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Asthma inhalers to go ‘green’ on Dec. 31

Global AIDS crisis overblown?

||| The change shouldn’t be a surprise. The Food and Drug Administration has long warned it was coming, and lung specialists have spent the past year easing many of the nation’s 20 million asthma patients – as well as millions of emphysema sufferers who also use albuterol to ease breathing – into it.

Last warning: Asthma inhalers go "green" on Dec. 31, forcing patients still using the old-fashioned kind to make a pricey and even confusing switch. The medicine inside these rescue inhalers – the albuterol that quickly opens airways during an asthma attack – isn't changing. But the chemicals used to puff that drug into your lungs are.
No more chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, that damage Earth's protective ozone layer. By year's end, all albuterol inhalers must be powered by the more eco-friendly chemical HFA, or hydrofluoroalkane. The down side: The new inhalers cost more, $30 to $60 compared to as little as $5 or $10 for the disappearing generic CFC inhalers.
And patients face a learning curve. HFA inhalers must be used differently than the old-fashioned kind. The medicine feels and tastes different, sometimes alarming new users despite doctors' assurances that it works just as well.
Calls from parents unsure how to use the new inhalers, or even what they are, have increased in the past two months as more drugstores run out of CFC-powered inhalers and automatically switch people who'd been expecting a mere refill, commented Dr. Harvey Leo of the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital.
What do patients need to know as they switch?
nExpect a softer puff instead of the CFC version's cold blast of air in the back of the throat.
nThe new inhalers clog more often because HFA makes the drug stickier. Clean the hole weekly, following the instructions unique to each brand.
nNever get the whole device wet.

Giving up vaccines

Mike Stobbe | AP Writer

About one in 10 doctors who vaccinate privately insured children are considering dropping that service largely because they are losing money when they do it, according to a new survey.
A second survey revealed startling differences between what doctors pay for vaccines and what private health insurers reimburse: For example, one in 10 doctors lost money on one recommended infant vaccine, but others made almost $40 per dose on the same shot. The survey was revealing even to some doctors. "Many physicians really weren't aware and that they were getting reimbursed so little," said Dr. Gary Freed of the University of Michigan, a co-author of both articles published in the December issue of the journal Pediatrics.
The studies are the first to attach numbers to doctors' long-simmering complaints that they are only breaking even – or even losing money – when they give shots.
"It's a pleasure to see a real study to show we're not just making this up," said Dr. Herschel Lessin, a pediatrician in Hopewell Junction, N.Y. who said his practice's spending on vaccines has more than doubled from 2006 to 2007.
Experts say there's no evidence that significant numbers of doctors are quitting the vaccination business yet because of financial concerns.
But health officials are worried.
A gov't advisory panel studying the financial burden of vaccines is expected to submit proposals for changes in reimbursement practices to federal health officials next year.
 

TODAY IN HISTORY

The Associated Press

1828 - Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States by the Electoral College.

1925 - Concerto in F by George Gershwin had its world premiere at New York's Carnegie Hall, with Gershwin himself at the piano.

1953 - The musical ''Kismet'' opened on Broadway.

1960 - The musical ''Camelot'' opened on Broadway.

1967 - The 20th Century Limited, the famed luxury train, completed its final run from New York to Chicago. Surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa, led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky, who lived 18 days with the new heart.

1979 - Eleven people were killed in a crush of fans at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum, where the British rock group The Who was performing.

1984 - Thousands of people died after a cloud of methyl isocyanate gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India.

2002 - World Food Program warns the U.N. Security Council that a record 38 million people are at risk of starvation in Africa.

2007 - Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez loses a constitutional vote that would have let him run for re-election indefinitely.

Thought for Today: “There is a way to look at the past. Don’t hide from it. It will not catch you if you don't repeat it.” – Pearl Bailey, American entertainer (1918-1990).

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