Hospitals Buy Back-Door Drugs Due to Shortages
Fifty-two percent of hospital purchasing agents and pharmacists reported they’d bought drugs from so-called “gray market” vendors during the previous two years, according to a just-released survey of 549 hospitals by the Institute for Safe Medication practices, an advocacy group.
Gray-market suppliers are those that operate outside official channels, often buying drugs from uncertain sources and reselling them at a steep profit. A report issued last week by a one hospital association found their average mark-up was 650 percent.
via Half of hospitals buy back-door drugs – Health – Health care – msnbc.com.
$100,000 for New Cancer Drug
Seattle Genetics Monday said the drug will cost $4,500 per vial. In its clinical trials, the company said, patients on average received three vials per dose and between seven and nine doses per treatment.
via $100,000 price tag for new cancer drug – Health – Cancer – msnbc.com.
5 Reasons Capitalism Has Failed
Reason One:
We’re living in the age of corporate dinosaurs. (The largest multinational is JP Morgan Chase with assets of $2 Trillion, 240,000 employees, and offices in 100 countries.) The original dinosaurs perished because their huge bodies possessed tiny brains. Modern dinosaurs are failing because their massive bureaucracies possess miniscule hearts.
The Wrong Solutions to Fixing our Economy
James K. Galbraith is spot on.
First, the economic models in use were obviously faulty. Why? Because they had assumed a “natural rate of unemployment” to which the economy will return whatever happens. This idea originated with Milton Friedman as part of his attack on John Maynard Keynes — who had argued, based on the stark evidence of the Great Depression, that mass unemployment can persist indefinitely. An economist who builds the natural rate into a model is like a doctor who assumes that her patient will always get better eventually, even without treatment. No such doctors exist, of course; that so many economists think this way is just strange.
via The wrong solutions to fixing our economy – latimes.com.
Abercrombie and Fitch Offers to Pay ‘The Situation’ To Stop Wearing Its Clothes
Talk about brand management: Teen apparel retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co. is offering to pay Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino not to wear its merchandise.
Price-Gougers Hike Drug Costs During Shortage
Amid growing shortages of life-saving drugs, some back-door suppliers are capitalizing on the problem, jacking up prices for medications for cancer, high blood pressure and other serious problems by as much as 4,500 percent, a new hospital survey shows.
via Price-gougers hike drug costs during shortage – Health – Health care – msnbc.com.
Competition in Action
The bottom line is money. Studios have been willing to deal with Netflix because it’s so popular. But Netflix is getting more competitors in the world of streaming video from services like Hulu, Amazon, iTunes and YouTube.
via In Shift To Streaming, Netflix Customers Find Holes : NPR.
9 Things You Didn’t Know about the History of Debt
Debt seems to be everywhere in the news nowadays: debt ceilings, sovereign debt crises, credit crunches, senate battles over debt protection agencies, subprime mortgages, the creeping feeling that the United States has somehow hocked itself to China. It might cause one to wonder: how did all this happen? How did politics suddenly become all about who owes who how much money?
via David Graeber: 9 Things You Didnt Know About The History Of Debt PHOTOS.
The President Surrenders on Debt Ceiling
Start with the economics. We currently have a deeply depressed economy. We will almost certainly continue to have a depressed economy all through next year. And we will probably have a depressed economy through 2013 as well, if not beyond.
The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash government spending, since that will depress the economy even further. Pay no attention to those who invoke the confidence fairy, claiming that tough action on the budget will reassure businesses and consumers, leading them to spend more. It doesn’t work that way, a fact confirmed by many studies of the historical record.
Economics @ ITT 
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