Rare Diseases and Their Relevance to Public Health
Rare diseases are defined by the population count affected by the disease. For a disease to be considered rare, it must affect 200,000 patients or less in the United States. The European Union defines a rare disease to be one that affects five or less out of 10,000 people.
Rare diseases affect all of us, even if we don’t have the disease ourselves. The issue, as always, is money. Medications and physician time are taken up with these diseases and could be considered as driving up healthcare costs. Generally, for instance, when a pharmaceutical company makes a medication, it is made for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. But a rare disease may require an orphan drug and those particular medications are incredibly expensive.
Because of this, in 1983, the U.S. Orphan Drug Act was passed by the U.S. Congress. This provides incentives to the drug companies to continue making the drugs that only a few people take, and thus avoid financial loss in the creation of those medications.
Whether an individual is affected or not, the existence of rare diseases affect the cost of medical care. If an individual does have one of the rare diseases, it is an issue that is up close and personal. Research through the site linked below will provide information to help you understand the role of rare diseases in your life, whether as a victim or as a person learning about the ins-and-outs of medical insurance and how rare diseases affect your healthcare.
Rare Diseases - This is the best and most “user” friendly site on this topic
Listings of Rare Diseases A through Z
Could This Be Why Prescriptions Cost So Much?
Do you ever wonder, when you go to the pharmacy to pick up your prescriptions, why the bill is so high? The cost of prescriptions is absolutely shocking and so often people are forced to chose between groceries and medication. Something about that is just not right! And when you look at pharmaceutical companies, and how they spend their money, it becomes fairly easy to see where that high price tag is originating from.
In their analysis of data from two market research companies, IMS and CAM, Marc-André Gagnon and Joel Lexchin (York University, Toronto, Canada) found that US drug companies spent US$57.5 billion on promotional activities in 2004, the latest year for which figures were available. In comparison, the National Science Foundation reported that in 2004 the amount of industrial pharmaceutical research and development (including public funds for industrial research and development) was US$31.5 billion in the United States.
Medical News Today
That is close to twice as much! That is money that is going into advertising, promotional materials (those pens, calendars, and coffee cups at the doctor’s office come from those companies), drug reps who talk with physicians about medications, and other forms of marketing to increase sales.
One might wonder what they will have to promote when they run out of new medications because of the lack of research!
Healthcare is in crisis today; not just in the United States but globally. Prices of diagnoses, procedures, treatments, and medications are becoming a luxury item available only to the wealthy. The old saying of “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” may be amended to, “The well get healthier and the sick get sicker!”
Drug Industry Spends Nearly Twice As Much On Marketing Than On Research And Development