We need to make sure that access to a curative drug doesn't become a yardstick by which poverty is eventually measured. Doing so requires a shared commitment between innovators and the insurance plans that are harder pressed to offer these advances to the poor.
Interpretation
Access to essential medicines should not be determined by wealth, highlighting the need for both innovation and equitable insurance coverage.
In this quote, Scott Gottlieb emphasizes the importance of ensuring that access to life-saving medications is not dictated by one's financial status. He warns against treating the availability of curative drugs as a measure of poverty and advocates for collaboration between innovators in the pharmaceutical industry and insurance providers to ensure that these vital advancements reach those who are economically disadvantaged.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about healthcare policy at a community meeting.
Science offers the chance to cure debilitating and once-intractable disorders like hemophilia and sickle cell disease. But we need to make sure the ability to access these therapies, or the risk that someone can be locked out of them, doesn't widen gaps between the rich and poor.
It is true that some off-label drug use is based on very unsettled science and has more risks. But medicine - and not just cancer care - involves lots of hard choices. And the more serious the disorder, often the more likely it is that for every right and wrong treatment choice there are many other practical decisions painted in shades of gray.
In fast moving fields like cancer, where doctors tailor treatments based on evidence that's constantly evolving, two years can be an eternity of waiting to learn about important science. For some patients, that interval can be fatal.
Running helps me stay on an even keel and in an optimistic frame of mind.
I have mothers with small children come to me and say, 'You found that I had early breast cancer - because of you, I don't have cancer.' You've just prevented that person from dying early, and to prevent an early, unnecessary death is incredibly meaningful.
Kids who participate in school meal programs get roughly half of their calories each day at school. ... This is an extraordinary responsibility. But it's also an opportunity. And it's why one of the single most important things we can do to fight childhood obesity is to make those meals at school as healthy and nutritious as possible.
A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running.
Effective health care depends on self-care; this fact is currently heralded as if it were a discovery.
Water is the medicine for indigestion; it is invigorating when the food that is eaten is well digested; it is like nectar when drunk in the middle of a dinner; and it is like poison when taken at the end of a meal.
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