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Cricket House Studios, cricketdiane, health, health care, health care reform, health care statistics, insurance industry, medical industry, medical industry statistics, medical malpractice, pharmaceutical deaths, pharmaceuticals defrauding taxpayers and disabled communities
Read the House bill here.
Read the Senate bill here.
Filed under: Health care
[originally found here -]
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/14/read-in-health-care-bills-in-congress/
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My Note –
I know this is not exactly summer reading and neither is it easy to read because of its arbitrary twists of ordinary language. However, there are only pharmaceutical companies, hospital corporations, mental health / psychiatric industry marketing representatives, insurance company legal and executive representatives and medical industry professional associations that are at the table with those deciding these “health care reform” things.
It is a fact that none of the rest of us are actually at that table.
Still, they will change this health care reform bill until it is unrecognizable. A lot of it was likely written by lobbying groups, think tanks and other health industry organizations and not by any of our representatives and senators.
I personally believe that, given the fact that the only participants at the table whose interests are money driven and profits driven, rather than health care and quality of life driven – none of it will be a “reform” of the health care system in any positive respect.
More likely than not, whatever reform it contains will ensure those medical trades, medical insurance companies, medical industry executives and corporations, pharmaceutical industry profits and sky-high hospital / medical services costs are served. They are the real shadow government in this country.
The pharmaceutical companies alone spend over $11 billion dollars a year on promotions, and that doesn’t include lobbying, research grants they underwrite and numerous other marketing activities. Pharmaceutical worldwide sales for 2008 was over $733 billion dollars with a little over $392 billion dollars of that coming from US sales alone.
From my notes –
Pharmaceutical Companies –
Total Promotion – 2008 – $ 11,267,000,000 (over $11 Billion Dollars)
Professional Promotion – 2008 – $6,838,000,000 (almost $7 Billion Dollars)
[Note – there is probably more money for promotions hiding in Research / Grants / Specialists / Conventions / Think Tanks Support / Public Relations / Marketing / and Honorariums would be what?]
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Total US Prescription Market (In Billions of US Dollars) – 2008
2008 $291.5 Billion
2007 $287.6 Billion
2006 $276.5 Billion
2005 $253.9 Billion
2004 $239.9 Billion
Rank 1 Antipsychotics
2008 $14.6 Billion
2007 $13.1 Billion
2006 $11.7 Billion
2005 $10.5 Billion
2004 $ 9.6 Billion
Rank 2 – Lipid Regulators – are the statins plus Vitorin and Zetia
2008 $14.5 Billion
2007 $16.4 Billion
2006 $19.9 Billion
2005 $18.3 Billion
2004 $16.7 Billion
Rank 3 – Proton Pump Inhibitors –
2008 $13.9 Billion
2007 $14.2 Billion
2006 $13.7 Billion
2005 $13.0 Billion
2004 $12.8 Billion
Rank 4 – Seizure Disorders –
2008 $11.3 Billion
2007 $10.2 Billion
2006 $ 8.9 Billion
2005 $ 8.0 Billion
2004 $ 8.5 Billion
Rank 5 – Anti-Depressants – (are the combination of SSRI products and SNRI products)
2008 $ 9.6 Billion
2007 $ 9.4 Billion
2006 $10.7 Billion
2005 $10.3 Billion
2004 $11.2 Billion
Rank 6 – Angiotensin II Antagonists –
2008 $ 7.5 Billion
2007 $ 6.6 Billion
2006 $ 5.8 Billion
2005 $ 5.1 Billion
2004 $ 4.5 Billion
Rank 7 – Antineo Monoclonal Antibodies –
2008 $ 7.5 Billion
2007 $ 6.8 Billion
2006 $ 5.8 Billion
2005 $ 4.0 Billion
2004 $ 2.6 Billion
Rank 8 – Erythropoietins –
2008 $ 7.2 Billion
2007 $ 8.7 Billion
2006 $10.1 Billion
2005 $ 8.7 Billion
2004 $ 8.2 Billion
Rank 9 – Anti-Arthritics, Biological Response Mod –
2008 $ 6.0 Billion
2007 $ 5.3 Billion
2006 $ 4.4 Billion
2005 $ 3.7 Billion
2004 $ 2.6 Billion
Rank 10 – Anti-Platelets, Oral –
2008 $ 5.3 Billion
2007 $ 4.5 Billion
2006 $ 4.2 Billion
2005 $ 3.8 Billion
2004 $ 3.4 Billion
Rank 11 – Analogs of Human Insulin –
2008 $ 5.1 Billion
2007 $ 3.9 Billion
2006 $ 3.1 Billion
2005 $ 2.4 Billion
2004 $ 1.8 Billion
Rank 12 – Steroid, Inhaled Bronch –
2008 $ 4.8 Billion
2007 $ 4.4 Billion
2006 $ 4.0 Billion
2005 $ 3.6 Billion
2004 $ 3.0 Billion
Rank 13 – Analeptics –
2008 $ 4.8 Billion
2007 $ 4.1 Billion
2006 $ 3.5 Billion
2005 $ 3.0 Billion
2004 $ 2.4 Billion
Rank 14 – GI Anti-Inflammatory –
2008 $ 4.4 Billion
2007 $ 4.0 Billion
2006 $ 3.6 Billion
2005 $ 3.1 Billion
2004 $ 2.8 Billion
Rank 15 – Codeine & Combinations –
2008 $ 4.3 Billion
2007 $ 3.6 Billion
2006 $ 2.8 Billion
2005 $ 3.3 Billion
2004 $ 3.4 Billion
Source IMS Health
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2008_Top_15_Products_by_U.S._Sales.pdf
Top 15 Products by U.S. Sales
Top 15 U.S Pharmaceutical Products by Sales
US$ in Billions
2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Total US Prescription Market 291.5 287.6 276.5 253.9 239.9
LIPITOR 7.8 8.1 8.7 8.4 7.8
NEXIUM 5.9 5.5 5.2 4.4 3.8
PLAVIX 4.9 3.9 3.0 3.5 3.1
ADVAIR DISKUS 4.4 4.3 4.0 3.6 3.0
SEROQUEL 3.9 3.5 3.0 2.6 2.1
SINGULAIR 3.5 3.4 3.0 2.5 2.2
ENBREL 3.4 3.4 3.1 2.8 2.0
NEULASTA 3.1 3.1 2.9 2.3 1.8
ACTOS 3.1 2.9 2.6 2.2 2.0
EPOGEN 3.1 3.1 3.3 3.0 3.0
PREVACID 3.1 3.4 3.6 3.8 3.9
ABILIFY 3.1 2.4 1.9 1.5 1.0
REMICADE 3.1 2.8 2.5 2.2 2.0
EFFEXOR XR 3.0 2.9 2.6 2.6 2.6
LEXAPRO 2.7 2.6 2.4 2.1 1.8
From – IMS HEALTH, a healthcare information company
Source: IMS National Sales Perspectives
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Adding together – 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
SEROQUEL 3.9 3.5 3.0 2.6 2.1 (Doubled)
ABILIFY 3.1 2.4 1.9 1.5 1.0 (Tripled)
EFFEXOR XR 3.0 2.9 2.6 2.6 2.6 (+ some)
LEXAPRO 2.7 2.6 2.4 2.1 1.8 (+$1 Billion )
Totals –
2008 $ 12.7 Billion (For just these four psychotropic drugs in the top 15 sellers)
2007 $ 11.4 Billion
2006 $ 9.9 Billion
2005 $ 8.8 Billion
2004 $ 7.5 Billion
a hike of $5.2 Billion from these four drugs alone 2004 –> 2008
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[from charts above – in dollars]
Total US Prescription Market (In Billions of US Dollars) – 2008
2008 $291.5 Billion 3,843.1 (total RX in Millions)
2007 $287.6 Billion 3,807.2
2006 $276.5 Billion 3,706.4
2005 $253.9 Billion 3,545.1
2004 $239.9 Billion 3,435.1
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2008_Top_Therapy_Classes_By_U.S._RX.pdf
U.S. Dispensed Prescription Information
Top Therapeutic Classes by U.S. Dispensed Prescriptions
http://www.imshealth.com/deployedfiles/imshealth/Global/Content/StaticFile/Top_Line_Data/2008_Top_Therapy_Classes_By_U.S._RX.pdf
Top Therapeutic Classes by U.S. Dispensed Prescriptions
Total Rx in Millions
RANK 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Total US Prescription Market
2008 3,843.1 (Total Rx in Millions)
2007 3,807.2
2006 3,706.4
2005 3,545.1
2004 3,435.1
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That would be how many prescriptions according to these statistics have been written by physicians and psychiatrists in 2008 which number almost 4 Billion of them in the United States alone. We must be the sickest people on the planet on a regular basis. – my note
But there were 165,000 confirmed deaths in the US from adverse drug reactions – and over 2 million pharmaceutical mistakes reported in hospitals which are under-reported.
Most of the information that doctors are using for diagnosis and for prescribing drugs are given to them from the drug companies on a monthly and annual report along with whatever software they use, which is also underwritten by pharmaceutical companies and their sponsored “experts” and by medical health professionals funded by pharmaceutical companies. It isn’t in the name of better health that they are doing that. It isn’t altruistic, nor are their intentions concerned with patients’ quality of life and overall health.
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Another note –
I wish that the health care reform bill and all other bills in our legislatures had to list with each section, who authored the bill and I don’t mean which legislator sponsored it, but that might be helpful too.
It seems to have been common practice for some number of years, to use bills and sections of legislation authored by the industries it seeks to reform or legislate or regulate. The passages and sometimes, the entire bill has been written, researched and determined by lobbying groups, industry-backed associations, think tanks, conservative legal think tanks or groups, social industry organizations, (in this case, pharmaceutical companies and medical industry / medical insurance carrier representatives or their lobby groups), or academics funded and sponsored by those industries and corporations they would claim to be legislating, regulating or reforming.
They ought to have to claim authorship of the passages that they’ve written in these bills and then show the sponsors of that portion of the bill who demanded that it be included from among our legislators and elected officials. It should be made public along with the bill, the passage in it and the legislation that comes from it. Then, we would know something. Every state legislature, along with the House and Senate of the Federal legislature should have to do that.
Every policy that is written or re-written in our State and Federal agencies should also have to publicly admit who authored them, and what lobbyists pressured for those policy applications as they are being considered and when they are made. If it has come from some academic, social institution or conservative think tank, industry, lobby, or elsewhere – it should be made a part of the public information about it. And, during discussions that are public – that information should be made available to everyone.
I don’t think that our Senators and Representatives have written a bill themselves since they were trying their hand at doing it in a law school or government civics class. It is actually possible for anyone to write a bill and get it sponsored by a Representative or Senator, but considering that they don’t and none of us are doing it (for the most part) – who are the people writing these bills? Who is it that is deciding what policies will be put into these legislation packages, including the health care reform bill?
And, who is deciding and writing how those policies are to be applied to our citizens who did not elect these corporate lobbyists and industry representatives to write our laws or legislate policies for us?
We didn’t elect the backroom policy makers of the Republican Party or from the Democratic Party to make those decisions. We didn’t hire, nor elect the industry lobbyists to decide for us. We didn’t elect, nor agree, to corporate profit-driven interests to write our laws. And, when they do write these laws which appear magically in their entirety on the floor of the House or the Senate – and they are not the people we’ve elected to write our laws, we should legally require their signature on it.
They should be required to claim that authorship, that pressuring of our elected officials and publicly post their exact involvement in writing that legislation or passage of any part in it, including its application into federal and state agencies’ policies and practices. If it has been altered – that should be credited to those who altered it with the associations who fund them.
For many years, we have been subjected to and subjugated by interests that we neither voted for, nor would have by majority, agreed with. Decisions about the applications of legislation into policy were made with the interests of those behind the scenes players, think tanks, industries and financiers put ahead of the vote, the voice and the will of the people of the United States.
Are we going to continue putting up with that, even now, having seen the damage that has come as a result of it? The global economic devastation and the US economy which has been devastated by doing it that way should be enough to learn that it doesn’t work and carries an inherent risk far greater than its benefits.
We can no longer afford to defer to “specialists” or experts to think through what we think about things or know about things. That is why we weren’t given one collective brain but rather were designed to have one of our own.
The purpose of the information from those specialists is to add to what we have available to us, not as a replacement for thinking nor as an exemption from applying our own intelligent use of our brains in order to gather information, to learn, to understand and to interpret the subject matter for ourselves. It is cohesive and inclusive while applying common sense and educated reasoning to these issues before us, rather than binding ourselves by deferring that responsibility and having to live with the consequences of someone else’s choice for us that may not have our best interest at heart or in mind.
As I watch the continued use of experts to tell people what “it” means and what they are to think of “it” and what they believe are the logical or emotionally charged arguments for or against “it” – whether “it” is the economic recovery / stimulus bill, or the financial regulation changes legislation, or the health care reform bill (or whatever else it might be), it looks like most people have not done background checks on a lot of the people whose views they are willing to accept and further without a thought whatsoever.
Hasn’t doing that cost us enough already? Our entire economy is in a shambles, people’s lives have been thoroughly trashed, businesses of all sizes have dropped from sustainability, profits have been lost, massive numbers of families have lost their loved ones from medical and pharmaceutical mistakes, and watched their family members suffer as many of them died horribly, painfully from preventable food-borne poisonings, products’ faultiness, and by the hand of callous “professionals” whose only goal was to line their pockets with silver, gold and bank stock portfolios.
At what point does it become obvious that using some experts’ brains to think it through and tell us what it all meant, has allowed the propagation of any ideology to be perpetrated and forced upon us whether we, as a nation, would agree with it or not? Did anyone even check to see if their expert reasoning was sound or if their constructs and interpretations from it actually made any good sense at all?
And, without the checks and balances of our citizens agreeing to those ideologies, nor checking where they had been intellectually founded – those trusted sources could’ve been used to tell us anything, to have perpetrated anything, forced us into subjugation to any ideology whether we believed in it or agreed to it or found it to have common sense for us as a nation, or in fact, found it to be something inappropriate for us.
Over the last thirty years, that is exactly what has happened and it has cost our nation, our futures, our economy, our individual lives, our potentials, our prosperity, and has cost every individual citizen, family and community intimately. Hasn’t doing it that way done enough harm now?
– cricketdiane, 08-14-09
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Cricketdiane's Weblog 
Cricket – So, is there a list of the sponsoring lawmakers and authors somewhere?
I will look around and see what I can find. The places I know are not all in the same place because I’m looking for the actual original sources where a PAC, lobby, association, industry organization, industry or business group, think tank, academic group or some other source actually wrote the bill or parts of it and submitted it to the Congressman or Senator that then incorporated it into a bill. If you find somewhere that someone is starting an accumulation of those original sources, let me know – but I probably wouldn’t trust them unless I see the source materials myself.
Thankyou so much for your question – I will post what I can find. There are also places in the information retrieval systems from the Library of Congress archives which shows the authors and sponsors of legislation, sometimes along with their notes from their offices that are required to be turned in as part of the historical record. In a current administration, some of that information would likely also be on the Senate and Congressional websites. I’ll look.
Thanks again,
– cricketdiane