Health care answers

Editor: Sometimes it is what you don’t read in the newspaper
that makes you scratch your head. So I pose these questions to you
and your readers: Why isn’t Big Pharma screaming about Health Care
Reform (HCR)? Why doesn’t the media raise the question of generic
drug use in HCR? Approved generics (listed in the Orange Book as AB
rated) are equivalent to brand name drugs at pennies on the
dollar.
Why have we not been bombarded by the biggest news since
penicillin?: That the vitamin D level in most Americans is too low
and that raising it to 60-80 ng/mL will prevent 77 percent of
cancers, diabetes (types 1 and 2), hypertension, inflammatory bowel
disease, heart failure, and the H1N1 flu? That it only costs 4
cents/day to get 4000 units/day? Big Pharma assuages the
legislators with “We are only 11 percent of healthcare
expenditures”, but they don’t add in the cost of the illnesses that
drug use incurs? This is a much, much bigger number. The average
American was on 12 drugs in 2004. The expenditure for prescription
drugs is over $ 180 billion and growing. Discontinuing two of 12
drugs would save around $30 billion in direct cost and hundreds of
billions more on indirect costs. The curious want to know more.
– Mark Burger, Pharm. D., Windsor