| Editorial: I don't understand why...
...airline executives receive salaries and benefits in the millions and millions of dollars but the airlines claim they are losing money. I would think that airline executives would be receiving those tremendous salaries for their efforts to make money for the airline. Otherwise, they are not doing their job.
...gasoline prices are still $2 to $3 per gallon and have doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in recent years. The increase in prices has not necessarily been because of the availability of crude oil; hurricane Katrina only caused a short downtime; we still get oil from the middle-east; the Alaskan pipeline is in place; and the oil is pumping here in Oklahoma! In fact, Oklahoma has the largest financial surplus ever in history due in part to the money the oil industry is bringing in. But our gasoline prices keep going higher.
...Medicare Part D was created and has already had drastic consequences. On the Compounder's Network List this week, we linked to a story about a pharmacy in Oklahoma that is going out of business owing directly to Medicare Part D. Prior to Medicare, all patients had access to pharmacies for their medications, and years ago the prices were "reasonable" because the patient was the "client." With Medicare, the prices of drugs from the pharmaceutical companies are "unreasonable," and the PBMs are the client. Reimbursement levels for pharmacists are so low and payment so slow, that some cannot stay in business. The old adage in dosing veterinary patients, "start low and go slow," seems to be what is driving Medicare Part D to "start low and pay slow." Has the government done our Medicare patients any good if there is no local pharmacy to serve them for their pharmaceutical needs? I guess they will all have to go to mail order and direct mail from the manufacturers (some have stated that this scenario may be what is behind Medicare Part D anyway).
...the average price of bread is now over $2 per loaf�but the cost of an entire bushel of wheat is only about $3.50, which is about the same price it was many, many years ago when bread only cost 50 cents per loaf. It looks like the food industry has a lot of middle-men also. The farmer is similar to the pharmacist because they are asked to provide more and more for less and less. Maybe the "farm" and "pharm" are the problem, and we should be "druggists" again.
...professional sports and celebrities' salaries and million dollar endorsements are totally out of control, but I won't even get started on that subject. We seem to be victims of mass marketing, corporate conglomerates, partisan politicians, exaggerated egos, and, yes, apathy, to allow all this to happen and to even participate in it.
Loyd V. Allen, Jr., Ph.D., R.Ph
Editor-in-Chief |
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Fifty abstracts/citations on Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) were added to the CompoundingToday.com literature search database this week. This is the first half of a large review on the subject - look for the second batch next week! Here are some samples:
- Arlt W. Dehydroepiandrosterone and ageing. Best Pract Res Clin Endocrinol Metab 2004; 18(3): 363-380.
- Cameron DR, Braunstein GD. The use of dehydroepiandrosterone therapy in clinical practice. Treat Endocrinol 2005; 4(2): 95-114.
- Cini M, Rampinelli P. DHEA-based preparations in Italy, Europe and USA: The regulations, the active ingredients, the formulations. J Endocrinol Invest 1999; 22(10 Suppl): 35-36.
- Dillon JS. Dehydroepiandrosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate and related steroids: Their role in inflammatory, allergic and immunological disorders. Curr Drug Targets Inflamm Allergy 2005; 4(3): 377-385.
- Finckh A, Berner IC, Aubry-Rozier B et al. A randomized controlled trial of dehydroepiandrosterone in postmenopausal women with fibromyalgia. J Rheumatol 2005; 32(7): 1336-1340.
Start your literature today at: http://compoundingtoday.com/Articles/
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Time to Start Testing!
If you haven't started yet, now is the time to start having samples of your compounded preparations tested by a qualified laboratory. This is important for your patients' safety and to document, for all interested parties, the quality of your compounding procedures and preparations. This will probably be a significant part of the future of compounding. |
