Senate Bill 1955
In May, a bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate and was promptly the source of heated partisan debate (shocking, we know). According to Republicans, U.S. Senate Bill 1955 would have allowed small businesses to cross state lines and form larger groups with fellow national association members (Realtors, for example) and participate in group insurance plans at a greatly reduced rate. Ostensibly, this would have allowed many of the 40-plus million U.S. citizens who are currently uninsured to obtain affordable health insurance.

However, Democrats argued that by removing state insurance regulations in order to allow these interstate groups to form, Bill 1955 would eliminate such hard-won state mandated regulations as insurance coverage for cancer screening (such as mammograms), diabetes screening and birth control.

Ultimately, Senate Bill 1955 was not passed. Where’s the bull? In the fact that there were no clear answers for those of us who really wanted to know whether the bill was the shining ray of hope for expanded access to health care or the death knell for early detection. Further, it is bull that such a good idea as allowing small businesses to form larger associations that can then affordably participate in group health insurance plans should be defeated by confusion and doubt about state mandates when a good compromise was surely available.

Sorry. We’d like to have been more amusing but we’re now suffering from “bull-blown” depression.

Drug firms hype diseases
Do drug companies over-hype diseases to sell more drugs? Richard Shears of the Daily Mail recently reported that two Australian researchers, David Henry and Ray Moynihan of Newcastle University in New South Wales, certainly think over-hype is the norm for drug advertising. The researchers say that Big Pharma actually exaggerates medical conditions into diseases that must be treated merely to sell more product.

The researchers cite Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity Disorder, Restless Leg Syndrome and Erectile Dysfunction as conditions which have become diseases that must be treated with drugs, turning more and more people into patients. Henry and Moynihan are also quoted as saying that drug companies are trying to turn menopause and shyness into diseases so that drug products can be sold to combat them.

GlaxoSmithKline responded to accusations that Big Pharma over-hypes conditions by saying: “We pride ourselves in providing miracle solutions to the health care needs of people every day.”

And here’s where things go really rank smelling: “Pfizer would only promote prescription medicines to health care professionals, and only in line with what licensing bodies have outlined, for them to use their clinical judgment.”

We’d like to point out that Pfizer is the proud manufacturer of Viagra. Need we say more?

Mumps “epidemic”
A mumps “epidemic” in Iowa was recently widely reported. A quick check of the archives of the Des Moines Register tells an interesting story.

An April 7, 2006 story by Tony Leys contains this quote: “Iowa health leaders are unsure what’s causing a growing mumps epidemic, but they remain confident that there is nothing wrong with the standard vaccine.”

Two days later, on April 9, we learn that health department investigators are stumped why people coming down with the highly contagious disease received the vaccine.

Hmmm.
On April 21, we discover that the Iowa Department of Public Health distributed 25,000 doses of the mumps vaccine to 35 counties that have colleges. The vaccine was offered to people 18 through 22 years old. Yet on May 4, we learn relatively few college-age students showed up for shots.

Hey, maybe the college education is working.

But, on May 11, the paper reported that adults younger than 47 who haven’t had either the mumps or the vaccinations were invited to get a free shot in the arm.

Alrighty, then—the vaccination “works,” but most of the people with mumps have been vaccinated; the students who are the prime at-risk demographic don’t come to get vaccinated; they have so many doses left over that they offer vaccinations to a population previously not considered at risk.

We guess Iowa needs all that corn to feed one big bull.