Content about U.S. healthcare

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT Serving as yet another indicator of the important role that retail pharmacists play in the U.S. healthcare system is the data conducted by Wolters Kluwer revealing that vaccinations jumped by double-digits this flu season.

(THE NEWS: Flu shot distribution by retail pharmacy increases 36%. For the full story, click here)

So many of the chronic conditions that continue to challenge the U.S. healthcare system tie back to rising obesity rates and the simple fact that here, in the land of plenty, Americans eat too much — particularly, too much of the wrong stuff. With that, today's supermarket pharmacies, ideally positioned to help fill the gap between the physician's office and everyday life, are emerging with unique solutions, leveraging the food-pharmacy connection to help Americans reduce costs and improve health outcomes.

As the healthcare reform debate continues and discussions of public vs. private are tossed about, what seems to be getting lost in all of the muck are the cost-controlling levers that already exist, like those reforms CVS Caremark's Tom Ryan outlined.

For example, getting patients to take their medications as prescribed could have a major impact on driving down costs -- to the tune of billions of dollars a year -- while improving healthcare outcomes of patients.

NEW YORK Question: What piece of compromise legislation proposes to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system at a price tag of $856 billion and promises to address both the unsustainable costs of that system and the crisis of uninsured and under-insured Americans – while failing to fully satisfy almost everyone involved in the health reform debate?

NEW YORK The complications that can result from unhealthy eating among middle-aged and elderly Americans with Type 2 diabetes have consequences for the whole healthcare system, but it’s not just diabetes, which already costs the U.S. healthcare system $116 billion. Unhealthy eating habits contribute to and exacerbate obesity, hypertension and kidney disease, diseases that often have causal relationships to one another. Obesity and diabetes already cost the healthcare system $147 billion and $116 billion, respectively.

NEW YORK Making sure that medication therapy management is a part of any new healthcare reform legislation is a major priority for this industry, but it may be even more critical to the U.S. healthcare system.

The announcement by Take Care Health Systems that it is offering free health services at its clinics throughout the rest of the year for those who lose their jobs couldn't have come at a more critical time.

In fact, the numbers just came in, and it doesn’t look good. The nation’s unemployment rate rose to 8.5% in March, the highest since late 1983. And, as we all know, the loss of a job too often means the loss of health benefits.