The Shkreli Awards for profiteering and dysfunction in healthcare, an annual tribute to the worst actors of the US health system, have unsurprisingly focused this year on misconduct during the covid-19 pandemic, with the place of dishonour taken by the Trump administration’s federal personal protective equipment (PPE) task force.
“What was even worse,” said award judge Patricia Gabow, “was that Moderna ‘selected’ Brigham and Women’s Hospital for the vaccine trial and Dr. Nabel sold Moderna stock, after it quadrupled in price with the vaccine development.”
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The Biden administration could fix our patent system, making it easier for generics to reach the market.
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Hospitals face the new year with new requirements to post price information they have long sought to obscure: the actual prices negotiated with insurers and the discounts they offer their cash-paying customers.
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The crisis of Covid-19 created new opportunities for exploitation by this year’s greedy and misguided “winners.”
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The current COVID-19 pandemic shares many of the same causes as the Panic of 1907: lack of a coordinated federal response, lax state-level regulations, and absence of clear strategies to respond and recover from the initial outbreak. Therefore, we propose a new entity paralleling the Federal Reserve —the Federal Health Authority (FHA)—to anticipate health shocks, coordinate future responses, and address longer-term problems in the nation’s health and health care.
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Pharmaceutical interaction in US residencies is common. This study explores the extent and type of learner interactions in US family medicine residencies with the pharmaceutical industry and compares interactions from 2008, 2013, and 2019.
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A top ten list of the worst examples of profiteering and dysfunction in health care, named for Martin Shkreli, the price-hiking "pharma bro" that everyone loves to hate.
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In a partnership with the Lown Institute, Washington Monthly created a ranking system that factored not only the clinical prestige of a hospital, but also its cost-effectiveness and service to the surrounding community. JPS was given high marks for caring for people living near the hospital, regardless of their ability to pay, and for taking on a leadership role in the community.
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What types of spending count as community benefits, and which types of hospitals spend the most? Shannon and Vikas tackle these questions and more on this week's Lown Hospitals Q&A.
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How do nonprofit and for-profit hospitals differ when it comes to community engagement and community health investment?
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New research confirms what drug companies have long known: Industry cash and gifts influence how doctors prescribe drugs for their patients.
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A Trump administration maneuver allows executives who are leading the federal effort to keep investments in drug companies that would benefit from the pandemic response.
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Purdue Pharma, which invented OxyContin, agreed to pay fines of $8 billion, will be effectively dissolved and converted into a benefit company.
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In the world of prescription drugs, "price" is a murky term. Using the list price across the supply chain would simplify things.
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The Crow reservation in Montana has one of the nation’s worst recent outbreaks—one of many rural communities now being hit by the virus. The people helping combat the disease spend their days and nights trying to save their own family and friends.
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In a report released Tuesday, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General found that a Louisiana prison did not not isolate inmates infected with coronavirus for about one week.
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A federal watchdog agency has issued an unusual warning to the drug industry to avoid using speaker programs to boost prescriptions.
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A new report shows that the ratio of hospital charges compared to their costs has ballooned over the past decades. Why does it matter?
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Covid-19 has revealed a lot of failures in the health care system. But some of the changes hospitals have had to make are worth keeping. In this week's Hospitals Q&A video, Shannon Brownlee and Vikas Saini discuss five things hospitals should keep doing after the pandemic.
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Does receiving money from medical device companies impact the devices doctors implant in patients? A recent study in JAMA suggests that it does.
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