Poss. Law could harm your health & bank account
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Focus on Your Health:
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
We do posts on staying healthy; preventing disease; aging more slowly; weight loss; exercise; nutrition; & news in medicine.
Today's post: Tuesday, 4-24-2007
A proposed law could harm your health & bank account….
This law, if my information about it is accurate & it were passed, could prevent you and your doctor from giving you the most effective, safe, & least expensive care.
And, since it likely will do this to hundreds of thousands of Americans, it will cause unnecessarily poor healthcare & at even higher costs than we have now.
This is NOT a desirable law. If anything we need laws that effectively do the reverse.
Since it’s been proposed in the United States Senate, I sent my two senators this message.:
Dear Senator (& I listed their names),
Please Vote against the "Safe Drug Compounding Act" that is being proposed.
As now written, if my information is accurate, it will drive up health care costs & harm the public health for a large number of Americans. A worse bill would be hard to imagine than one with those effects.
It may be good for some businesses. But even though I am pro-business, I'm only in favor of ethical ones!
And I do NOT support businesses that pollute to make money or who otherwise harm the public health.
There is a piece of legislation that is apparently proposed by Senators Kennedy (D/MA) Burr (R/NC) and Roberts (R/KS)with Safe Drug Compounding Act as its title.
In an email to me (& others) Al Sears MD writes that this legislation would prevent him as a doctor in prescribing the exact dosages of medications that his patients need.
And it would prevent him from choosing the best drugs for his patients by eliminating some of the choices he has found superior (both more effective & safer) through his own practice and experience.
Here are his comments.
"The latest bill going to congress, the “Safe Drug Compounding Act of 2007” would make many natural compounds and medications from a compounding pharmacist illegal.
A compounding pharmacist is a specialist who can mix, blend and prepare customized medications and dosages according to your doctors instructions. That may not sound important to you, but it could have a profound impact on your life.
There’s not a single day that goes by in my practice that I don’t use compounding pharmacists. Why? Because it’s better medicine ..... Here’s an example: A patient needs a small dose of a blood pressure drug – let’s say 6 mg. But the smallest dose offered by a drug company is 25mg. In that case, I’ll have a compounding pharmacist custom prepare a 6 mg dose of that drug.
It’s simple, effective and very economical. Prices are much lower when you can buy directly from the pharmacist."
It's a fact that people are biochemically individual. Studies show some people need larger than standard doses because their bodies remove drugs so efficiently. Similarly, some patients are the reverse & need smaller doses than standard doses.
And, this is NOT trivial. Overdoses of some medicines can be life threatening.
In addition, the dosage a patient needs over time can go down. The patient Dr Sears speaks of with high blood pressure might go on the DASH diet that is high in vegetables & low in salt; go to Weight Watchers regularly; & begin walking 3 miles on most days.
In that event, they may lose 40 pounds & need even smaller doses of the medication to get superb control of his or her blood pressure.
If only standardized doses are available, such a patient & that patient's doctor have a choice between no drug at all, even if they need it, or an overdose.
If Dr Sears report of this proposed bill is at all accurate & this bill becomes law, this kind of harm will happen throughout our country to hundreds of thousands of people until it's changed somehow.
And, the patients or the health insurers will have to pay more than they would have had to pay for the dosage actually needed.
Our health care costs are already rising so fast it's beginning to threaten our economy & make us less competitive in the world economy.
For either of these reasons this bill is extremely ill advised.
Please, please, vote against it. And, let me know you did so!
Hopefully,
David Eller
Focus on Your Health:
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
We do posts on staying healthy; preventing disease; aging more slowly; weight loss; exercise; nutrition; & news in medicine.
Today's post: Tuesday, 4-24-2007
A proposed law could harm your health & bank account….
This law, if my information about it is accurate & it were passed, could prevent you and your doctor from giving you the most effective, safe, & least expensive care.
And, since it likely will do this to hundreds of thousands of Americans, it will cause unnecessarily poor healthcare & at even higher costs than we have now.
This is NOT a desirable law. If anything we need laws that effectively do the reverse.
Since it’s been proposed in the United States Senate, I sent my two senators this message.:
Dear Senator (& I listed their names),
Please Vote against the "Safe Drug Compounding Act" that is being proposed.
As now written, if my information is accurate, it will drive up health care costs & harm the public health for a large number of Americans. A worse bill would be hard to imagine than one with those effects.
It may be good for some businesses. But even though I am pro-business, I'm only in favor of ethical ones!
And I do NOT support businesses that pollute to make money or who otherwise harm the public health.
There is a piece of legislation that is apparently proposed by Senators Kennedy (D/MA) Burr (R/NC) and Roberts (R/KS)with Safe Drug Compounding Act as its title.
In an email to me (& others) Al Sears MD writes that this legislation would prevent him as a doctor in prescribing the exact dosages of medications that his patients need.
And it would prevent him from choosing the best drugs for his patients by eliminating some of the choices he has found superior (both more effective & safer) through his own practice and experience.
Here are his comments.
"The latest bill going to congress, the “Safe Drug Compounding Act of 2007” would make many natural compounds and medications from a compounding pharmacist illegal.
A compounding pharmacist is a specialist who can mix, blend and prepare customized medications and dosages according to your doctors instructions. That may not sound important to you, but it could have a profound impact on your life.
There’s not a single day that goes by in my practice that I don’t use compounding pharmacists. Why? Because it’s better medicine ..... Here’s an example: A patient needs a small dose of a blood pressure drug – let’s say 6 mg. But the smallest dose offered by a drug company is 25mg. In that case, I’ll have a compounding pharmacist custom prepare a 6 mg dose of that drug.
It’s simple, effective and very economical. Prices are much lower when you can buy directly from the pharmacist."
It's a fact that people are biochemically individual. Studies show some people need larger than standard doses because their bodies remove drugs so efficiently. Similarly, some patients are the reverse & need smaller doses than standard doses.
And, this is NOT trivial. Overdoses of some medicines can be life threatening.
In addition, the dosage a patient needs over time can go down. The patient Dr Sears speaks of with high blood pressure might go on the DASH diet that is high in vegetables & low in salt; go to Weight Watchers regularly; & begin walking 3 miles on most days.
In that event, they may lose 40 pounds & need even smaller doses of the medication to get superb control of his or her blood pressure.
If only standardized doses are available, such a patient & that patient's doctor have a choice between no drug at all, even if they need it, or an overdose.
If Dr Sears report of this proposed bill is at all accurate & this bill becomes law, this kind of harm will happen throughout our country to hundreds of thousands of people until it's changed somehow.
And, the patients or the health insurers will have to pay more than they would have had to pay for the dosage actually needed.
Our health care costs are already rising so fast it's beginning to threaten our economy & make us less competitive in the world economy.
For either of these reasons this bill is extremely ill advised.
Please, please, vote against it. And, let me know you did so!
Hopefully,
David Eller
Labels: health news, healthcare costs, law, medical costs
posted by David at 12:55 PM
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