Price Fixing, Regulatory Capture, Crony Capitalism - Will the New Public Citizen Report Succeed in Outing the RUC?

Just last month the RUC made it back into the headlines.  Then we posted  Politico made another attempt to shed some light on this obscure ...

The RUC. "an Independent Group of Physicians?" - But It Includes Executives and Board Members of For-Profit Health Care Corporations and Large Hospital Systems

Introduction We just discussed how a major story in Politico has once again drawn attention to the opaque RUC (Resource Based Relative Va...

Now Politico Tries RUC Raking

It has been a year since we wrote about the RUC , the American Medical Association's Relative Value System Update Committee.  There is o...

Medicare Pays $220 Million a Year for Acthar Without Any Controlled Trials that Prove it Works - While We Have No Money to Develop Ebola Vaccines or Treatment?

Introduction - No Money for Ebola Vaccine Development While a new Ebola epidemic continues in Africa, people in developed countries are gett...

Fourth Time is the (Anti)Charm? - UK NICE Highlights "Uncertainties in the Evidence Base" About Sovaldi

As we have discussed, ( here , here and here ), while anger continues to build about the $1000/ pill price sought by Gilead for its new ant...

Sovaldi - a "Revolution" in Clinical Care, or in Marketing and Public Relations?

The continuing public discussion of the sky high price Gilead has set for Sovaldi (sofosbuvir,) its new antiviral drug for hepatitis C, cont...