NEWS: Drug Companies Invent Diseases to Boost Profits

"Worst Pills, Best Pills" is a series of books and newsletters published by Dr. Sidney Wolfe (affiliated with the U.S. Public Citizen nonprofit group). They have a web site which is partly fee-based but recently decided to provide much more information online for free:

www.worstpills.org...

In general, they recommend not taking medications that have been on the market for less than 7 years, since that is the average amount of time needed to document the presence or absence of serious side effects, medical contra-indications, etc. Free information can be found there on a lot of the most controversial medications.

In my previous work experience in the U.S. health care industry (systems analyst) I was unimpressed with the incentives driving both the earlier private insurance programs and later the HMO/PPO.

As a doctor friend recently told me, "managed care is neither."