Why Do Pharmaceutical Companies Spend Billions On Marketing Drugs To Doctors? John Oliver Is Back To Explain!

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Why Do Pharmaceutical Companies Spend Billions On Marketing Drugs To Doctors? John Oliver Is Back To Explain!

America takes a lot of prescription drugs with more than 70% of Americans taking at least 1 prescription drug. A staggering 4 Billion prescriptions were written in 2011!

We are bombarded with drug advertisements on television BUT it is scary to think that only about 20% of their marketing budgets are spent on consumer marketing and 80% on marketing directly to doctors.

According to the BBC, 9 out of 10 Big Pharma companies do in fact spend more on marketing than on R&D.

The point is, these pharmaceutical companies have a big a influence on doctors and they do not always public’s best interests at heat.

U.S. Has the Worst Health Care? Not By a Long Shot

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U.S. Has the Worst Health Care? Not By a Long Shot

Few complaints about the U.S. healthcare system are as common as the claim that we spend too much on health care and get too little for all that spending in return — especially compared to other industrialized nations.

A new Commonwealth Fund report is the latest to indict U.S. health care. It pegs the American system dead last in a survey of 11 developed countries.

But like virtually every other study that trashes the U.S. healthcare system, Commonwealth’s rankings rely on questionable assumptions, like giving weight to those systems that treat people equally rather than well. At the same time, Commonwealth ignores the problems that countries with socialized healthcare systems have actually treating people once they’re sick.

And on that metric — that is, actually delivering care to those who need it — the United States is without peer.

The Commonwealth Fund report begins by asserting that the U.S. health care system “is the most expensive in the world.”

It’s true that the United States spends a larger share of its Gross Domestic Product — 17.9 percent, or almost $3 trillion – on health care than other countries. But by itself, that statistic means nothing.

The United States also happens to be one of the richest countries in the world. Once basic needs are taken care of, an increasing share of each extra dollar will go to what were once considered luxuries. You can only spend so much on food, after all.


That’s borne out by national spending data. Between 1990 and 2012, for example, spending on health care climbed 290 percent, significantly faster than overall GDP growth of 171 percent.

But household spending on pets climbed 353 percent over those same years; on live entertainment, it went up more than 500 percent. Americans spend 639 percent more on telephones and 900 percent more on computers.

By the Commonwealth Fund’s logic, America also faces a pet-care spending crisis.

In contrast, spending on staples like food, clothing, housing, and furnishings all climbed more slowly than overall GDP.

The Commonwealth Fund concludes that the United States “underperforms relative to most other countries on most other dimensions of performance” despite having the most expensive healthcare system in the world.

But a closer look at those “dimensions” calls that claim into question.

Take infant mortality rates, where the United States typically places far down the list behind France, Greece, Italy, Hungary, even Cuba.

This comparison is notoriously unreliable, because countries either use different definitions of a live birth — or fudge their numbers.


The United States, for example, counts every live birth in its infant mortality statistics. But France only includes babies born after 22 weeks of gestation. In Poland, a baby has to weigh more than 1 pound, 2 ounces to count as a live birth.

The World Health Organization notes that it’s common practice in several countries, including Belgium, France, and Spain, “to register as live births only those infants who survived for a specified period beyond birth.”

What’s more, the United States has significantly more pre-term births than other countries. That fact alone accounts for “much of the high infant mortality rate in the U.S.,” according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC found that if the United States had the same pre-term birth rate as Sweden, our infant mortality rate would be cut nearly in half.

What about life expectancy, where the United States ranks below its peers as well?

International measures of longevity typically fail to account for differences in obesity, accidental deaths, car accidents, murders, and the like, all of which shorten lives no matter how good a nation’s healthcare system is.

The U.S. murder rate, for example, is more than four times the United Kingdom’s — and far higher than all the other countries in the Commonwealth Fund study. The United States has a worse highway death rate than all but one of them. And U.S. obesity rates are more than double Canada’s and more than four times Switzerland’s.

A far more meaningful comparison of international health systems would take stock of how people afflicted with diseases such as cancer fare in different countries. And on this measure, there’s no question the United States stands above the rest.

Five-year survival rates for breast cancer are higher in the United States than England, Denmark, Germany, and Spain, according to the American Cancer Society.

In the United States, the survival rate for prostate cancer is 99.1 percent. In Denmark it’s 47.7 percent.


For kidney cancer patients, the survival rate here is 68.4 percent. It’s just 45.6 percent in England — which the Commonwealth Fund ranked as the number-one healthcare system in the world.

Finally, the Commonwealth Fund study also ignores massive problems with actual access to care in the countries it heralds. Every citizen of a country with socialized medicine may have insurance. But that doesn’t mean they can get the care they need.

Treatment delays were so chronic in the United Kingdom, for example, that the government had to issue a formal requirement that patients shouldn’t have to wait more than four months for treatments authorized by their general practitioner.

The Royal College of Physicians found that poor care — including doctors trying to keep costs down — caused nearly two-thirds of asthma deaths in the U.K. in 2012.

In Canada, the average patient seeking an elective medical service has to wait four-and-a-half months between being recommended for treatment by their primary care physician and actually receiving it.

Waiting for care is the norm in Canada, even though Madam Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Canadian Supreme Court declared nine years ago, in a ruling holding a ban on private health insurance in Quebec illegal, “Access to a waiting list is not access to health care.”

The Commonwealth Fund is right about one thing — the U.S. healthcare system is too expensive. But rationing care — as Commonwealth’s favored systems do — is not the answer.

U.S. Health Care Ranked Worst in the Developed World

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U.S. Health Care Ranked Worst in the Developed World

The U.S. ranks worst among 11 wealthy nations in terms of “efficiency, equity and outcomes" despite having the world's most expensive health care system

The U.S. health care system has been subject to heated debate over the past decade, but one thing that has remained consistent is the level of performance, which has been ranked as the worst among industrialized nations for the fifth time, according to the 2014 Commonwealth Fund survey 2014. The U.K. ranked best with Switzerland following a close second.

The Commonwealth Fund report compares the U.S. with 10 other nations: France, Australia, Germany, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.K. were all judged to be superior based on various factors. These include quality of care, access to doctors and equity throughout the country. Results of the study rely on data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Health Organization and interviews from physicians and patients.

Although the U.S. has the most expensive health care system in the world, the nation ranks lowest in terms of “efficiency, equity and outcomes,” according to the report. One of the most piercing revelations is that the high rate of expenditure for insurance is not commensurate to the satisfaction of patients or quality of service. High out-of-pocket costs and gaps in coverage “undermine efforts in the U.S. to improve care coordination,” the report summarized.

A striking take-home from the report was a need for equity throughout the nation. “Disparities in access to services signal the need to expand insurance to cover the uninsured and to ensure that all Americans have an accessible medical home,” it said. A lack of universal health care was noted as the key difference between the U.S. and the other industrial nations.


Despite these shortcomings, positives noted include the breadth of reforms spearheaded by the Affordable Care Act, including new databases for transparent information and financial assistance for low-middle-income families in gaining coverage. “Those efforts will likely help clinicians deliver more effective and efficient care,” the report concludes.

Health minister ignores dying man lying outside hospital during visit to check on patient care in India

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Health minister ignores dying man lying outside hospital during visit to check on patient care in India

• Laxma Reddy was visiting a hospital on his first day as health minister
• He had gone to inspect patients care in the midst of a swine flu outbreak
• Now faces criticism after he was seen walking past a man lay dying outside

A health minister in India has been seen walking past a man lay dying outside the same hospital he had come to inspect.

The newly appointed minister for health in the Indian state of Telangana, Laxma Reddy, had gone to investigate the way officials were tackling a severe swine flu outbreak in the region.

But on his first day into the new job, he and other top health officials were seen walking past and completely ignoring a dying man left lying on the ground.

The new health minister in the Indian state of Telangana Laxma Reddy had completely ingored the dying man lying on the floor outside Osmania General Hospital

Instead the minister continued with his visit to Osmania General Hospital, in the city of Hyderabad where he inspected patient care and suggested improvements to try and tackle the outbreak

He now faces criticism for his seeming indifference to the terminally ill person lying unattended at the entrance. 

The minister declined to comment.  

Mr Reddy was moved from the role of energy minister to take over the health portfolio after massive criticism of the government in central India's Telangana State for its poor handling of the swine flu epidemic.

 Mr Reddy had gone to investigate the way officials were tackling a severe swine flu outbreak in the region

But on his first day into the new job, he and other top health officials were sere seen walking past and completely ignoring a dying man left lying on the floor

So far some 50 people have died of swine flu in Hyderabad this season and dozens of others are reported to be ill with the disease including five children.

Isolation rooms and beds to treat swine flu patients have already been created at hospitals in the city including Niloufer, Fever Hospital and Osmania General Hospital where the minister visited. 

He told hospital staff to lay more stress on sanitation and promised to take up modernisation of the existing hospital mortuary and toilets.

Mr Reddy was moved from the role of energy minister to take over the health portfolio after massive criticism of the government in central India's Telangana State for its poor handling of the swine flu epidemic but has come under fire himself for his seemingly callous indifference to a dying man

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