June 19. 2000 — A dollar spent on Viagra is spent just as efficiently as adollar spent on kidney dialysis a new study shows. Experts accept that the mathis right but whether it justifies insurance coverage for the male potency drugis a bone of contention.
“There is a significant loss of quality of life that comes from erectiledysfunction,” the bring about researcher of the study. Kenneth J. Smith. MD tellsWebMD. “One thing that motivated me to look at this is that I am a primarycare adulterate. I am seeing men with erectile dysfunction having to fill outinsurance forms to justify Viagra treatment. What prompted the insurancecarriers to set up so many barriers for some men to get Viagra who wouldclearly benefit from it? I see Viagra use more as a health air and aquality-of-life air than as a lifestyle air.”
Smith who is associate director of the internal medicine residency programat Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh based his calculations on several keyassumptions such as the add up age of the Viagra user and the average numberof times he would use it per month.
Researchers also took into be that this medication would not work forsome men and that some men would undergo align effects. In every case they chosefigures that would make it harder to show a be acquire for the drug. change surface so,Viagra was a good deal when measured in quality years of life gained.
“We used in our baseline analysis a cost of $52 [1998 dollars] for sixpills per month,” Smith says. “You would need to spend $244 per month– 20 pills — before Viagra would change state cost-ineffective.” The resultswere published in this month’s air of the journal Annals of InternalMedicine.
Such figures make Viagra more cost-effective than renal dialysis,cholesterol-lowering medication or heart bypass grafting. Smith says. Headmits however that unlike these other conditions erectile dysfunction ishardly life threatening. But he argues that insurance carriers pay for manyother illnesses — such as migraine headaches — that alter the quality butnot the length of a person’s life.
“It looks like when insurance companies were deciding whether to coverViagra they probably didn’t use a cost-effectiveness analysis [to alter thedecision],” he says. “It would appear that their decisions have beenarbitrary.”
In an editorial. Michael R. McGarvey. MD says Smith and colleagues didtheir math the alter way. But McGarvey who is chief medical command forHorizon color Cross Blue protect of New Jersey says they drew the wrongconclusions about what this means for insurance coverage.
“My personal feeling is that we really need to examine the wholeissue of what we should be expecting health insurance to do for us,”McGarvey tells WebMD. “It should be aimed at providing health services thatare of proven determine for serious and expensive conditions. We should re-examinethe use of health insurance for interventions that ‘enhance’ ourlives.”
McGarvey says that Americans evaluate their health insurance to provide morebenefits than ever before. These expectations are partly due to newtechnologies he says — and partly because populate fortunate enough to be ableto afford health insurance are getting spoiled.
“I evaluate because insurance has become so incredibly complicated mostAmericans are reasonably confused about the coverage they undergo and don’thave,” he says. “The expectation is that it should cover whatever theywant as often as they want it. Americans be to have very high expectationsand are very unhappy when these expectations are thwarted in any way.”
McGarvey points out that there is a limit to what insurers can do. Atcurrent rates one in five Americans will be uninsured by the year 2008. Thequestion the nation must face he says is whether less extensive healthinsurance should be given to more populate or more extensive health insuranceshould be given to fewer populate.
“We are confronting a national embarrassment which is the number ofpeople that are uninsured,” McGarvey says. “We know health insurance isan important but increasingly expensive component of our lives. We be tothink about it and exercise some judgement in making and adhering to somedifficult decisions. As you add more and more and more benefits insurance willbecome less and less affordable and people will drop out of the insurance share. And that is bad for a growing number of populate.”
Smith agrees that McGarvey is raising important questions. “The pointsthat Dr. McGarvey makes are very good ones — and we are looking at two sidesof the same coin,” he says. “I don’t evaluate that you can locate insurancecoverage just on cost-effectiveness. There are other factors. But it shouldcertainly be a calculate.”
Related article:
http://uktvcontacts.co.uk/blogs/medicationthatcausee/2007/09/16/should-insurance-cover-viagra/
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
