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August 20, 2008
Brave New Healthcare World
by Peter Pitts
Does it seem counter-intuitive that “universal” care results in restricted access and poor outcomes? Not when you consider the facts.
A recent report published in The Lancet was the first international analysis of cancer survival that provides comparable data across countries. Across all cancers studied, survival in the US was greater than in Europe. For example, 5-year relative survival for women with breast cancer was 84% in the US and 73% in the EU. For men with colon cancer in the US survival was 60% whereas in the EU it was 47%.
The researchers attributed the variation in survival to “differences in access to diagnostic and treatment services.”
Similarly,
Is the conventional wisdom that medicines for the very ill are healthcare budget busters? Not when you consider the facts.
A recent study published in Health Affairs found that for the severely ill, commercially-insured population, the costs of medical services account for more than 75% of health plan costs. Hospitalization costs accounted for half of this amount. In contrast, medications accounted for just over 20% of health spending for this group, whose annual costs are more than nine times higher than the overall plan population. The authors concluded that medication costs “do not seem to be the driver of health care costs for these members.”
Among the 2.5% of members with the highest spending, specialty medicines (defined in this study as "biologic-derived agents that target specific immune processes and proteins”) were used by 45% and accounted for 32% of spending on medicines and just 6.6% of total plan spending.
Pharma is not the enemy – disease is the enemy.
(But that’s not a convenient political sound-bite.)
Let’s not forget the wise words of Aldous Huxley, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
Posted by peterpitts at August 20, 2008 11:42 AM
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