America's Healthcare Subculture
Two things especially struck me about researching my latest BusinessWeek.com column, about Big Pharma's bullying of small pharmacies to control the market for women's hormones:
1. Maybe it's because I'm a man, but I never had any idea so many women benefit from so-called bioidentical hormone treatment. Sure, some of the testimonials from women to the FDA were orchestrated by Wyeth opponents, but too many are just too authentic to be canned responses; if you want to get a sense of the relief many women receive from this alternative treatment approach, click on this link and take a look through the letters for yourself.
2. Related to the previous, I'm always amazed when I do this kind of research and discover many thousands of people improving their health outside the parameters of our conventional healthcare system. I've seen it happen often enough that I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Maybe I'm just too much of a media junkie, getting roped in to the establishment media's narrow view of the the healthcare world. A case in point is yesterday's front-page Wall Street Journal article about hormone therapy for women. Not even a hint of a suggestion in this major piece that there might be another kind of hormone therapy out there.
It's encouraging to know there is another approach to medical care available. It's up to us to be open to the alternatives and prepared to search them out, even if we decide in the end not to use them. We owe it to ourselves.
The Complete Patient
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Reader Comments (1)
Just this morning I learned of your article in Business Week via a ListServe reference from one pharmacist to another re Big Pharma's push to, apparently, squash the little guy.
Having read the article and, subsequently, this blog, I would like to state that, in our experience, there is an astonishing array of treatment options available for many, many illnesses, diseases and age-related complications. A great many of these are either not FDA approved or, more to the point, not profitable to drug companies. Yet, according to clinicians, these same compounds are quite efficacious and cost effective for the patient. And, shouldn't the needs of the patient be the most important consideration in medicine?
In many cases, these options would not be available to the patient if not for the compounding pharmacist.
Compounding pharmacists (an estimated 4,000 independents in the US, alone) keep medication options open by allowing practitioners to treat patients according to their needs and not the needs of the large drug companies.
Pharmacists have traditionally compounded meds tailored to the needs of the patient. Their contribution to the practice of medicine is invaluable and should be applauded, not hindered.
Large drug companies are, arguably, in business to increase the wealth of their stakeholders. That's business. That's what managers should be doing. However, that sense of responsibility to the stakeholder over the needs of the patient is a disconnect that has contributed mightily to the inordinant rise in healthcare costs. Question: Just how many non-steroidal anti-inflammatories do we need?
There are only so many pieces you can divide a market into and remain profitable.
Best regards,
Michael Pruett, MBA, RPh
DynaLabs LLC
(888) 396-2522