Envisioning 2.0

While scanning the headlines for interesting stories, I often find little tidbits of healthcare-related information and save them to blog about in the future. In this series, From the Back Pages I post links and commentary on a few of them. This month’s edition is below.

Universal Healthcare: Earlier this month, Sen. Ron Wyden announced legislation that would potentially solve the uninsured problem by requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance. Wyden launched this effort partly because he feels that waiting two years to start talking about healthcare reform is too long.

Commentary: There’s been some great coverage of Wyden’s plan around the blogosphere. Especially noteworthy is Joe Paduda’s analysis. Click here, here and here to read some of it.

Rare Diseases & The FDA: Jerome Groopman of the New Yorker continues his fantastic coverage of the healthcare system with “The Right To A Trial,” which focuses hereon whether or not dying patients should have access to experimental drugs.

Commentary: Groopman’s article is a must-read. In addition, if you’re interested in learning about how a parent of a child with a rare muscle condition fought to get his children experimental medication, read Geeta Anand’s book The Cure. I had the pleasure of meeting Anand in New York City last month and I found her to be very dedicated to those looking to get treatment for rare conditions. See this article, for example (registration required).

Rost Says Don’t Be A Whistleblower: Peter Rost, who wrote a book detailing his experiences at Pfizer, The Whistleblower: Confessions from a Healthcare Hitman, has some advice for would be whistleblowers: Don’t do it. In a wide ranging interview with Pharmaceutical Executive Rost said that whistleblowing “should be avoided at any price” and compares the pharmaceutical industry to the mob.

Commentary: Clearly Rost comes off as a bit bitter and I’m not sure if I’d put the pharmaceutical industry and the mob in the same category.

Another Take On Zyprexa: As reported on this blog and elsewhere, the New York Times published two front page stories about Eli Lilly’s marketing of Zyprexa. The articles have received a range of responses from across the blogosphere. One of the more interesting posts comes from the author of the blog World of DTC Marketing who used to work at Lilly. He says:

“What the Times failed to report is that the people who were responsible for this poor judgment are no longer with Lilly. They were shown the door a long time ago and, now it seems, for good reason. If the reporting in the Times is accurate than in fact several people did use extremely bad judgment in the marketing of the product.

A lot of the Zyprexa team people were shown the door and Lilly cleaned house in the brand team a while back. I don’t know where these marketers wound up but I can assure you being fired from a pharmaceutical company is not something you want on your resume . . . The media reporting in this country has really gone down hill. They seek headlines rather than fact . . . they don’t research stories and the news is more about sensationalism than facts. That’s a shame because as a former Lilly employee I was always were told to put patients first and I observed this in the development of a lot of our marketing materials.”

Commentary: This is an interesting take on the situation. Lilly has a reputation for doing great work for patients – especially in mental health as Prozac has saved a lot of lives. From this post, it looks like people made some mistakes and that heads rolled. That’s a good thing. Click here for a statement from Lilly about the Times’ coverage.

This entry was posted on December 19, 2006 at 2:08 pm and is filed under From The Back Pages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.