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Fibromyalgia is a devastating disease that causes chronic pain and other symptoms for those who are affected – but it’s a disease with no known cause and no standard treatment. Many people haven’t even heard of the condition, but if that’s the case it’s not because the drug industry isn’t trying hard enough.

Drug Companies’ Hundreds of Millions Help Raise Awareness of Fibromyalgia

Last year, drug industry giants Pfizer and Eli Lilly spent hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to “raise awareness” of fibromyalgia. The companies donated more than six million dollars to non-profit organizations for educational campaigns and medical conferences, too.

That’s more than the companies donated for Alzheimer’s, and diabetes. And only donations made for cancer, depression, and AIDS were higher than the donations made to further the cause of fibromyalgia.

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When a doctor explains treatment options to a patient, it’s often little understood; frequently glossed over; and delivered in over-technical terms. A new movement in health care is makings strides to change the status quo, and with it the decisions of a whole new group of patients.

Case Examples of Informed Consent Opportunities

Currently, the most effective early warning signal for prostate cancer is an elevated level of prostate-specific antigen in the blood. But that test is nowhere near perfect – many men with prostate cancer test negative for PSA, and men who are overweight and have developed prostate cancer often have reduced PSA levels. Up to 25% of men with prostate cancer test negative for elevated PSA.

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The $787 billion economic stimulus package that was signed into law last week includes one or two health-related measures that haven’t been widely publicized, but which are no less important for it.

One of these is the $1.1 billion that has been assigned for a study to compare the effectiveness of a large number of medical treatments, drugs, surgeries, and other current standard medical procedures and devices. A council of fifteen federal employees will be set up to coordinate the research and advise the President and Congress on where the money would best be spent.

The program is a response to growing concerns that doctors have little solid evidence on which to base the value of many of the treatments that are currently considered standard.

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Japan’s overcrowded, understaffed hospitals are in danger – and so are the people who rely on those hospitals when they need emergency medical care. An elderly Japanese man who sustained head injuries after being struck by a motorcycle waited ninety minutes in an ambulance – while paramedics phoned fourteen different Tokyo hospitals, trying to find a hospital that would accept the man for treatment. All the hospitals refused to admit the injured man, saying they lacked the equipment and staff needed to treat him. The paramedics arrived at the accident site just a few minutes after the 69-year-old man was injured, but ninety minutes and fourteen hospitals later, the man died just a short time after paramedics finally located a hospital that would accept him for treatment. The man died from the shock caused by the loss of a large amount of blood – a condition which the man might have survived if he had received treatment earlier.

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The big healthcare news from the Obama administration over the last few weeks has been that the State Child’s Health Insurance Program will be expanded, but another SCHIP-related change that happened around the same time hasn’t received as much attention.

This change is a reversal of enrollment rules imposed in August 2007 by the Bush administration. Controversial at the time, the new rules made it much more difficult for states to allow certain families to use SCHIP. For families whose income totaled more than 250% of the federal poverty line (that equates to around $50,000 per year for a family of four), it suddenly became all but impossible to use SCHIP. Several states actually sued the federal government over this change, including Maryland, Illinois and Washington.

In May 2008, Bush relented a little by reducing the income restriction to around 200% of the federal poverty line, or about $40,000 per year for a family of four.

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The close ties between doctors and the drug industry are long-standing, but recently health policy experts have been saying that it’s about time those ties were cut. Over the years, many reports of drug companies providing financial and material perks for doctors has caused an erosion of public trust in medical professionals – and experts say that to repair that particular problem, it’s time for doctors to cut ties with the drug companies that provide the kick-backs.

A series of comments made by health policy experts in the British Medical Journal elaborate on the issue, saying that doctors might have to give up the freebies to win back public trust. From inexpensive prescription pads and pens to seminars at luxurious hotels, there are plenty of rewards for doctors who cultivate good relationships with drug companies.

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After being accused of overcharging millions for health care insurance, one of America’s biggest insurers has agreed to a $50 million settlement pay-out.

Hundreds of people made complaints about charges made by Oxford Insurance, and its parent company UnitedHealth Group. The parent company claims that its reimbursement rates are based on “independent research from across the health care industry,” but an investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office revealed that it’s actually Ingenix, a research firm owned and operated by UnitedHealth Group, that supplies the data.

This isn’t just a case of conflict of interest, however – it gets much worse.

According to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Ingenix has been manipulating the data, allowing UnitedHealth Group’s Oxford Insurance to pay less for reimbursement of its customers.

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Trees are good for your health – they suck up carbon dioxide and release oxygen, help reduce greenhouse gases and provide welcoming shade during the summer. But those aren’t the trees that have recently been in the news for helping to improve the health of many Americans. This time it’s family trees that are up for discussion – and electronic ones, at that.

Importance of Knowing Your Health History

The importance of knowing your family medical history can’t be emphasized strongly enough, according to Acting Surgeon General Steven Galson, whose office has been in charge of a new initiative to promote the use of a website where users can grow an electronic family tree to find out where their health risks lie.

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Early in January, the California High Court banned emergency room doctors from directly billing insured patients, after their HMOs refused to pay their emergency medical care bills. The High Court has decided that doctors should not be allowed to take up the issue with patients if they believe they’ve been shortchanged by the patient’s HMO.

This new ruling affects around 21 million people, providing them with protection if they are treated by emergency room doctors who are not covered by their HMO plan.

The issue centers around a practice called balance billing. Sometimes, HMOs don’t cover the entirely of an emergency treatment bill, typically because the doctor used by the policy holder isn’t covered by the HMO’s plan. In these cases, the doctor concerned normally directly bills the patient who received the treatment.

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According to recent figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 148,000 Americans lost their jobs in the financial sector alone. Regardless of the industry in which they work, many of those who have found themselves out of work as a result of the economic crisis haven’t only lost their jobs – they have also lost their healthcare.

What do you do if you find yourself in this position? It’s tempting to go without - it’s one more expense at a time when you can least afford it. But without healthcare coverage, you can’t afford to become sick or injured, either. So what are your healthcare and coverage options if you lose your job?

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