California Healthcare Institute Launches Second Podcast Episode on Dangers of a Cost-based U.S. Healthcare System

Business Wire, Jan 24, 2007

Podcast Examines Implications of Cost-Effectiveness Analysis on Healthcare Disparities

LA JOLLA, Calif. -- As state and federal policymakers search for ways to reduce healthcare costs, the California Healthcare Institute (CHI) launched the second episode of a podcast series, Cost Over Care: The Dangers of Bureaucratic Medicine, to inform policymakers and healthcare consumers about the dangers of a cost-based health care system. The five-part series can be found on the California Healthcare Institute Web site, www.chi.org, and is accessible on iTunes and other podcast directories.

In the second episode released today, Dr. Kwabena Adubofour, the medical director of the East Main Clinic and Stockton Diabetes Intervention Center, addresses how cost-based healthcare policies could increase healthcare disparities among minority communities.

"Under budgetary pressures, policymakers in some countries as well as some states in the U.S. have increasingly adopted evidence-based medicine as a cost-containment device," said Adubofour. "There are several strategies to contain these rising costs in health care. Just restricting the nature of the formularies that the clinician is utilizing may not be enough to save in the long term. There are far too many agencies, far too many committees, far too many people, trying to wedge themselves between what goes on between my patient and I. Leave it to us to decide what's best."

The first episode of the podcast series featured Dr. David Gollaher, president and CEO of CHI. Future episodes of the series will feature: Meryl Comer, journalist and caregiver; Ruth Lopert, Harkness fellow in healthcare policy, George Washington University and principal advisor, Pharmaceutical Policy Taskforce, Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing, Canberra, Australia; and Peter J. Pitts, co-founder and president, Center for Medicines in the Public Interest, and former FDA associate commissioner for external relations.

For more information about evidence-based medicine and cost-effectiveness analysis or to download podcast episodes, please visit the CHI Web site at www.chi.org. This series has been made possible through a grant from Pfizer Inc.

California Healthcare Institute (CHI) represents more than 250 leading biotechnology, medical device, diagnostics, and pharmaceutical companies, and public and private academic biomedical research organizations. CHI's mission is to advance responsible public policies that foster medical innovation and promote scientific discovery. CHI's web site is http://www.chi.org.