re: “Suicide” of HHS official Daniel Best (day after HE released Q&A on lowering drug prices)

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America’s opioid crisis is a warning to the NHS. Don’t let big pharma loose on policy Chris McGreal

The US watchdog that is supposed to protect patients is in thrall to an industry profiting from addiction
Sun 18 Nov 2018 00.59 EST

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The FDA assembles advisory committees of doctors and scientists to weigh the arguments for and against new drugs. In 2012, an opioid 10 times more powerful than regular painkillers, Zohydro ER, was on the agenda. By then, no one was in any doubt about the ravages of the worst drug epidemic in US history. So far, it has claimed at least 350,000 lives. Around 150 people a day are dying in a crisis with roots in the push for the mass prescribing of opioid painkillers that took off two decades ago.

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The senior FDA representative on the committee told the doctors they had no business asking such questions. He admonished the committee, saying that there had to be “a level playing field for industry”. In other words, if one company was making money from a dangerous drug then others were entitled to too, even if it was killing people. Some of the doctors were incredulous. One exclaimed that “the primary thing has to be the public health”, not profits. The committee voted 11-2 against approving Zohydro. A majority of members also said it was not safe even for those it was prescribed to. But the FDA decided it didn’t like the committee’s advice and approved the drug for sale on the grounds that it would benefit a narrow set of patients.

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The industry’s money also buys access. For more than a decade, big pharma was paying tens of thousands of dollars at a time to have its officials sitting at the same table as FDA officials deciding opioid policies. That was possible in part because the line between regulator and regulated had become increasingly blurred. A former head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which first declared the opioid crisis an epidemic, told me that key federal health agencies “had lots of industry money” and that influenced their position on the mass prescribing of opioids.

The Zohydro hearing was a turning point, at least in waking up the FDA to growing public anger at what was widely regarded as its indifference to the epidemic. Dr Margaret Hamburg, who was head of the agency when the drug was approved, acknowledged to me that within the FDA “there had been an under-appreciation of just how serious a problem this was”.

But little has really changed in a healthcare system that is primarily an industry, not a service.

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Suicide by multiple blows to the back of the head. Hillary switching it up on us. Sneaky bitch

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Trump’s Drug Pricing Czar Found With ‘Multiple Blunt Force Injuries,’ Ruled Suicide
BY PETR SVAB
November 18, 2018 Updated: November 19, 2018

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Best was found “unresponsive” near the garage door exit of an apartment building in Navy Yard, a neighborhood about a mile south of the Capitol at 5:25 a.m. on Nov. 1, according to the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department. Best was pronounced dead on the scene.

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Azar and Best will “know where the bodies are buried,” a health insurance lobbyist told Stat in May, though he added the two would also know how far they could go against the industry. “You can only shake up so much.” Best apparently wanted to shake up quite a bit. Two days before his death, HHS published a question-and-answer article where Best explained one of the initiatives he led was expected to save the government more than $50 billion in its first eight years on Medicare and Medicaid expenses—at the expense of drugmakers and/or other developed countries.

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As Best explained, Americans often pay much higher prices than people in other developed countries for some expensive drugs. The plan was to attempt to level the playing field by tying how much Medicare pays for some drugs to a selection of international prices, instead of the average U.S. price.

Many European countries, for instance, exercise broad control over health care and dictate how much companies can charge for drugs. Conservative pundits have long complained over the oversized chunk of pharmaceutical research paid by Americans through higher drug prices. “The world reaps the benefits of American genius and innovation, while American citizens—and especially our great seniors, who are hit the hardest—pick up the tab,” Trump said on Oct. 25 when announcing the plan.

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Best grew up in the Erie, Pennsylvania, area and graduated from the University of Dayton. He leaves behind a wife and three sons.

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The D.C. police, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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Answering Your Questions about the IPI Drug Pricing Model
October 30, 2018
By: Dan Best, Senior Advisor to the Secretary for Drug Pricing Reform

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Summary: HHS answers questions about the International Price

Index Model, a proposed way of paying for physician-administered drugs within Medicare.

Last week, as part of fulfilling President Trump’s promise to lower drug prices and cut down on foreign governments’ freeriding, HHS put forth a new way of paying for physician-administered drugs within Medicare, the International Price Index (IPI) Model. The model aims to: Reduce the price Medicare pays for a set of costly drugs to closer to what other countries pay. Remove perverse incentives that encourage the prescribing of more expensive drugs. Reduce physician burden associated with “buy and bill” by enabling private sector vendors to play a larger role in the purchase and distribution of these drugs

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How much money will this save patients and Medicare?

The model is projected to save the Medicare and Medicaid programs more than $17 billion over its first five years, and more than $50 billion in its first eight years.

Because Medicare beneficiaries without other coverage pay 20 percent of physician-administered drug payments as coinsurance, they would see up to $3.4 billion in savings over the first five years.

Here are two examples: A senior who receives an eye medicine that currently costs Medicare $1,800 a month, but other countries just $300, would see the coinsurance drop from around $4,400 a year to around $900 a year after full implementation of the proposal. Some Medicare beneficiaries use a drug to fight infection that currently costs Medicare $4,700 every time they receive chemotherapy. On average, it costs other countries $1,100. These beneficiaries would see their coinsurance drop from over $900 every time they use the drug to under $300 after full implementation of the proposal.

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The guy was murdered...

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Clearly it must be a conspiracy

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