An Inside Look at Health Care for the Elderly and Medicare

Under the ACA’s Open Payment policy, CMS will now be publishing reports of payments to physicians from drug companies. This is slated to start on June 30th. Log onto the CMS site to check out who and how much money the drug companies are paying. That site is: http://www.cms.gov/openpayments. Why is this important? We know that medicines are over-prescribed in this country, often resulting in high cost and poor outcome. Similarly, drug companies very often deceptively r

SEE EDITORIAL IN THE BALTIMORE SUN. Recently the front page of virtually every major publication proclaimed that medicines used to treat acid reflux (proton pump inhibitors, or ppi’s) may cause heart attacks. Using “mined data” by scouring electronic medical records, researchers determined that use of ppi’s increase people’s risk of getting a heart attack by 16%. That day and the next, my email was pummeled by patients and families wondering if they should stop their prilos