John Tyler High School
Tyler,Texas
Class Of 1968
LIONS DEN
Forum: Health Issues | |||||
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Jake (Kelly) Tidmore
Little Rock, AR Joined: 03/31/09 Posts: 98 View Profile |
An Eye for an Eye? Posted Sunday, December 8, 2013 01:37 PM An article in the Washington Post is just one more chapter in the book of the screwed up American medical system. It's about two eye drugs, Avastin and Lucentis, virtually the same, both equally effective. One costs $50. The other costs $2,000. Guess which is prescribed a half million times a year? Genentech, a division of the Roche Group, makes both products but reaps far more profit when it sells the more expensive drug. Although Lucentis is about 40 times as expensive as Avastin to buy, the cost of producing the two drugs is similar, according to scientists familiar with the drugs and the industry.
We must move away from a supply-driven health care system organized around what physicians do and toward a patient-centered system organized around what patients need. We must shift the focus from the volume and profitability of services provided—physician visits, hospitalizations, procedures, and tests—to the patient outcomes achieved. And we must replace today’s fragmented system, in which every local provider offers a full range of services, with a system in which services for particular medical conditions are concentrated in health-delivery organizations and in the right locations to deliver high-value care. |
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