baseline's blog

Health care costs in the United States exceed $2 trillion per year, which represents more than 15% of our GDP. Most industrialized nations only spend about 10% of their GDP on health care. The US ranks 15th out of 19 nations with regard to preventable deaths. It is estimated that 115 per 100,000 people die who would have survived if timely and appropriate medical care was administered. France scored highest in this category, with only 75 deaths per 100,000. The US ranks last in infant mortality, with 7 deaths per 1,000 births.

The Union of Concerned Scientists surveyed 5,918 scientists at the FDA to examine the state of science there. The survey featured one essay question that allowed the scientists to provide a written narrative. Of the 997 FDA scientists that responded to the essay question, 20% stated that they had been asked, “…for nonscientific reasons, to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or their conclusions in an FDA scientific document.” More than 40% feared retaliation if they expressed safety concerns in public.

We hear a lot about depression and antidepressants. Antidepressants are among the most frequently prescribed medications in the United States, accounting for approximately 14% of the total US outpatient pharmacy costs in 2000, according to the National Institute for Health Care Management. More than 164 million prescriptions were written in 2008 for antidepressants, totaling $9.6 billion in U.S. sales, according to IMS Health. In the decade between 1996 and 2005 the use of antidepressants doubled, going from 13 million patients using the medication to 27 million patients.