Underage Drinking
Underage alcohol use was up in California and Wisconsin in 2003–2004, compared with a year earlier, but down in Michigan and South Carolina, according to a new report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The survey found that the percentage of 12- to 20-year-olds using alcohol within the past month increased from 24.7% to 26.3% in California, and from 34.7% to 38.3% in Wisconsin. On the other hand, the rate of underage drinking decreased in Michigan, from 31.8% to 30.2%, and in South Carolina, from 27.3% to 24.1%. “While we are making progress on drug and tobacco use among youth, underage drinking continues as a stubbornly persistent problem,” said SAMHSA Administrator Charles Curie. “It's time to change attitudes toward teen drinking from acceptance to abstinence.” Eight states were in the top fifth for both underage use of alcohol and underage binge use of alcohol: Iowa, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
ADHD Drugs Prescribed Too Often?
Nearly two-thirds (61%) of adults think that drugs are prescribed too often to treat children under age 13 with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to a poll of 2,200 adults by Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive. Only 2% said the drugs were not prescribed often enough, while 7% said they were prescribed as often as they should be, and 30% were not sure. In addition, 68% of respondents agreed that stronger warnings should be required on the drugs' labels; 6% disagreed. Respondents were slightly less concerned about ADHD drugs being prescribed to teens; 51% thought they were prescribed too often while 4% said they weren't prescribed often enough. “This [poll] suggests that the public would rather see the FDA err on the side of caution when it comes to labeling for prescription drugs,” said Katherine Binns, senior vice president of Harris Interactive.
FDA Names Drug Safety Spokesman
The Food and Drug Administration has appointed Dr. Paul Seligman as associate center director for safety policy and communication in the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). In this position, Dr. Seligman will coordinate drug safety policy and risk communications, according to CDER director Dr. Steven Galson. “We anticipate that this step will help to provide a more standardized and predictable approach to ensuring drug safety and enhance the effectiveness and timeliness of the information we provide to the health care community and the public.” But Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, said the appointment was just more window dressing. “It's very parallel to the way in which they originally dealt with this problem of poor decision making as far as drug safety,” he said in an interview. When Congress was considering legislation to separate the Office of Drug Safety from CDER, the FDA responded with a safety advisory board–but one that was made up largely of agency employees. Now, in the case of Dr. Seligman, “he will be reporting directly to Dr. Galson and will lack the independence necessary to free up the Office of Drug Safety from its second-class position in FDA,” Dr. Wolfe said. At a telephone press conference, Dr. Seligman said that although he still works for FDA, “there are many important policy questions that go well beyond the FDA” when it comes to deciding whether to change drug labeling or pull a drug from the market.
Part D Costs Up for 2007
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reports that Medicare recipients enrolled in Part D drug coverage will be paying 7% more for their benefits in 2007. Deductibles will rise from the current $250 to $265; Medicare will stop coverage when the program has paid out $2,400 (up from $2,250), and will resume when the beneficiary has incurred $3,850 in medication costs (up from $3,600). This is the so-called “doughnut hole.” Putting a positive spin on the increase, a spokesperson from the CMS Office of the Actuary said in a statement that “the actuarial value of the drug benefit increases along with any increase in drug expenses, and the standard Part D benefit continues to cover a constant share of drug expenses from year to year.”
Report Critical of HRSA
The Health Resources and Services Administration needs to do a better job of making health workforce projections, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office. “Although HRSA is responsible for providing health professions workforce information to policymakers, HRSA has in the past decade published national supply and demand projections for the nurse and pharmacist workforces but no national projections for the physician and dentist workforces,” the GAO said in its report. HRSA should “develop a strategy and time frames to regularly update and publish national health professions workforce projections.” In response, HRSA noted that the GAO mainly focused its criticisms on publications from the agency's National Center for Workforce Information and Analysis and did not include “the considerable body of work produced by the regional workforce centers that receive … funding from HRSA.” The agency stated “that the legislated goal of providing 'health workforce information and analysis, … such as shortages of registered nurses, shortages of pharmacists, and the distribution of health care workers in underserved areas,' is broader than what GAO's exclusive focus on supply and demand projections for physicians, nurses, and dentists would allow.”