This is a blog for the Mental Health Policy Class at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work.

June 29, 2007

Psychiatrists Top List in Drug Maker Gifts

As states begin to require that drug companies disclose their payments to doctors for lectures and other services, a pattern has emerged: psychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty. How this money may be influencing psychiatrists and other doctors has become one of the most contentious issues in health care. For instance, the more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved.

Bush calls a Democratic effort to expand a popular program a move toward government takeover of healthcare.

Laying down a marker on healthcare, President Bush on Wednesday strongly criticized a push by Democrats and some moderate Republicans to broaden a popular children's insurance program. Bush called the plan a step toward a government takeover of medicine.After months of watching from the sidelines as Congress ignored his healthcare ideas, Bush forcefully reinserted himself into the debate. His bottom line: Government healthcare programs should focus on the poor and near-poor, not on middle-class families.

June 27, 2007

Closing the Divide: How Medical Homes Promote Equity in Health Care

The Commonwealth Fund 2006 Health Care Quality Survey finds that when adults have health insurance coverage and a medical home—defined as a health care setting that provides patients with timely, well-organized care, and enhanced access to providers—racial and ethnic disparities in access and quality are reduced or even eliminated. When adults have a medical home, their access to needed care, receipt of routine preventive screenings, and management of chronic conditions improve substantially. The survey found that rates of cholesterol, breast cancer, and prostate screening are higher among adults who receive patient reminders, and that when minority patients have medical homes, they are just as likely as whites to receive these reminders.

June 22, 2007

Backlash on bipolar diagnoses in children

No one has done more to convince Americans that even small children can suffer the dangerous mood swings of bipolar disorder than Dr. Joseph Biederman of Massachusetts General Hospital.
From his perch as one of the world's most influential child psychiatrists, Biederman has spread far and wide his conviction that the emotional roller coaster of bipolar disorder can start "from the moment the child opened his eyes" at birth. Psychiatrists used to regard bipolar disorder as a disease that begins in young adulthood, but now some diagnose it in children scarcely out of diapers, treating them with powerful antipsychotic medications based on Biederman's work.

States Face Decisions on Who Is Mentally Fit to Vote

Rhode Island is among a growing number of states grappling with the question of who is too mentally impaired to vote. The issue is drawing attention for two major reasons: increasing efforts by the mentally ill and their advocates to secure voting rights, and mounting concern by psychiatrists and others who work with the elderly about the rights and risks of voting by people with conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Bush Again Vetoes Bill on Stem Cell Research

President Bush today issued his second veto of a measure lifting his restrictions on human embryonic stem cell experiments, a move that effectively pushed the contentious scientific and ethical debate surrounding the research into the 2008 presidential campaign.
At the same time, Mr. Bush issued an executive order intended to encourage scientists to pursue other forms of stem cell research that he does not deem unethical. But that research is already going on and the plan provides no new money.
Advocates for embryonic stem cell research called the new plan a ploy to distract from Mr. Bush’s opposition to the studies. “I think the president has issued a political fig leaf,” said Sean Tipton, spokesman for the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, an advocacy group. “He knows he’s on the wrong side of the American public.”

Study Finds 1.8 Million Veterans Are Uninsured

As the nation struggles to improve medical and mental health care for military personnel returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, about 1.8 million U.S. veterans under age 65 lack even basic health insurance or access to care at Veterans Affairs hospitals, a new study has found.

. . . . Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), the committee's chairman, said taking care of veterans is a continuing cost of war. "All veterans should have access to 'their' health-care system," he said. "This is rationing health care to veterans, those who have served our nation. And I think it's unacceptable for a nation of our wealth and our ability."

June 15, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/washington/09surgeon.html

President Bush’s nomination of Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., a Kentucky cardiologist, to be surgeon general is drawing criticism from gay rights groups, physicians and lawmakers who say they are troubled by opinions critical of homosexuality that Dr. Holsinger has voiced in nearly 20 years as a high-ranking layman in the United Methodist Church.

A National Survey of Physician–Industry Relationships

A new national survey finds nearly all physicians (94%) have some type of relationship with the pharmaceutical industry—from receiving drug samples or food in the workplace, to being reimbursed for professional meetings, to receiving consulting fees.
The authors of "A National Survey of Physician–Industry Relationships" (New England Journal of Medicine, Apr. 26, 2007) document widespread relationships between physicians and the pharmaceutical, medical device, and other medically related industries, and also find that such relationships vary according to type of specialty, practice setting, and other factors.