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Opinion Pieces Respond To Obama's Call For 'Empathy' In Supreme Court Justice
Two newspapers recently published opinion pieces responding to President Obama"s comments on the need for "empathy" in candidates to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Summaries appear below.~ Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe: When discussing Souter"s replacement, Obama said he will seek a nominee ""who understands that justice isn"t about some abstract theory. ... It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people"s lives,"" Globe columnist Goodman writes in an opinion piece. According to Goodman, Obama"s emphasis on the need for judicial "empathy" has sparked outrage among a "phalanx of horrified conservatives" who claim that "empathy is just a code word for the sentimental liberal bias in favor of underdogs over the Constitution." However, she continues, "let us remember that empathy is not sympathy. It doesn"t require that we take sides. Nor is it an emotional shortcut that upends all legal reasoning to declare a winner." According to Goodman, empathy "is rather the ability to imaginatively enter into the experience of others." She writes that the "capacity to recognize another person"s reality is not just liberal," adding that empathy "doesn"t trump reason, it informs reason." Goodman writes, "The truth is that we want judges who "get it,"" adding that the "myth of justice as a matter of pure objective reasoning that could be meted out by a computer is just that, a myth" (Goodman, Boston Globe, 5/22).~ Mike Rosen, Denver Post: Although Obama"s emphasis on empathy might seem "[c]ompassionate and seductive" to some, his stance "represents a radical and dangerous departure from traditional American jurisprudence," radio host Rosen writes in a Post opinion piece. Rosen writes, "When empathetic judges rule on their feelings, they are exceeding their authority," adding that the "role of the judicial branch of our government is to rule on the Constitution as written and the law as passed by Congress and signed by the president." According to Rosen, the courts "are a co-equal branch of government, not a superior branch," and judges should not "rule on what they think the law ought to be" because that would be "government by a presumptuous, unelected judiciary." Rosen continues that "judges are referees, not rule makers" because they are "not there to empathize with the fans or the players. They represent the rule book, and they aren"t authorized to … make it "fairer."" According to Rosen, the "dispute between conservatives and liberals on judicial activism is philosophical and irreconcilable." He concludes that Senate confirmation hearings for Obama"s nominee "should make for an interesting debate on these principles" (Rosen, Denver Post, 5/22).
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Sanofi Pasteur Responds To Nation's Need For Hib Vaccine With Increased Supply
Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of the sanofi-aventis Group (EURONEXT: SAN and NYSE: SNY), announced that the company has been able to increase the supply of its Hib-containing vaccines to enable the return to a full series of vaccinations for U.S. children. Based on the increased supply, on July 1, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will reinstate its recommendation that children receive a booster dose of Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) vaccine after 12 months of age. The CDC also provided guidance on a phased approach to immunize children whose booster dose was previously deferred at their next regularly scheduled medical visit. The CDC had recommended a temporary deferral of the booster dose of Hib vaccine in 2007 due to supply constraints caused by another manufacturer"s withdrawal of Hib vaccine from the market. Since that time, Sanofi Pasteur has been, and continues to be, the sole supplier of Hib vaccine to the U.S. market.
News of the day
Experimental Drug Five Times More Effective Against MDR-TB Than Conventional Therapy
A Johnson & Johnson-run study found that its experimental drug TMC207 could make conventional tuberculosis treatment five times more effective against multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) because it cleared traces of the TB bacteria in the sputum of 48 percent of study volunteers after eight weeks, Reuters reports (Emery, Reuters, 6/3). The results were published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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Premier Healthcare Alliance, GNYHA Ventures Identify More Than $317 Billion In Hospital Cost Savings

In a letter sent to President Obama and House and Senate leaders today, the Premier healthcare alliance and GNYHA Ventures, Inc., Greater New York Hospital Association"s supply chain enterprise that includes group purchasing organizations (GPOs), said that hospitals could improve healthcare quality and achieve cumulative savings of $317 billion if certain policies are enacted to create a more competitive and transparent purchasing environment. The savings are based on an analysis conducted by the two groups and projected over 10 years, to be fully realized by 2019. Premier and GYNHA Ventures identified the savings opportunities by analyzing information from the Premier Perspective™ database, the nation"s largest and most detailed clinical, financial and outcomes database, containing information for one out of every five - or 210 million - patient discharges in the United States. Further savings were identified by analyzing real-world lessons learned from GYNHA Ventures hospitals, including those participating in Premier"s quality and cost improvement collaboratives such as the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) and the QUEST: High Performing Hospitals initiative. "As the largest national alliance of hospitals working on the front lines to improve the quality and reduce the cost of healthcare, the Premier healthcare alliance is in a unique position to identify healthcare savings opportunities," said Susan DeVore, Premier"s incoming president and CEO. "Through our work, we have learned firsthand that sizable savings can be achieved without compromising patient care. These savings will serve as a down payment to help our nation pay for comprehensive healthcare reforms that improve quality, affordability and access to care." "Quite simply, we do not believe that healthcare supply costs need to increase," said GNYHA Ventures President Lee Perlman. "Through sound policy and a commitment to transparent purchasing practices, group purchasing organizations can contribute significantly to slowing the growth of healthcare spending." Specifically, savings opportunities identified by Premier and GNYHA Ventures include: - Improved alignment between physicians and hospitals - Allowing shared savings programs would align hospital and physician financial incentives to achieve greater consistency and standardization of medical products, which would improve the quality of care and provide more value to healthcare purchasers. If properly structured, 2-4% a year of the approximately $57 billion that is spent annually on physician preference items, such as cardiovascular, orthopedics, spine, intraocular, ophthalmic, ear and other devices, could be saved through improved physician and hospital alignment, yielding 10-year cumulative savings of $68-$128 billion. - Transparency in payments to physicians by manufacturers - Requiring manufacturers of drugs, devices and medical supplies to publicly report financial relationships with physicians would help expose payments that could create conflicts of interest. These conflicts can encourage inappropriate and more costly care, such as the greater use of more expensive branded drugs rather than equally effective generics. - Removal of price confidentiality contracts - Publicly disclosed prices would provide hospitals with the necessary information to engage with physicians in making informed, evidence-based decisions, while tracking outcomes to ensure quality of care. Further, disclosure of price points would improve hospitals" ability to negotiate with manufacturers to reduce costs. The power of this type of collaboration is evident in the $36 billion in annual savings achieved through hospitals and clinicians working with GPOs to aggregate supply purchasing and improve systems and processes that maximize efficiency, labor and expenses. - FDA evidence-based oversight of reprocessing - FDA currently provides oversight and regulates the reprocessing of single-use devices (SUDs). Despite FDA regulation, many hospitals do not reprocess SUDs because of the single-use label. FDA could require manufacturers to show evidence that a medical device is unable to reused, including studies that indicate reuse would render the device unsafe. - Allowing follow-on biologics - Granting manufacturers of biologic products a set number of years of market exclusivity, similar to one that makers of traditional drugs already have, would allow follow-on biologics manufacturers to enter the market and compete to drive down prices. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that follow-on biologics will produce a savings of at least $5.9 billion ($6.6 billion if increased tax revenues are included) over 10 years. - Implementation of unique device identification - The creation of a national unique device identification (UDI) system is a large, critical piece to fully recognizing savings and improving patient safety. According to a recently updated Efficient Consumer Response study entitled "Improving the Efficiency of the Healthcare Supply Chain," $16 billion in annual savings are projected from the adoption of universal product numbers and the identification of standards for electronic data interchange and bar coding. - Comparative effectiveness research - Comparative effectiveness research will lay the foundation to produce information that will help healthcare providers and patients evaluate medical innovations and determine which represent added value, which fail to offer enhancements to current choices and which treatments work for some patients and not for others. This will enable the provider community to take the findings and drive greater market competition. Premier Inc.


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