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January 19, 2021 Coronavirus-Alternate2

Miller talks about which of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are better for younger and older Americans based on the available data. Batchelor and Miller also discuss the new COVID-19 coronavirus mutation found in the UK and what it means for vaccines and shutdown orders. Miller also explains the long history of other coronavirus vaccines mainly used in the livestock industry and why the new "human" vaccine is different through the use of the messenger RNA technique. ...

January 19, 2021 Coronavirus - Alternate

By John J. Cohrssen and Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. The World Health Organization has called attention to a COVID-19 “infodemic” – “an overabundance of information … that includes deliberate attempts to disseminate wrong information to undermine the public health response and advance alternative agendas of groups or individuals.” Part of that inaccurate information is the patently false and misleading claim that COVID-19 is like the flu, only less lethal. In less than a full year, COVID-19 has killed more than 380,000...

January 19, 2021 Coronavirus

Last week, former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb suggested that we "hit the reset" button on Covid-19 vaccine distribution. That reset should include taking the government out of the equation. The government has largely failed to get life-saving vaccines into the arms of Americans. And the consequences are deadly. The government's botched rollout of the coronavirus vaccine stands out as Exhibit A in the argument against more government control over our health care. Amazingly, inventing a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine may turn out to...

January 13, 2021 CoronaVirusSlide3

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, there have been many thousands of articles and commentaries published on almost every imaginable aspect of the SARS-Cov-2 virus and the COVID-19 pandemic it has caused. They have appeared online, in journals, on preprint servers, in newspapers, and on blogs. As much as we might try to keep up, there will always be important facts or developments we might have missed, so below are a few that should help us understand some of...

January 13, 2021 Coronavirus-Alternate2

Henry Miller, M.S., M.D., joins the nationally-syndicated Lars Larson Show based in Portland, Oregon, to discuss little known facts about the rollout and use of the current COVID-19 coronavirus vaccines. One of the main points Dr. Miller makes is the difference in how the two vaccines have performed in various age groups. With the Moderna vaccine, data shows that it is more effective with older Americans. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, the Pfizer vaccine had better efficacy with...

January 12, 2021 Coronavirus

By Monday afternoon, of 25.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses distributed across the United States, just 9 million had actually been administered to patients. That's well short of the government's goal of inoculating 20 million people by the end of 2020. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. Government-controlled markets are notoriously inefficient and subject to waste, fraud, and abuse. In this case, tragically, the consequences are deadly. Inexplicably, the government is moving with no real sense of urgency. In December in New York City, vaccinations effectively weren't...

January 7, 2021 Coronavirus - Alternate

Dr. Henry Miller joins the John Batchelor Show to discuss the hesitancy of long-term care givers and staffers in nursing homes to get the COVID-19 vaccinations. Miller talks about the role of the anti-vaccine lobby and conspiracy theories that have painted doubt about the effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and what we can do to ensure those at the most risk receive the vaccine. Batchelor and Miller also talk about the staggering waste with the current vaccine: in...

January 7, 2021 Innovation

By Henry Miller, M.S., M.D. and Kathleen Hefferon, Ph.D When was the last time you read an online magazine or newspaper, only to find yourself bombarded with shopping ads specifically targeted to your preferences and needs, seemingly by magic? How about the detection of fraud or the filtering of spam from your email inbox? Well, that was most likely the handiwork of "machine learning," a subset of artificial intelligence that uses computer algorithms that over time and multiple experiences, or iterations,...

January 6, 2021 Coronavirus

Dr. Henry Miller, M.S., M.D., joints the nationally-syndicated Lars Larson Show based out of Portland, Oregon, to discuss the latest issues with the production and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. Dr. Miller's interview begins at the 47:00 minute mark. Miller talks about his disappointment with the vaccine distribution, but also says that it wasn't entirely unexpected. When you put distribution on the states and farther down the chain, your going to have issues. Miller also says that the timing of the...

December 29, 2020 Blog, Coronavirus - Alternate

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released new data on Dec. 16 on health expenditures. In 2019, overall spending rose 4.6% to reach a total of $3.8 trillion, or 17.7% of the economy. That's enough to make anyone do a double take. But a deeper look at the data actually shows we're getting a lot of value out of all that spending. Hospital care and physician and clinical services accounted for over 50% of spending. Spending in those two categories grew at a slightly faster...

December 21, 2020 Industry Trends

By Wayne Winegarden and Robert Popovian The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized a regulation on November 20, 2020 that removed the safe harbor protections for rebates on prescription drugs paid to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and Part D plans. This analysis evaluates the expected impact from this regulation on Medicare premiums and patient out-of-pocket (OOP) costs. Based on the data from the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC), the loss of manufacturer drug rebates would cause the average insurance...

December 16, 2020 Coronavirus, Coronavirus - Alternate, Innovation

By Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. and John J. Cohrssen Few could have imagined a year ago that by now our world would be so profoundly changed by a pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 Americans; been confirmed in over 16 million; gone undiagnosed in scores of millions more; and caused debilitating, persisting symptoms in many who have “recovered.” Certainly, no credible drug manufacturer would have claimed that a new vaccine for this emerging infectious disease could go through all...

December 15, 2020 Coronavirus, Coronavirus - Alternate, Innovation

To the editor of the Wall Street Journal: Your editorial contains the statement: "There's no evidence that a three-week review is needed." You know this how, exactly? Has anyone at the Journal seen the data (which run to hundreds of thousands of pages)? Has anyone at the Journal ever seen, let alone touched, an application for approval of a drug or vaccine? I have. As an FDA reviewer, I found extraordinary complexity, and sometimes shortcomings or inconsistencies, in many submissions ....

December 15, 2020 Coronavirus, CoronaVirusSlide3, Innovation

Public Health And Economic Growth Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin Vaccination of high-risk groups against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has begun in earnest – and not a moment too soon because the trends in the United States are moving in the wrong direction. On December 13, records were set for 7-day averages of daily cases ((211,494), the number of people hospitalized (106,656), and daily deaths (2,427); and with the Christmas and New Year’s holidays approaching, we can expect worsening...

December 10, 2020 Blog, Innovation

By Henry Miller, Shiv Sharma Much of the progress in medicine during the past half-century has involved expensive, high-tech diagnostic tests and therapies.  The trend in this direction worries health economists and politicians because it has the potential to send already-high healthcare costs into the stratosphere. However, in both medicine and dentistry, there is an important role as well for ingenious, low-tech, less expensive approaches to improved health and increased longevity. The FDA last year approved a high-tech gene therapy drug, Zolgensma, for a...

December 9, 2020 Briefs, Price and Costs

Tearing down drug “rebate walls” that increase patient costs and block access to cheaper and often more effective medications would increase competition, lower out-of-pocket costs, and improve health outcomes, finds a new brief released today by the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute. Click to download the brief “America’s patients are harmed because they do not benefit from large, fast-growing rebates when purchasing their medicines,” writes the brief’s author, Dr. Wayne Winegarden, director of PRI’s Center...

December 7, 2020 Coronavirus-Alternate2

By John J. Cohrssen and Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. Relief from the scourge of COVID-19 in the United States may be in sight. Government and private sector initiatives should be able within months to provide enough safe, effective vaccines to begin to make a dent in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. But for society to approach normalcy, people will need to be able to document that they are immune to COVID-19. Although vaccination is intended primarily to protect individuals against COVID-19...

December 3, 2020 Coronavirus - Alternate

It should be obvious by now that the adoption of measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, has become politicized. Consider the presidential campaigns: President Donald Trump held large indoor rallies with mostly mask-less supporters, while President-elect Joe Biden seemed to have a mask sutured to his face and spent much of the campaign in isolation. Gallup surveys published in November show that partisanship remains the most significant driver of the public’s perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic and...

November 25, 2020 Coronavirus - Alternate, Coronavirus-Alternate2, Issues, Multimedia

Dr. Henry Miller, PRI senior fellow in health care studies and former founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology, joins PRI's "Next Round" podcast with an update on efforts to develop vaccines and therapeutics to fight Covid-19.  He discusses how a transition between two presidential administrations will affect the work of the federal government in fighting Covid-19, whether a national mask mandate is a good idea, whether Governors like Gavin Newsom should initiate state-level reviews of potential vaccines, and...