Johnson & Johnson's announcement last week that it would exit the stent business is, on its face, a classic case of winners and losers.
But if you wanted to identify a single product that embodies both the strengths and flaws of the American health care system, you won't do much worse than the $2,000 drug-coated stent.
These tiny metal devices, which are used to prop open clogged coronary arteries, have been credited with helping improve the quality of life of millions of people around the world.
But these wonders of biomedical innovation also have been blamed for helping drive up the cost of health care in the United States. Compelling evidence suggests that many patients who are undergoing hourlong, $11,000 stent procedures could be treated equally effectively with prescription drugs and behavioral changes.
Taxpayers are bearing the brunt of this overuse. Stents by and large end up in older people, who typically rely on Medicare to foot most of their health care costs. From fiscal year 2004 to fiscal year 2009, the federal government's Medicare Part A program paid an estimated $25.7 billion for cardiac stent procedures. By some estimates, payments from Medicare account for 40 percent of the stent industry's total annual revenue.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Patients and taxpayers bear cost of stent wars | StarTribune.com
via startribune.com
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You are right we have all paid for all this and with the just under 2 billion dollar court settlement J and J received last year with Boston Scientific, who needs to make them anymore, take the money and run and buy another company like Synthes, right? As consumers we just want devices we can afford and the matter that they are legally patented makes no difference other than driving the price up for all.
I get furious as with all this money floating around in legal cases and so forth, they can't even put a little money into recalling them and devices get missed being pulled from inventories and people die, happens more often then you think sadly.
Just last month a magazine published me on this topic and I have been all over the US FDA and drug and device companies to do something about this with bar codes that anyone could scan for devices, drugs and over the counter pharmaceuticals for recalls. They do nothing for the consumer at all with making valuable information accessible and then scratch their heads on why consumers don't use more healthcare applications.
The developers of many of these programs don't even use their stuff they write:)
Anyway it has been my campaign and even Microsoft featured it last week too on their bar code site but we have closed ears and the money all goes to lawyers and legal battles instead of help for consumers and doctors. Here's the story about a man who died because of a defective clamp that was not removed from inventory.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56311471/Micro-Cap-FDA-Recalls-Never-End
This same functionality would help find stolen and counterfeit drugs too and India is about read to start using the technology on their exports as I read a couple months ago. Here's the write up from last week at MSFT too.
http://tag.microsoft.com/community/tag-blog-item/11-06-06/Tag_Could_Boost_Safety_in_Medical_Industry.aspx
It just makes me nuts that the consumer gets left out for safety and yet all the money spent on patents wars does nothing but increase the cost and potentially restrict availability for us, the ones who need life saving technologies. I just keep plugging away at it, been doing this for about 2 years now and have written to J and J as well as other Pharma/device companies in the hopes that someone will open their ears soon and address this. When you look at almost 2 billion in this legal patent case, how many procedures would that have maybe covered and where's our priorities? Heck if nothing else it could buy the technology at least a dozen times over:)
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