Suzi Wizowaty

Flu season is approaching, and we’re being barraged almost daily with news reports about the swine flu. Interesting fact: on a recent visit to Vermont, David H. Newman, an emergency room physician at St. Luke’s in NYC who also teaches at Columbia, reported that while about 500 people have died of the swine flu so far in the U.S., 50,000 people die of the “regular” flu every year.

So why all the hype, and more significantly, who stands to benefit? (more…)

Amid all the scary, grim financial news last week came some great news for Vermont. Our law that regulates drug manufacturers’ marketing efforts has been declared--unhappily for the drug companies that challenged it--constitutional. We will now move ahead to strengthen regulations further.

Here’s what happened. In 2007 the Vermont legislature passed Act 80 (amended slightly in 2008 as Act 89), which aimed to protect public health and contain drug costs in several ways. (Drug advertising costs consumers billions of dollars a year, and newer drugs--the focus of most marketing--are not necessarily better or more cost effective.) (more…)