Posts Tagged ‘Medicaid’
Monday, October 25th, 2010
U.S. Sen Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, examined Minnesota doctors as part of his investigation into the overprescription of drugs, at great cost to Medicaid and Medicare.
Star Tribune
By Jeremy Olson
October 25, 2010
Minnesota doctors are again under the microscope of an influential U.S. senator from Iowa — this time because of concerns that expensive medications are being overprescribed at great cost to the publicly funded Medicaid and Medicare programs.
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, notified federal authorities Wednesday that he found potential examples of overprescribing after requesting lists from states, including Minnesota, of doctors who issued the most prescriptions for antipsychotic and narcotic medications in 2008 and 2009.
The most egregious example, cited in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, was a Florida doctor who wrote 96,685 prescriptions for mental health drugs in 21 months and billed the cost to the state’s Medicaid program.
Grassley’s letter mentioned no Minnesota physicians, instead pointing out doctors in Ohio, Oklahoma and South Dakota who prescribed many more high-cost drugs than their colleagues to poor and disabled Medicaid patients.
Grassley’s findings don’t prove fraud or overprescribing, but they could cause doctors to be removed from participating in Medicare and Medicaid, government health programs that, between them, insure some 100 million elderly, poor and disabled Americans. He urged federal authorities to pick up the trail.
“This trend is found again and again across the states,” Grassley wrote, “suggesting that top prescribers stand out not only against other providers in their state, but against the very top prescribers in those states.”
Last April, Grassley asked Minnesota authorities for a list of 10 doctors who submitted the most claims to the Department of Human Services for prescriptions of such specific antipsychotics as Seroquel and such narcotics as OxyContin.
The state provided the information in May. It also conducted its own review to determine whether the prescriptions appeared appropriate, and whether the top prescribers of antipsychotics were in appropriate specialties, such as psychiatry.
A department spokeswoman said no formal investigations were launched as a result of the review.
None of the doctors on the Minnesota list appeared to approach the excesses Grassley highlighted in other states. Several are on staff at rural mental health centers, which puts them in a position to issue more prescriptions.
Roseville psychiatrist Dr. Roger Johnson stood out on the list, issuing 1,605 prescriptions for Seroquel to patients in Minnesota’s managed-care and fee-for-service Medicaid programs in 2009 — up from 916 prescriptions in 2008. Documents show that his claims to the fee-for-service program alone approached $450,000 last year. The next closest doctor billed the state for just 688 Seroquel prescriptions last year.
Read entire article here: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/105576013.html?page=2&c=y
« Return to news items
Tags: antipsychotics, Charles Grassley, disabled, elderly, Health and Human Services, high-cost drugs, investigations, Kathleen Sebelius, Medicaid, Medicare, medications, mental health drugs, Minnesota, Minnesota doctors, overprescribed, poor, prescriptions, psychiatrist, psychiatry, Roger Johnson, Senate, Seroquel, top prescribers
Posted in News | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
Lexington Herald Leader, October 20, 2010
By MAR CABRA AND JOHN DORSCHNER
Based on the huge numbers of prescriptions written by a Miami psychiatrist, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is continuing to pressure federal officials to investigate why some doctors write stunning numbers of scripts for tax-funded Medicare and Medicaid programs.
In his latest volley, a letter sent Wednesday to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Grassley demanded exact answers to three pointed questions about what her department is doing to address the problem.
“The federal government has an obligation to figure out what’s going on here,” Grassley said in a statement e-mailed to The Miami Herald Wednesday. “The taxpayers are footing the bill, and Medicare and Medicaid are already strained to the limit. These programs can’t spare a dollar for prescription drugs that aren’t properly prescribed.
“The conclusion might be that there isn’t any fraud, but it’s important to reach a conclusion one way or the other and fix whatever is broken,” Grassley said.
In the Sebelius letter, Grassley said his concern was triggered by a “Florida provider who wrote 96,685 prescriptions for mental health drugs in a 21-month period.” The letter did not identify the provider, but state records confirm that it is Fernando Mendez-Villamil, a psychiatrist with an office on Coral Way.
State Medicaid records independently obtained by The Herald show that over a two-year period Mendez-Villamil wrote almost twice as many prescriptions for mental health drugs as the No. 2 Medicaid prescriber in the state.
Robert N. Pelier, attorney for Mendez-Villamil, said Wednesday he and his client learned about the letter only after receiving a call from The Herald. He said the psychiatrist tried to reach Grassley’s office when his prescription numbers were made public to give the proper context to the doctor’s prescription patterns and “why he is an intricate part in the community.” Pelier said he had not received a response from Grassley.
“What my client believes is that he’s been a victim of this health care debate,” the attorney said. “The majority of his prescriptions are expensive because they’re cutting-edge pharmaceuticals.”
Pelier said Mendez-Villamil has been recently terminated from the Medicaid program and is now seeing some patients for free. “We are pursuing legal action against AHCA Agency for Health Care Administration for the improper termination of doctor Mendez-Villamil from Medicaid,” he said. The lawsuit was filed late July.
Meanwhile Ryan Wiggins, spokesman for the Florida Office of the Attorney General, confirmed there is an ongoing investigation into Mendez-Villamil that involves “complicated issues of medical necessity … We cannot comment further at this time.”
Last December, Grassley’s office calculated Mendez-Villamil’s numbers meant “this physician wrote approximately 153 prescriptions each and every day, assuming he did not take vacations.”
Earlier this year, Mendez-Villamil told The Herald that he works long hours and often gives each patient four or five prescriptions, accounting for the large numbers.
In April, Grassley wrote to all state Medicaid agencies requesting data about certain mental health drugs. On Wednesday, Grassley’s office said the Florida provider identified by The Herald as Mendez-Villamil had the second-highest number of prescriptions in the nation for the generic form of Xanax in the data they analyzed.
The Wednesday letter also noted that the top Zyprexa provider in Florida wrote 1,356 prescriptions for 309 individuals in 2008 and 1,238 for 236 in 2009. The Herald independently verified from state data that this provider was Mendez-Villamil, and he wrote more than twice as many Zyprexa prescriptions as the No. 2 provider in the state.
“I want to be clear that none of the information provided suggests any illegal or wrongful behavior,” Grassley wrote. But such huge numbers “might also suggest overutilization or even health care fraud. The only way to determine veracity is through appropriate oversight by Health and Human Services and continued monitoring by the Congress and the Senate Finance committee.”
Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/10/20/1488418/grassley-seeks-probe-into-numbers.html#ixzz12xQPjZzm
« Return to news items
Tags: Fernando Mendez-Villamil, grassley, Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, Medicaid, Medicare, Miami psychiatrist, psychiatrist, Senator Charles Grassley
Posted in News | No Comments »
Thursday, September 9th, 2010
MomLogic.com
By Vivian Manning Schaffel
September 9, 2010
Last week, the New York Times ran a sad yet compelling story about a boy named Kyle, who at 18 months was put on antipsychotic drugs to quell severe temper tantrums.
By the time he was 3, the poor kid had been diagnosed with autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia and “oppositional defiant disorder” (um, isn’t that a fancy phrase for “normal toddler behavior”?). He was on the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac, two sleeping medicines and a pill for attention-deficit disorder.
Did you read that?! Prozac! Sleeping pills!
The side effects had Kyle “drooling” and “overweight,” but his mom likened the worst side effect to a coma. “I didn’t have my son,” she said. “It’s like, you’d look into his eyes and you would just see blankness.”
Fast-forward to the present, and you meet a very different kid. Kyle is 6, in first grade and doing very well in school. He’s off the drugs (except for Vyvanese for ADD), and as it turns out, never should have been on all those drugs in the first place.
In fact, the article pointed out that more and more doctors are writing stronger scripts for younger and younger children, citing a 2009 Food and Drug Administration report which stated that over half a million children and adolescents in America are now taking antipsychotic drugs. Yet some doctors warn of the considerable developmental and physical risks these strong drugs pose to younger children, and say that research has not deemed these meds safe for this age group.
Another disturbing nugget of info: A Rutgers University study found that children from low-income families, like Kyle, are four times more likely to receive antipsychotic medicines than children whose parents are privately insured. Why? Because medicating these children is cheaper than asking them to participate in family therapy.
Read entire article here: http://www.momlogic.com/2010/09/babies_on_antipsychotics.php
« Return to news items
Tags: Antidepressant, antipsychotic drugs, antipsychotics, autism, babies, bipolar disorder, blankness, child drugging, coma, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, hyperactivity, insomnia, Medicaid, oppositional defiant disorder, physical risks, privately insured, prozac, Risperdal, sleeping pills
Posted in News | No Comments »
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
“The use of Paxil in children became extremely controversial after it emerged that GSK knew for 15 years, but didn’t tell anyone until 2006, that the drug may carry a risk for suicide. The drug now carries a black-box warning for suicide risk in children.”
BNET
By Jim Edwards
August 19, 2010
A crooked doctor who faked data in a GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) study of the antidepressant Paxil in children pled guilty to criminal charges today, causing groans among GSK’s senior management as the company hopes to fend off a different criminal investigation into whether it manipulated clinical data on its diabetes drug, Avandia. She was sentenced to 13 months in prison.
The two cases are technically completely separate, but they’re both about data manipulation. GSK has been accused of sitting on data showing risks on both drugs; and the FDA previously shut down one of GSK’s factories where both drugs were made.
Thus, the expected guilty plea of Dr. Maria Carmen Palazzo today is a reminder to managers everywhere that cutting ethical corners can cause unwanted chickens to return to their roosts, even years later.
Palazzo was indicted in 2007 on 40 counts of defrauding Medicare and Medicaid at her New Orleans clinic, and 15 counts of conducting fraudulent clinical trials. The charges followed an FDA accusation that she had enrolled 26 children in studies of Paxil for obsessive-compulsive disorder and major depressive disorder. She included children in the trial — which was given the cutesey nickname “Kiddie-Sads-Present and Lifetime” — who did not have the diagnoses being studied. GSK gave her more than $5,000 for each child she enrolled.
At trial, Palazzo was convicted on 39 counts of healthcare fraud and was sentenced to 87 months in prison and forfeiture of $655,000. The clinical trial fraud charges were thrown out, but prosecutors appealed and won a ruling this year reinstating those charges. That appears to be the reason Palazzo is reappearing in court to make a plea.
The use of Paxil in children became extremely controversial after it emerged that GSK knew for 15 years, but didn’t tell anyone until 2006, that the drug may carry a risk for suicide. The drug now carries a black-box warning for suicide risk in children.
Read entire article here: http://www.bnet.com/blog/drug-business/10-years-later-glaxo-still-haunted-by-faked-studies-of-paxil-in-kids/5545
Read more about Palazzo here:
http://medicaresmostwanted.blogspot.com/2007/06/dr-maria-carmen-palazzo-has-been.html
« Return to news items
Tags: antidepressants, black box warning, child drugging, clinical trials, convicted, criminal charges, criminal investigation, defrauding, FDA, GlaxoSmithKline, GSK, healthcare fraud, indicted, Kiddie-Sads-Present and Lifetime, Major Depressive Disorder, Maria Carmen Palazzo, Medicaid, Medicare, New Orleans, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Paxil, pled guilty, sentenced, Suicide
Posted in News | No Comments »
Monday, August 2nd, 2010
OpEdNews
By Martha Rosenberg
August 1, 2010
Why are troops killing themselves?
The long awaited Army report, “Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide Prevention” considers the economy, the stress of nine years of war, family dislocations, repeated moves, repeated deployments, troops’ risk-taking personalities, waived entrance standards and many aspects of Army culture.
What it barely considers is the suicide-inked antidepressants, antipsychotics and antiseizure drugs whose use exactly parallels the increase in US troop suicides since 2005.
In the report Chief of Staff General Peter W. Chiarelli acknowledges antidepressant risks, saying there’s “fair quality evidence that second generation antidepressants (mostly SSRI) increase suicidal behavior in adults aged 18 to 29 years” but adds that “other research evidence shows the benefit of antidepressant use”.
And nowhere does he acknowledge the suicide potential of antiseizure drugs so widely used for pain and as “mood stabilizers” by troops even though the FDA mandated suicide warnings on Lyrica, Topamaz, Depakote, Lamictal, Tegretol, Depakene, Klonopin and 16 others in 2008.
(Lamictal also has the distinction of wasting more taxpayer money than any other drug according to a July American Enterprise Institute report. Medicaid spent an unnecessary $51 million on Lamictal instead of buying a generic last year, thanks to GSK salesmen. You go, guys,)
When asked by NPR’s Robert Siegel if the high number of medicated troops contributed to suicide, Gen. Chiarelli said, “The good thing about those numbers is…the prescriptions were all made by a doctor.” Asked why troops who had not even deployed were among the suicides, Chiarelli said there were other stressors involved.
In June Marine Times reported 32 deaths on prescription drugs in Warrior Transition Units (WTUs) since 2007 and said an internal review “found the biggest risk factor may be putting a soldier on numerous drugs simultaneously, a practice known as polypharmacy.”
But instead of citing dangerous drugs and drug cocktails for turning troops suicidal (and accident prone and at risk of death from unsafe combinations) the Army report cites troops’ illicit use of them along with street drugs. (The word “illicit” appears 150 times in the Army report and “psychiatrist” appears twice.)
No, it’s not the 8,000 urine samples in 2009 which showed prescription drug traces according to the Army report — it’s the fact that 21 percent of the drugs were “illicit.”
No wonder the revised suicide report form suggested by the Army report doesn’t even have a box to enter “adverse reactions to drug or drug combinations.” Instead, it has a box that asks how long before a suicide a patient was “compliant” with the prescription. Was the medication “taken as prescribed? Skipped?” Taken “In excess of prescription? In different manner (e.g., crushed instead of in capsule)?”
Read entire article here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Army-Suicide-Report-Ignore-by-Martha-Rosenberg-100801-596.html?show=votes
« Return to news items
Tags: Adverse reactions, antidepressants, antipsychotics, antiseizure drugs, army, Chief of Staff General Peter W. Chiarelli, dangerous drugs, Depakene, Depakote, FDA, GSK, Health Promotion, Klonopin, Lamictal, Lyrica, Marine Times, Medicaid, mood stabilizers, polypharmacy, prescriptions, psychiatrist, research, risk of death, Risk Reduction, soldiers, ssri, suicidal behavior, Suicide, suicide prevention, Tegretol, Topamaz, troops
Posted in News | No Comments »
Monday, July 12th, 2010
AlterNet
By Martha Rosenberg
July 10, 2010
The drug company Pfizer is best known for Lipitor, a drug that brings cholesterol down and Viagra, a drug that brings other things up.
But the “world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical company” which sits between Goldman Sachs and Marathon Oil on the Fortune 500, is also closely associated with a seemingly never-ending series of scandals.
To say Pfizer’s been accused of wrongdoing is like saying BP had an oil spill. Other drug companies have a portfolio of products, Pfizer has a portfolio of scandals including, but not limited to, Chantix, Lipitor, Viagra, Geodon, Trovan, Bextra, Celebrex, Lyrica, Zoloft, Halcion and drugs for osteoarthritis, Parkinson’s disease, kidney transplants and leukemia.
During one week in June Pfizer 1) agreed to pull its 10-year-old leukemia drug Mylotarg from the market because it caused more, not less patient deaths 2) Suspended pediatric trials of Geodon two months after the FDA said children were being overdosed 3) Suspended trials of tanezumab, an osteoarthritis pain drug, because patients got worse not better, some needing joint replacements (pattern, anyone?) 4) Was investigated by the House for off-label marketing of kidney transplant drug Rapamune and targeting African-Americans 5) Saw a researcher who helped established its Bextra, Celebrex and Lyrica as effective pain meds, Scott S Reuben, MD, trotted off to prison for research fraud 6) was sued by Blue Cross Blue Shield to recoup money it overpaid for Bextra and other drugs 7) received a letter from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) requesting its whistleblower policy and 8 ) had its appeal to end lawsuits by Nigerian families who accuse it of illegal trials of the antibiotic Trovan in which 11 children died, rejected by the Supreme Court. And how was your week?
Nor does Pfizer back down when faced with legal troubles.
Even as it was under the probation of a 5-year Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA) with Health and Human Services for withholding $20 million in Lipitor rebates owed to Medicaid in 2002, it off-label marketed its seizure drug Neurontin and entered into another CIA in 2004.
Read entire article: http://www.alternet.org/story/147467/
« Return to news items
Tags: Bextra, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Celebrex, Chantix, Charles Grassley, children died, Corporate Integrity Agreement, deaths, Drug companies, FDA, Geodon, Halcion, Health and Human Services, illegal trials, investigated, lawsuits, legal troubles, Lyrica, Medicaid, off-label marketing, overdosed, pediatric, Pfizer, pharmaceutical company, Scott S Reuben, seizure, Supreme Court, whistleblower, Zoloft
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
Scoop Independent News
By Evelyn Pringle
June 22, 2010
Non-Profit Advocacy Groups
As a main component of the Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex, the so-called “patient advocacy” organizations have become the leading force behind the American epidemic of mental illness over the past two decades.
Drug makers, and their foundations, funnel millions of dollars to these non-profits every year. In return, the leaders recruit their members as foot soldiers to carry out the latest marketing campaigns and to provide a fire-wall so that no money trail can be tracked back to the drug companies.
Gigantic Pyramid
The psychiatric front groups form a gigantic pyramid and once pharmaceutical money enters the system through a major organization, it gets channeled into a huge spider-web that weaves through many groups, making it nearly impossible to keep track of where it came from or where it all went. Often, when the grant reports of the drug companies list a large donation to one organization, the annual reports of the other groups will show smaller gifts from that same organization.
The “charity” groups are exempt from income tax and the “contributions” funneled through them are tax deductible. The money is used for disease mongering campaigns to both market disorders and pressure public health care programs and private insurers to pay for expensive treatments.
“Presenting themselves as patient advocacy groups is highly disingenuous not only to their membership, many of which may have a sincere desire to help a loved one or a family member with mental problems, but to legislators, the press and the American public — for they have consistently lobbied for legislation that benefits the mental health and pharmaceutical industries which fund them, and not patients they claim to represent,” according to Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a mental health watchdog group.
In a June 2, 2010, commentary titled, “Psychiatric Fads and Overdiagnosis,” on the Psychology Today website, Dr Allen Frances points out that it “is too bad that there is no advocacy group for normality that could effectively push back against all the forces aligned to expand the reach of mental disorders.”
The leaders of the supposedly “non-profits” earn outrageously high salaries, along with excellent benefit packages, while many of the patients they claim to represent are encouraged to seek federal disability payments of under $700 a month, and apply for public housing, food stamps, and Medicaid, to make ends meet. The top officials will often move from a leadership role in one organization to a higher position in another.
The drug makers rely on the front groups to do their bidding any time profits are threatened. For instance, if the FDA is considering adding a black box warning about a deadly side effect to a drug’s label, which may result in a drop in sales, representatives of front groups will show up at the FDA advisory panel hearings to testify against adding the warning.
They will also lobby FDA panels whenever there is a chance to increase profits, such as enlarging the drug customer base. In June 2009, the Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee was set to meet to evaluate AstraZeneca’s Seroquel, Pfizer’s Geodon and Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa for use with 13 to 17 year-olds diagnosed with schizophrenia, and 10 to 17 year-olds diagnosed with pediatric bipolar disorder.
On June 8, 2009, nine front groups issued a joint statement urging the panel to vote to approve all three drugs for kids. The groups signing the letter included the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American Psychiatric Association, Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Families for Depression Awareness, Mental Health America, National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare.
Read entire article: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1006/S00162.htm
Also see: http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharmaceutical-front-groups/
« Return to news items
Tags: Allen Frances, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American Psychiatric Association, APA, AstraZeneca, black box warning, CCHR, CHADD, Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, disease mongering, Drug companies, drug makers, Eli Lilly, Evelyn Pringle, Families for Depression Awareness, FDA, front groups, Geodon, Marketing, Medicaid, Mental Health America, mental illness, NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness, National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, overdiagnosis, patient advocacy, pediatric bipolar disorder, Pfizer, pharmaceutical money, private insurers, Profits, psychiatric front groups, Psycho Pharma, Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex, schizophrenia, Seroquel, Zyprexa
Posted in News | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
Politics Daily
By David Sessions
June 16, 2010
Seven-year-old Gabriel Meyers didn’t want soup for lunch one Thursday in April, 2009. When his 23-year-old foster brother sent Gabriel to his room for dumping his soup in the trash, Gabriel threatened to kill himself. He kicked his toys around his room, then locked himself in the bathroom.
Police reports say Gabriel was home sick that day from his elementary school in Margate, Fla., under the care of Miguel Gould, his foster father’s son. Around 1:00 p.m., city police responded to Gould’s frantic 911 call and found Gabriel had hanged himself.
A troubled child who had previously suffered from neglect, sexual assault, and abusive parenting, Gabriel spent the previous year shuttling among several foster parents while taking a constellation of antipsychotic medicines, including Lexapro and Vyvanse, to control his depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Like most children in Florida state foster care, Medicaid paid Gabriel’s medical expenses.
Just one month before his suicide, Gabriel’s doctor prescribed him Symbyax, an anti-depressant restricted for treatment of children. The medication’s FDA-required label features a warning that use of the drug by children or teenagers can lead to suicide.
Symbyax does not meet criteria established by Congress for Medicaid reimbursement., so it is illegal for Medicaid to pay for a prescription of the drug to a child. Sohail Punjwani, the doctor who prescribed Gabriel’s Symbyax, received a stern letter from the FDA about his history of over-prescribing mental health drugs.
According to a number of foster care experts who spoke with Politics Daily, children in foster care, who are typically concurrently enrolled in Medicaid, are three or four more times as likely to be on antipsychotic medications than other children on Medicaid. Alarmingly, many of these drugs are medically prohibited for minors and dangerous to the children taking them. Often young patients under state supervision are also prescribed three or four high-risk drugs at a time — all paid for by Medicaid.
State foster care programs and child protective services have had mixed success addressing the pervasiveness of dosing their clients with prescription psychotropic drugs. Using federal Medicaid monies to purchase dangerous prohibited prescriptions for children, which cost the government up to $600 per dose, is technically a violation of the law.
Now, the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, chaired by Democratic Sen. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, has asked the Government Accountability Office to look into the drugging of foster care children. The investigators will attempt to account for estimates in the hundreds of millions of dollars of possible fraud arising from prescriptions for drugs explicitly barred from Medicaid coverage. The GAO is collecting data from Oregon, Massachusetts, Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, and Texas, to search for patterns of abuse. This effort marks the first time suspicion of Medicaid fraud related to psychotropic drugs has been examined at the federal level. According to Senate staffers working on the investigation, the committee will likely hold hearings on the matter later this year.
Read entire article: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/06/17/psychotropic-drug-abuse-in-foster-care-costs-government-billions/
« Return to news items
Tags: antipsychotic drugs, child drugging, Child Protective Services, federal level, foster care, Foster children, Gabriel Myers, GAO, Government Accountability Office, Jim Gottstein, Medicaid, Medicaid fraud, prescriptions, psychiatric drugs, psychotropic drugs, Sen. Daniel Akaka, Senate, Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Sohail Punjwani, Suicide, symbyax
Posted in News | 3 Comments »
Monday, June 7th, 2010
NewsTimes.com
By Eileen FitzGerald
June 7, 2010
Here’s just one statistic that Danbury school psychologist Charles Manos worries about: 42 percent of all kids in foster care are taking three or more mood-altering drugs.
“All kids in foster care have some story of trauma, like abuse or neglect, so we need to ask the question `How are we dealing with trauma?’” Manos asked.
Overall, children are receiving more prescriptions than ever before to treat medical, emotional and psychological problems, according to a May report from Medco Health Solutions.
More than one in four children with health insurance in the U.S., and nearly 30 percent of all children from 10 to 19, take at least one prescription to treat a chronic condition. The most substantial increases over the past nine years have been in antipsychotic, diabetes and asthma drugs, according to the Medco report.
In some cases, students take medications at home. In many cases, school nurses dispense it.
For instance, Danbury schools health coordinator Sue Levasseur said 80 middle school students receive asthma medication each day at school and another 14 to 15 children receive a psychotropic drug at school.
Part of the school system’s job is to educate parents, said Manos, who has worked in local schools for more than 30 years and also has a private practice.
“I think we have become a society that says it’s OK to medicate the symptoms of kids. Medication is easier. I think as a society we are quick to change behavior rather than understand it,” Manos said.
Behavior medications can be destructive if used improperly, he said.
“Say there is abuse or trauma, and we don’t do an adequate analysis. Then we silence the symptoms through the medications,” Manos said.
“The fact is that medication does not treat a disorder, it treats the symptoms of the manifestation, and people don’t understand that. I think there is a myth that medication treats the disorder.”
Read entire article: http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Growing-numbers-of-children-on-medication-514614.php
« Return to news items
Tags: antipsychotic, Behavior, Behavior medications, Charles Manos, child drugging, diabetes, foster care, Foster children, foster kids, Medco Health Solutions, Medicaid, medications, mood-altering drugs, prescriptions, psychological problems, psychotropic drugs, symptoms
Posted in News | 2 Comments »
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
Huffington Post
By Bruce E. Levine
May 20, 2010
Children covered by Medicaid are far more likely to be prescribed antipsychotic drugs than children covered by private insurance, and Medicaid-covered kids have a higher likelihood of being prescribed antipsychotics even if they have no psychotic symptoms. This is reported in the May19, 2010 Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) article, “Studies Shed Light on Risks and Trends in Pediatric Antipsychotic Prescribing.”
Researchers at Rutgers University and Columbia University found that children and adolescents covered by Medicaid were four times as likely as those with private insurance to receive an antipsychotic in 2004. Among those aged six to 17 years who were covered by Medicaid, 4.2 percent were prescribed at least one antipsychotic drug. In contrast, among those in this same age group who had private insurance, less than 1 percent were prescribed an antipsychotic. Nearly half of these Medicaid-covered pediatric patients receiving antipsychotic drugs had nonpsychotic diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or some other disruptive behavior disorder. In contrast, of the privately insured pediatric patients receiving antipsychotics, about one fourth were diagnosed with ADHD or some other disruptive behavior disorder.
The current issue of JAMA also reports another troubling study published earlier this year in the journal Pediatrics. This study, conducted by Robert Penfold of the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, examined the use of the antipsychotic Geodon (ziprasidone) in pediatric patients covered by Medicaid in Michigan in 2001. Of the pediatric patients who had been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and had received Geodon, only 53.3 percent actually had a diagnosis of psychosis. The other children who received Geodon had one or more of the following diagnoses: 24.1 percent were diagnosed with explosive personality disorder, 17.6 percent were diagnosed with depressive disorder, and 13.1 percent of these kids who were prescribed Geodon had oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). What exactly does it take to get an ODD diagnosis?
Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-e-levine/psychiatric-drugs-and-poo_b_583568.html
« Return to news items
Tags: ADHD, antipsychotic, antipsychotic drugs, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Bruce E. Levine, child drugging, Columbia University, diagnosed, diagnosis, disruptive behavior disorder, explosive personality disorder, Geodon, JAMA, Journal of American Medical Association, Medicaid, ODD, oppositional defiant disorder, pediatric patients, Pediatrics, poor kids, private insurance, psychiatric disorders, psychosis, psychotic symptoms, Rutgers University, Trends in Pediatric Antipsychotic Prescribing, ziprasidone
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
News Feed
Donate
