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Next Year's Rising Health Costs May Not Be Slowed By Reform
"Employers who offer health insurance coverage could see a 9 percent cost increase next year, and their workers may face an even bigger hit, according to a report Thursday from consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers," the Associated Press reports. Workers concerned about losing their jobs" and their insurance, while it lasts - are using more health care than usual, contributing to rising costs, the report says. As the costs increase, employers are also likely to shift more of the burden to employees. "A total of 42% of employers surveyed said they would increase employees" share of costs," the AP reports.

Vermont Legislature Passes Law Regulating All Drug/Device Company Marketing, Requiring Disclosure Of Gifts To Doctors
The Vermont Legislature has passed legislation (S 48) that bans nearly all gifts from pharmaceutical and medical device companies to health care providers, administrators and facilities in the state, the New York Times reports. The legislation specifically would prohibit drug and device makers from giving providers no-cost meals. Vermont"s legislation would go further than similar laws in other states like Massachusetts and Minnesota by requiring drug and medical device manufacturers who give gifts to health providers to publicly disclose recipients" names and dollar amounts of payments and gifts. The measure would not require manufacturers to disclose payments for clinical research of products undergoing FDA review, the Times reports. The legislation also would eliminate a loophole that allows manufacturers to conceal certain expenses by claiming them as trade secrets. In a recent report, the Vermont Office of the Attorney General said that medical product makers spent about $2.9 million on promotional efforts to the state"s health care providers in fiscal year 2008 and that nearly half of the state"s 4,573 licensed providers had received some type of incentive from drugmakers in the same year. The report, which was developed prior to passage of the new legislation, offers only aggregate data, as 83% of the manufacturer-declared payments were deemed to be trade secrets, the Times reports.Gov. Jim Douglas (R) is expected to sign the law, which would take effect July 1. Several state medical groups -- including the Vermont Association for Mental Health and the Vermont Medical Society -- have indicated support for the legislation.Marjorie Powell, a senior lawyer for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the requirements under the new law appear redundant with new voluntary guidelines the group has issued on physician gifting practices. She said, "We think this is unnecessary, and it is not going to improve patient care," adding, "It makes it onerous not only for the company but also for the physician in Vermont, because this is going to be on a Web site" (Singer, New York Times, 5/20).
News of the day
Democrats Hone August Health Care Message, Republicans Plan Counter-Offensive
Democrats are finding points they agree on in a tenuous accord for the message they want to relay to constituents during the August recess: The health insurance industry is the bad guy, The Washington Post reports.
Mental Health

New Drug Targeting Cancer Weakness Shows Great Promise

Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and The Royal Marsden Hospital, working with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, have completed a Phase I clinical trial demonstrating the great promise of a completely new type of cancer treatment. The results are announced today in The New England Journal of Medicine. Patients with inherited forms of advanced breast, ovarian and prostate cancers - caused by mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes - were treated with the new drug olaparib (a PARP inhibitor). Despite having previously received many standard therapies, in more than half of the patients tumours shrank or stabilised. One of the first patients to be given the treatment is still in remission after two years. Olaparib targets the cancer cells but leaves healthy cells relatively unscathed. Importantly, patients experienced very few side-effects and some reported the treatment was "much easier than chemotherapy". Dr Johann de Bono, one of the ICR scientists who led the AstraZeneca/KuDOS-sponsored Phase I trial held at The Royal Marsden and the Netherlands Cancer Institute, said the positive results confirmed olaparib should be taken into larger patient trials. "This drug showed very impressive results in shrinking patients" tumours," Dr de Bono says. "It"s giving patients who have already tried many conventional treatments long periods of remission, free from the symptoms of cancer or major side-effects." Olaparib is the first successful example of a new type of personalised medicine using "synthetic lethality", in which the treatment works in combination with a patient"s own specific molecular defect. It was based on experiments conducted at the ICR and funded by Cancer Research UK and Breakthrough Breast Cancer showing that some cancers had an Achilles" heel: If drugs - such as olaparib - are used to block an enzyme called PARP in the body, the tumour cells" DNA breaks down and they die. Cancer cells with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations were the first discovered to be sensitive to PARP inhibitors, but there is evidence that olaparib will be effective in other cancers with different defects in the repair of DNA - this could include some non-inherited breast and prostate cancers and up to half of the most common type of ovarian cancer. "This is a very important drug for the treatment of BRCA1/2-related cancer," ICR scientist and joint lead researcher Professor Stan Kaye, who is supported by Cancer Research UK, says. "The next step is to test this drug on other more common types of ovarian and breast cancers where we hope it will be just as effective." Professor Alan Ashworth, Director of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre at the ICR, developed the approach of targeting defects in DNA repair in cancer. "We are delighted that the work we did in the lab has been translated so quickly into potential benefit for patients," Professor Ashworth says. "This concept is now being tested in a variety of clinical trials across the world." The Institute of Cancer Research


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