Why is American health care so expensive?

In the United States, biomedical research, including basic science and clinical studies, is paid for mainly by companies that expect to make money off of new discoveries. The government, through the National Institute of Health (NIH) funds a little over a quarter of it, but most of the money comes from drug and device manufacturers. This means that interesting research that might result in breakthroughs that save patients money is unlikely to find funding. This is terrible. If gummy bears cured cancer, we might never find out about it. If anything that is easy to come by, from various sources, were to show promise therapeutically, we as US citizens would not be likely to find out about it through our own research. Some examples: 1. Red yeast rice, a dietary supplement made of rice fermented with the fungus Monascus purpureus in a centuries old process, contains a widely marketed cholesterol medication (lovastatin) that is naturally produced by Monascus . The doses are high eno...

In July of 2015 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved an injectable monoclonal antibody alirocumab (Praluent) which lowers the LDL or "bad cholesterol". The drug is produced by Regeneron, given by injection once every 2 weeks, and will cost $14,600 wholesale per year. In August, evolocumab (Repatha) was FDA approved. It, too, is a monoclonal antibody and will cost $14,100 wholesale when it is finally released. It was developed and will be marketed by Amgen. These drugs are antibodies, produced in hamster ovary cells in vats, which, when injected, bind to proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9), making it less active. PCSK9 normally reduces the liver's ability to remove low density lipoprotein (LDL) from the blood. The main drug class that we have now which reduces LDL is the statins, also known as HMG CoA reductase inhibitors, which reduce the production of cholesterol. A couple of common statins are atorvastatin (Lipitor) and simvastatin (z...

Within the last two days I received a bill for my glasses and read a post by a friend ranting about medical billing mistakes. This is a huge problem that is so common that it could be considered the norm. It is ridiculously expensive and could probably be fixed. My exposure to medical bills has been through patients who show them to me, hoping I can make sense of them, my occasional foray into the world of being a healthcare consumer and the woes of friends and family. I can say, with confidence, that I have never read a medical bill that I understood. When I do choose to dig a bit deeper, overcharging and errors are more common than not. It is very hard to get good statistics on this, but the lower end of what I'm seeing suggests that one in 10 bills contain errors. It's probably higher than that. Common billing errors include being billed for procedures that were cancelled, being billed twice for the same thing, under different names, being billed for a more complex ...

I just read a disturbing article  about a recently completed study on treating high blood pressure. The SPRINT (systolic blood pressure intervention) trial was conducted at around 100 locations in the US and Puerto Rico, comparing treating blood pressure intensively to usual care. According to recently adopted guidelines, we now treat blood pressure with the goal of reducing the top number, the systolic blood pressure, to below 140 for adults younger than 60 and below 150 for those 60 an over. The goal for the bottom number, the diastolic blood pressure, is below 90. We recommend lifestyle changes, encouraging exercise, weight loss and reduction in salt intake, and use medications when the blood pressure stays too high. In the SPRINT trial, a comparison group was treated with blood pressure medications, sometimes 3 or more different types, to lower the systolic blood pressure below 120. The patients in the comparison group (more intensive treatment) apparently did better, with a ...

In 2003 the Medicare Modernization Act added a prescription drug plan to the benefits available to seniors and disabled adults. The act did a few other things, including introducing health savings accounts and defining Medicare Advantage Plans. The prescription drug plan rolled out in 2006, after which time seniors who bought the extra coverage had some help paying for their ever more expensive drugs. Today the government pays about $70 billion per year to provide this service, 11% of the total cost of Medicare. The purpose of Medicare Part D was to allow seniors, often the most financially vulnerable of our patients, to be able to afford to pay for medications without impoverishing themselves. Since medications are such an important part of treating the diseases of aging, the government hoped that seniors who were able to pay for necessary medications would be healthier, requiring fewer hospitalizations and emergency room visits. This improvement seemed likely to, at least partial...

A few weeks ago I was feeling angry and disappointed when I noticed that many of the articles I was reading in my favorite medical journal were funded by companies who made the products those articles evaluated (that blog here ). This is nothing new, but it looks to me like there are increasingly more of these articles which celebrate products and fewer interesting articles about the science of medicine. The other thing that is particularly irritating about this trend, if it is a trend, is that the drugs and devices that are being sold are increasingly more expensive and benefit fewer and fewer people. The reason they benefit fewer people is that they are designed for very specific, and often pretty rare, diseases. Also, since they are so expensive, only a subset of these few people can afford them. They must be very expensive because they benefit fewer and fewer people, so in order to make the money to pay for the research to come up with these drugs and devices, the companies charg...

Today I thought I'd read the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and learn something deeply meaningful. I usually love the New England Journal (Wikipedia says it is " among the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals  and the oldest continuously published one ")  because I feel like it has such a strong history of academic excellence that whatever they print will have value. This is probably not true. The New England Journal In 2009, Marcia Angell MD, a senior lecturer at Harvard University and the former Editor in Chief of the NEJM wrote an article entitled "Drug Companies and Doctors, a Tale of Corruption" in the New York Review about the way drug companies skew research to encourage increasing and inappropriate use of medications. It was based on what she had seen published in the New England Journal and others. This might have been a hint that there was something amiss in the contents of my favorite professional publication. In 2012, the W...

Another great trip! I have gotten to go with University of California at Irvine medical students to Tanzania for three years as their supervising MD. They do all of the work, pretty much, preparing lesson plans to teach clinical officer students basic ultrasound as well as designing study protocols, getting institutional review board approvals, and carrying ultrasound machines on fatigued shoulders through multiple airports. I get to teach them a bit about clinical medicine, field questions that they couldn't possibly answer and flaunt the MD on my nametag. Ten students, just done with a pretty grueling first year, came to Mwanza, Tanzania this year and worked like dogs for a month teaching and doing research. Each year the project is a little bit different, with different research protocols along with improved and adjusted curricula. Their primary project is to teach a large group of students (this year about 100) who are in school to become clinical officers, roughly the equi...

First, a disclaimer: I don't know why Carac (0.5% flourouracil cream) is so expensive. I will speculate, though, at the very end of this blog. Sun and the skin: what happens If a person reaches a certain age, has very little pigment in her skin, and has spent lots of time in the sun, bad stuff happens. The ultraviolet radiation of the sun does all kinds of great things: it makes us happy, causes us to synthesize vitamin D which strengthens our bones and it gives us this healthy glow until we get old and wrinkled and leathery. And even that can be charming. The skin cells put up with this remarkably well for a long time, partly aided by melanin pigment which absorbs the radiation, which is why we tan and freckle, if we are fair skinned. Eventually, though, we absorb enough radiation that it injures the skin and produces cells which multiply oddly. It also damages the skin's elasticity which creates wrinkles. The cells which reproduce in odd ways peel, creating dry skin or...

 Facts (from the Centers for Disease Control Health report , 2013) : The consumption of opioid pain medications (like morphine, hydrocodone an oxycodone) increased 300% between 1999 and 2010. The death rates from poisoning by opioid pain medications more than tripled during that time. The greatest increases in deaths from opioids were seen in non-Hispanic whites and American Indian/Alaskan native populations, who showed a 4 fold increase in deaths. I have written several blogs on this, most recently talking about the experience of working with a large group of outpatients who are habituated to these drugs and are experiencing side effects, including addiction, along with small improvements in pain that are clearly not worth the devastating consequences of taking these drugs long term. "What is so devastating?" you may ask. Here are some stories* (names and details changed for privacy): Crystal is 43 years old. She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a painful con...

Lately I've had the opportunity to work in an outpatient clinic where the regular doctor is out sick for a prolonged period of time. It is a breathtakingly beautiful little community, with green hills and a crystal clear river. It is also troubled by methamphetamine and prescription drug abuse. The little clinic in town is unwittingly a partner in this crime. Like the US itself, this small community clinic has been generous with prescribing controlled substances for those who appear to need them. Sedatives in the benzodiazepine (Valium, Ativan and Xanax are brand name examples ) family are prescribed for those with anxiety. Opiates, from the family that includes morphine, are prescribed for patients with back pain and knee pain and a host of other long lasting pains, and continue to be prescribed monthly for round the clock use, sometimes at increasing doses, since these long term pains rarely go away, even on medications. Every young person these days seems to have attention d...

I just got back from the annual meeting of the American College of Physicians, an organization of internal medicine physicians with about 140,000 members. In the annual meetings organizational things take place, such as recognition of particularly hard working members and a kind of graduation ceremony in which members who have achieved a certain level of accomplishment are advanced to fellowship. Mostly, though, the tens of thousands who attend are there to go to lectures and discussions by doctors who know things that we all want to know. It is possible when attending these meetings to get a general idea of what the leadership in internal medicine thinks is important or acceptable. This year one of the themes seemed to be "reduction of variability." Only one talk actually used those words, but many of the speakers mentioned that they were encouraged to present the "party line" meaning published guidelines by specialty organizations within the ACP. Guidelines a...

I am, or will be, a "bad patient." The "good patient" accepts advice gracefully. The "bad patient" may not be a bad person, but does not play the part of the patient well. The word patient comes from the Latin word root pati, to suffer. The "good patient" suffers well, and accepts help from a physician,who Merriam Webster defines as someone skilled in the art of healing. This relationship is one in which the roles are well defined. When the patient is not actually suffering and is even more confusingly "skilled in the art of healing" the roles get really wonky. I will be this kind of "bad patient." One way in which I do not play the part of the patient well regards preventive medicine. I am getting to an age at which various things are recommended in order to reduce my risk of developing some dread disease. When it comes to these recommendations, I find that I have become quite the picky consumer. I would dearly love not t...

I recently read a discussion by 3 hypertension specialists, Drs. Jan Basile, Dominic Sica and David Kountz, on how to treat "resistant hypertension." Resistant hypertension is blood pressure that remains above goal despite treatment with 3 drugs, from different classes, one of which must be a diuretic. 10-15% of patients with high blood pressure will have resistant hypertension. These are the people who always seem to have blood pressure at levels that are concerning despite using medications that should be working. We wonder if they are actually taking the medications, but they assure us they are. It's almost like they are just taking sugar pills. Often patients such as these have extensive testing to see why their blood pressures are so high. They get put on even more medications which then have side effects, and eventually we may just give up and decide that they are as good as they are going to get. Giving up helps to avoid still more medication side effects, but ...