flickr Some rights reserved by NIAID

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devex

The Nonprofit Hospital That Makes Millions, Owns a Collection Agency and Relentlessly Sues the Poor

June 27, 2019

Nonprofit hospitals pay virtually no local, state or federal income tax. In return, they provide community benefits, including charity care to low-income patients. In Memphis, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare has brought 8,300 lawsuits for unpaid medical bills in just five years

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The Nonprofit Hospital That Makes Millions, Owns a Collection Agency and Relentlessly Sues the Poor

Thursday, June 27th, 2019

This article was produced in partnership with MLK50, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

MEMPHIS, Tennessee — In July 2007, Carrie Barrett went to the emergency room at Methodist University Hospital, complaining of shortness of breath and tightness in her chest. Her leg was swollen, she’d later recall, and her toes were turning black.

Given her family history, high blood pressure and newly diagnosed congestive heart failure, doctors performed a heart catheterization, threading a long tube through her groin and into her heart.

Her share of the two-night stay: $12,109.

…continue reading ‘The Nonprofit Hospital That Makes Millions, Owns a Collection Agency and Relentlessly Sues the Poor’

Image: By Thomas R Machnitzki (thomas@machnitzki.com) – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18943286

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ProPublica

Hospitals Earn Little From Suing For Unpaid Bills. For Patients, It Can Be ‘Ruinous’

June 26, 2019

Not every hospital sues over unpaid bills, but a few sue a lot. In Virginia, 36% of hospitals sued patients and garnished their wages in 2017, according to a study published Tuesday in the American Medical Association’s journal, JAMA

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Hospitals Earn Little From Suing For Unpaid Bills. For Patients, It Can Be ‘Ruinous’

Wednesday, June 26th, 2019

On a sunny morning — the second Friday in June — the first defendant at court is a young woman, Daisha Smith, 24, who arrives early; she has just come off working an overnight shift at a group home for the elderly. She is here because the local hospital sued her for an unpaid medical bill — a bill she didn’t know she owed until her wages started disappearing out of her paycheck.

The hospital, Mary Washington, sues so many patients that the court reserves a morning every month for its cases.

Inside the courthouse, it’s not hard to figure out where to go. Right through court security, there are signs on colored paper: “If you are here for a MW case, please register at the civil window.” When the elevators open, there’s another Mary Washington sign. Wearing name badges, Mary Washington billing staff members walk through the halls. They’ve set up a kind of field office in a witness room at the back of the courtroom, where they are ready and waiting to set up payment plans for defendants.

…continue reading ‘Hospitals Earn Little From Suing For Unpaid Bills. For Patients, It Can Be ‘Ruinous”

Image via NPR Shots – Jaci Starkey

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NPR Shots

Move Over, Martin Shkreli

June 13, 2019

This Pharma Exec Is Accused Of Fixing Prices On 107 Drugs

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Move Over, Martin Shkreli

Thursday, June 13th, 2019

In some ways, it was the corporate world equivalent of the infamous baptism scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, when, in a single 24 hours, the newly anointed don of the Corleone family executed a plan to simultaneously eliminate rivals in La Cosa Nostra.

In this case, however, the family was made up of generic-drug makers Teva Pharmaceuticals, Mylan, Actavis, Lupin, Novartis’ Sandoz, Taro Pharmaceuticals and others. On a single day, Friday, April 2014, the scheme hiked the price on 22 generic drugs—ranging from cephalexin, a bacterial infection antibiotic, which jumped 185%, to ketoconazole cream, used to combat athletes foot and jock itch, which jumped 110%, to diflunisal, an anti-inflammatory, up as much as 182%.

In annals of marketing, their concerted action was impressive. The move rubbed out price competition and profit erosion in an industry plagued by them—and created a windfall for those in on the game.

…continue reading ‘Move Over, Martin Shkreli’

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Forbes

Minorities Face More Obstacles to a Lifesaving Organ Transplant

June 11, 2019

Patients who experience organ failure need a transplant to improve their odds of survival and to achieve a better quality of life

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Minorities Face More Obstacles to a Lifesaving Organ Transplant

Tuesday, June 11th, 2019

However, getting an organ transplant is often accompanied by several challenges, many of which can be attributed to factors like the state of an individual’s living circumstances, their economic status and where they were born.

As a result, many racial and ethnic minorities, such as African Americans, Latinx individuals and Native Americans, must unjustly wait longer for a much-needed new organ – or never receive one at all because of these barriers to care.

Research shows that these disparities are avoidable, especially with changes at the institutional level.

…continue reading ‘Minorities Face More Obstacles to a Lifesaving Organ Transplant’

thumb image via Flickr Some rights reserved by theglobalpanorama

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The Conversation

The War to Free Science

June 11, 2019

How librarians, pirates, and funders are liberating the world’s academic research from paywalls

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The War to Free Science

Tuesday, June 11th, 2019

The 27,500 scientists who work for the University of California generate 10 percent of all the academic research papers published in the United States.

Their university recently put them in a strange position: Sometime this year, these scientists will not be able to directly access much of the world’s published research they’re not involved in.

That’s because in February, the UC system — one of the country’s largest academic institutions, encompassing Berkeley, Los Angeles, Davis, and several other campuses — dropped its nearly $11 million annual subscription to Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of academic journals.

…continue reading ‘The War to Free Science’

By art designer at PLoS, modified by Wikipedia users Nina, Beao, and JakobVoss – http://www.plos.org/, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5069489

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Vox

Page 2 of 22«123 4 5...10 20...»Last »

A ‘No-Brainer’?

A ‘No-Brainer’?

The Promise and Perils of Cellular Therapies

The Promise and Perils of Cellular Therapies

Pregnant Women in DRC Finally Receive Ebola Vaccine

Pregnant Women in DRC Finally Receive Ebola Vaccine

The Nonprofit Hospital That Makes Millions, Owns a Collection Agency and Relentlessly Sues the Poor

The Nonprofit Hospital That Makes Millions, Owns a Collection Agency and Relentlessly Sues the Poor

Hospitals Earn Little From Suing For Unpaid Bills. For Patients, It Can Be ‘Ruinous’

Hospitals Earn Little From Suing For Unpaid Bills. For Patients, It Can Be ‘Ruinous’

Move Over, Martin Shkreli

Move Over, Martin Shkreli

Minorities Face More Obstacles to a Lifesaving Organ Transplant

Minorities Face More Obstacles to a Lifesaving Organ Transplant

The War to Free Science

The War to Free Science

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