![]() It should be possible to grow meat with similar science, he realized. The concept for what's now called "cultivated" meat came to Valeti when he was working with heart attack patients at the Mayo Clinic more than 15 years ago, growing human heart cells in a lab. Instead of raising livestock on farms and killing them in slaughterhouses, Valeti wanted to find a way to "grow" meat in a production facility, by culturing animal cells. Upside Foods was co-founded by Uma Valeti, a cardiologist who dreamt of producing meat in a different way. Department of Agriculture on labeling and inspection. This removes a key regulatory hurdle and could bring Upside Foods one step closer to selling its products in the U.S. The agency says it "has no further questions" about the firm's conclusion that the products are safe to eat. The FDA reviewed more than 100 pages of documentation from Upside Foods, and has now completed its pre-market consultation. "The world is experiencing a food revolution and the FDA is committed to supporting innovation in the food supply," wrote FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and director the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Susan Mayne. The company produces meat grown from animal cells, without slaughtering the animal. Still, he considered the findings positive.The Food and Drug Administration has taken a first step towards allowing the sale of cultivated "no kill" meat in the U.S, giving a safety nod to Upside Foods, a San Francisco based start-up. So while the lower copays didn’t save money overall, they didn’t drive up costs either, according to the report, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.Ĭhoudhry said value-based insurance designs are unlikely to lead to a “massive spending cut,” and are only a small step toward better treatment adherence. Combined insurer pharmacy and medical spending inched up by eight percent, offsetting the lower patient spending. GETTING SOMETHING FOR NOTHINGīeyond the lower copay, patients also ended up shelling out less money for other medical services, with drops between 10 and 24 percent. Over time, he expects to see the same in the Pitney Bowes employees. Choudhry said a previous experiment he worked on in higher-risk patients found decreases even in such major clinical outcomes when patients didn’t have to pay out-of-pocket for heart medicine. There were no drops in major health complications, such as heart attacks, strokes or heart surgeries, however. That’s about one fewer admission per 200 patients, Choudhry said. Over the same period, the rate of prescriptions filled for the two drugs rose by six to seven percentage points, although still hovered just around 50 percent overall.Ĭompared with a group of nearly 50,000 employees from other companies without a value-based insurance design, Pitney Bowes’ employees had 10 to 20 percent fewer doctor visits and about 10 percent fewer hospitalizations and ER admissions. The clopidogrel copay dropped from just over $17 to less than $9 per month, on average for the patients on statins, the monthly out-of-pocket spending on the drugs fell from about $24 to less than a dollar. Pitney Bowes lowered the copays in January 2007. While people may skip their drugs for many reasons, the price tag could be a deterrent to some. an estimated $100 to $300 billion a year, Choudhry said. Non-adherence is considered a major problem, costing the U.S. ![]() The goal is to improve quality of care and eventually curb healthcare spending by ensuring that people stick with their treatment to avoid more-serious, costlier health problems - in the case of clopidogrel, another heart attack or stroke. The Affordable Care Act also contains a provision asking insurers to explore this option. Several insurers now offer similar plans, known as value-based insurance designs, lowering the amount patients have to pay for certain evidence-based health services. He and his colleagues studied the healthcare use of more than 2,800 Pitney Bowes employees who qualified for reduced copays on statins, a class of cholesterol-lowering medications, or the clot-buster drug clopidogrel. Niteesh Kumar Choudhry of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “These are events that are clinically and economically important,” said Dr. They also were less likely to visit the doctor, end up in the ER or be admitted to a hospital, slashing their out-of-pocket expenses beyond the copay reductions, researchers found. NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - After Pitney Bowes Inc cut copayments for two essential heart drugs, employees at the Stamford, Connecticut-based company began filling their prescriptions more regularly, according to a new report. ![]()
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