FORWARD IN REVERSE: THE PROGRESSIVE LIBERTARIAN: BIG PHARMA VS. FDA: WHO IS WORSE?

This comes from one of my favorite self-proclaimed punk rock libertarian bloggers, "The Freedom Files". Click on the link below.

Who is Worse? Big Pharma or the FDA?
Category: News and Politics

Hello Freedomphiles! I promise I'll get off this "defang the FDA" kick soon, but I haven't yet gotten it all out of my system. A new study by the Manhattan Institute really breaks down what FDA delays cost us, as well as showing us exactly what kind of benefit we get from a relatively free market in medicine.

Frank R. Lichtenberg writes in the Washington Post today:

How have medical innovations affected American health? In a study the Manhattan Institute is releasing today -- "Why Has Life Expectancy Increased More in Some States Than in Others?" -- I explain that incremental medical innovations, particularly the use of newer drugs, have played a major role in increasing American longevity in recent years.

(...)

According to my econometric model, about two-thirds (63 percent) of the potential increase in longevity during this period -- the increase that would have occurred if obesity, income and other factors had not changed -- can be attributed to the use of newer drugs. In fact, for every year increase in average drug vintage there was an almost two-month gain in life expectancy.

Increasing access to newer drugs was not associated with above-average annual spending on health care; and the use of newer medicines seems to have increased labor productivity (output per employee) by about 1 percent per year, perhaps because of reduced absenteeism from chronic ailments. Overall, my findings contradicted the common assumption that advances in medical technology automatically result in increased health-care expenditures.

So, not only are we living longer because of these new drugs, but we don't seem to really be paying much more to do so. This doesn't surprise me, and I find it fascinating, but here is what I really wanted to show you - the crux of the bisquit, as it were - that one line: In fact, for every year increase in average drug vintage there was an almost two-month gain in life expectancy.

That is so telling. What that means is that while the FDA is frittering away and trying to be perfect, every year it takes them to approve a new drug takes two months from the life of the patient.

Let's look at beta-blockers:

The FDA held up approval of beta blockers for eight years because it believed they caused cancer. In the meantime, according to Dr. Louis Lasagna of the Tufts University Center for the Study of Drug Development, 119,000 people died who might have been helped by that medication.

So, that's 119,000 people dead because the FDA was dragging its feet. But with this new information, we also know that in eight years, every patient that could use them but didn't die lost 16 months off their lives. Because the FDA was protecting them. Bullshit, right?

But let's take that a step further. The American Heart Association says that beta-blockers "lengthen the lives of people at risk of sudden death due to irregular heart beats." I don't even know how to google for a total of people that would fit that criteria. So, let's say that the people who lived were exactly the same amount of people who died - which is going to be a low estimate, as far more people live through this sort of thing.

So, that's 119,000 people whose lives were shortened 16 months. That's 1,094,000 months of life robbed from Americans by beaureacracy. Or you can view it as 158667 years. Dead split in the center of those 8 years of delay was 1972, when the average American life-expectancy was 71.2 years.

Using that statistic, 2228.5 lifetimes were lost in that eight year period, taking the total to 121,228. And all because we don't trust people to make their own decisions with good information.

Disgusting.