Medicare Drug Program Fails to Monitor Prescribers, Putting Seniors and Disabled at Risk

Dr. Daniel J. Hurley talks to patient William Sanders at his outpatient clinic in Beech Grove, Indiana. Hurley was credited with writing more than 160,000 prescriptions in Medicare Part D in 2010, the most of any provider in the country. Hurley said prescriptions by others in his practice were credited to him by nursing home pharmacies, but that Medicare has never asked him about his numbers. “Why wouldn’t they call us up and ask us?” he said. (Photo by Matt McClain/ The Washington Post)

by Tracy Weber, Charles Ornstein and Jennifer LaFleur
ProPublica, May 11, 2013, 9:06 p.m.

The initiative, the biggest expansion of Medicare since its creation in 1965, proved wildly popular. It now serves more than 35 million people, delivering critical medicines to patients who might otherwise be unable to afford them. Its price tag is far lower than expected.

But an investigation by ProPublica has found the program, in its drive to get drugs into patients’ hands, has failed to properly monitor safety. An analysis of four years of Medicare prescription records shows that some doctors and other health professionals across the country prescribe large quantities of drugs that are potentially harmful, disorienting or addictive. Federal officials have done little to detect or deter these hazardous prescribing patterns.

The lying liars who lie about psychiatry

by Jon Rappoport www.nomorefakenews.com

These days, we are witnessing an acceleration in the use of psychiatry to target Americans, to label them as dangerous, to take away guns they own, to blame gun violence in the US on mentally ill people. (see also this story by Dan Roberts).

It’s a winning strategy, because most Americans don’t have a clue about the way psychiatry actually works or its pose of being a science.

The public hears techno-speak and nods and surrenders.

If psychiatrists are experts on the human mind, mice can navigate the Arctic in canoes. But psychiatrists are educated to be able to talk a good game.

The Real Problems With Psychiatry and DSM 5

A psychotherapist contends that the DSM, psychiatry’s “bible” that defines all mental illness, is not scientific but a product of unscrupulous politics and bureaucracy.

by Hope Reese, The Atlantic

On May 22, the American Psychiatric Association will release the fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5. It classifies psychiatric diagnoses and the criteria required to meet them. Gary Greenberg, one of the book’s biggest critics, claims these disorders aren’t real — they’re invented. Author of Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease and contributor to The New Yorker, Mother Jones, The New York Times and other publications, Greenberg is a practicing psychotherapist. The Book of Woe: The Making of the DSM-5 and the Unmaking of Psychiatry is his exposé of the business behind the creation of the new manual.

Study: Depression May Be Overdiagnosed And Overtreated

By Chelsea Karnash BALTIMORE, MD (CBS) 

New research shows that most people diagnosed with depression do not actually meet the criteria for the illness.

Prozac

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health looked at a sample of 5,639 people from across the country that had been diagnosed with depression in a non-hospital setting between 2009 and 2010.

Participants in the study were then re-evaluated during a face-to-face interview to see if they met the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), which includes having at least one major depressive episode (MDE) a year — defined as a debilitating loss of interest in daily life and a depressed mood lasting at least two weeks.

What researchers found is that only 38.4% of participants met the criteria for having had a major depressive episode and therefore, for MDD. Older adults were less likely than younger people to have had a major depressive episode, with only 14.3% of those 65 years or older meeting MDE criteria.

The study also found, however, that the majority of participants had been prescribed psychiatric medication, whether they had met the criteria for MDD or not. In fact, 69.4% of those with “unconfirmed diagnoses” had used medication to treat their symptoms.

Based on their research, the study’s authors say that depression may be overdiagnosed and overtreated, and there is a need to improve the targeting of diagnosis and treatments nationwide.

Loma Linda Psychiatrist license revoked 3 years after his DUI arrest

busted

Dr. Michael D. Schultz, a psychiatrist located in Loma Linda California, was arrested on March 11th, 2010 for DUI. His blood test taken that day was positive for opiates.

Turns out his drivers license was suspended – and had been suspended since 2005 for a disability. Dr. Schultz had been driving for 5 years on a suspended license!

He never appeared for the hearing related to his DUI and an arrest warrant is still outstanding for Dr. Schultz.

Given these circumstances, the Medical Board of the State of California has revoked the medical license of Dr. Schultz on Feb 8th, 2013.

As some might say, better late than never.

View the Medical Board decision here: 02-08-13 Dr Michael D Schultz default decision and order

Breeding Mental Illness from Birth Until Death in the US

by Belén Fernández, Al Jazeera, via AlterNet.org

In a  recent article on the BBC News website, Professor Peter Kinderman—head of the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society at the University of Liverpool—warns that the forthcoming edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ”will lower many diagnostic thresholds and increase the number of people in the general population seen as having a mental illness”.

According to Kinderman, the manual—scheduled for publication in May 2013—constitutes a dangerous effort to pathologise emotions and other symptoms of human existence and will exacerbate the rampant over-prescribing of drugs that already occurs “despite significant side-effects and poor evidence of their effectiveness”.