Category Archives: Health care

Opioid lawsuits: What to do with the millions/billions?

State and local governments in Arkansas are suing opioid manufacturers for millions or billions. If they’re successful, what will they do with all that money?

On March 21, the Association of Arkansas Counties and the Arkansas Municipal League announced that 72 counties – it’s now all 75 – and 210 cities together were suing 65 defendants in the opioid industry in Crittenden County Circuit Court. Both organizations were already part of a nationwide federal lawsuit. Then on March 29 Attorney General Leslie Rutledge announced her office is suing three of the largest opioid manufacturers.

They’re currently feuding a bit over these dueling lawsuits, but that’s not what this column’s about.

Continue reading →

Medical marijuana: Skip the growers?

By Steve Brawner

© 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

It’s been 18 months since Arkansas voters passed the medical marijuana amendment, and the drug is still not available – legally under state law, anyway. It may not be available for a while, now that a judge has put a halt to awarding growers’ licenses.

But there could be a way to change that. First, the Medical Marijuana Commission could follow the governor’s advice and award growers’ and dispensaries’ licenses the same way alcohol permits are awarded – through a lottery. Meanwhile, the amendment’s sponsor says growers aren’t really needed yet anyway because dispensaries can meet current demand. Continue reading →

Trump change helps Arkansas Obamacare program continue

Seema Verna

Seema Verna hands the work requirement waiver to Gov. Asa Hutchinson at the Capitol.

The presidential administration that tried to repeal Obamacare in 2017 just made it easier for some Arkansas legislators to vote to continue part of it.

I guess that’s ironic. But that’s how politics works sometimes.

On Monday, Arkansas was visited by Seema Verna, President Trump’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator. She granted a waiver letting the state require some Arkansas Works beneficiaries to work.  Continue reading →

Your pharmacist doesn’t want to see you now

If your pharmacist doesn’t look happy to see you the next time you visit, it’s probably because she’s losing money filling your prescription.

The problems are occurring with two groups of patients. The largest are those covered by Arkansas Works, which uses Medicaid dollars to purchase private health insurance for 285,000 low-income Arkansans. The other problem patients are the 68,100 Arkansans who purchase their health insurance through the online Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace. Like Arkansas Works, the Marketplace was created by the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

Who are the pharmacy benefit managers?

Pharmacists say that, in those plans, they aren’t being fairly reimbursed by their pharmacy benefit managers. Those PBMs act as middlemen between pharmacists and insurance companies, which in Arkansas are Blue Cross, Ambetter and QualChoice. Continue reading →

America’s health care sickness: Paid to treat, not heal

RosenthalBy Steve Brawner

Dr. Denise Faustman believes type 1 diabetes might could be cured using a tuberculosis vaccine already sold as a generic. Unfortunately, she’s had trouble obtaining funding for research. Too many people have a financial incentive to keep the status quo.

Faustman, a Harvard Medical School researcher, found that  the vaccine, long sold on the market, showed promise when tested on mice.

That would be big news, especially for the 1.25 million Americans living with type 1 diabetes. And it did cause a stir when she published the initial results – in 2001.

However, the pharmaceutical industry wasn’t interested in funding further research because it didn’t see a pathway to profits using a drug that’s already on the generic market. The big medical foundations haven’t wanted to fund her research because they’re allied with the pharmaceutical industry – in fact, often financially invested in its products. Despite the roadblocks, Faustman managed to find enough funding to publish further research in 2012. Now she’s trying to raise money through her website, www.faustmanlab.org.

Rosenthal: They’re paid to treat, not heal

Faustman’s story is one anecdote in “An American Sickness,” a book by Elisabeth Rosenthal, a medical doctor who became a New York Times reporter and is now editor in chief of Kaiser Health News. If you want to better understand why the American health care system is failing, read this 330-page book. Continue reading →