The Health Shopper

The California Supreme Court ruled Monday against two doctors who sued a San Diego woman for posting an allegedly libelous e-mail on two Web sites, the AP has reported. "Websites that publish inflammatory information written by other parties cannot be sued for libel, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday. The ruling in favour of free online expression was a victory for a San Diego woman who was sued by two doctors for posting an allegedly libelous e-mail on two websites." This isn't just a big win for freedom of speech, but for health consumers as well. It enables Web sites like Vimo.com to post comments from users without fear of lawsuits. It's no wonder that major online players like Amazon.com, America Online Inc., EBay Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. sided with the defendant in this case. Let Internet freedom ring.

According to a recently published study in the American Journal of Managed Care, U.S. doctors rarely discuss drug costs and insurance coverage with patients. "Our third-party payer system of health care still pays doctors by task," said Devon Herrick, Senior Fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis. "They aren't paid according to patient need. They are paid according to insurance company's negotiated bundle of services." Obviously, this is a situation that the market is going to change, with outlets like Wal-Mart and Target offering $4 drugs and more and more Americans adopting high-deductible health plans and Health Savings Accounts. "When more patients pay out-of-pocket for the services they want, doctors will have to adapt to provide those services," Herrick told Consumer Driven Health Care. "When doctors are paid for their services, and not by the task, they will undoubtedly become more knowledgeable about prices and discuss them regularly."

Two interesting articles were posted last week that illustrate why healthcare is so confusing.

One for the Ages: A Prescription That May Extend Life

In the last year, calorie-restricted diets have been shown in various animals to affect molecular pathways likely to be involved in the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and cancer. Earlier this year,researchers studying dietary effects on humans went so far as to claim that calorie restriction may be more effective than exercise at preventing age-related diseases.

In other words, don’t eat much, stay hungry.

A Compound in Red Wine Makes Fat Mice Healthy

But the mice that received resveratrol remained healthy and were about 30 percent less likely to die, living as long as the animals that ate a normal diet and stayed thin. Preliminary results indicate resveratrol increases their life span by about 15 percent, which is the equivalent of adding perhaps about 10 human years.

Moreover, the hearts and livers of the animals getting resveratrol looked healthy, the activity of a host of key genes appeared normal, and they showed some of the biological changes triggered by caloric restriction. They also appeared to have a better quality of life, retaining their activity levels and agility.

'It is really quite amazing,' Sinclair said. 'The mice were still fat, but they looked just as healthy as the lean animals.'

Drink lots of wine, it doesn’t matter what you eat!

Good health and good music often go hand in hand. As Hal A. Lingerman remarked, "Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind."

In that spirit, Vimo is offering its users free iPod-ready music downloads from major recording artists as a gift for reviewing a doctor. You rate and review your doctor, and we send you a code to download five free tracks from eMusic.com, which you can play on an iPod or burn to compact disc.

Use the Vimo search form to find your doctor in Vimo's comprehensive database of physicians in the United States. Click the "Rate this doctor" button to provide a rating and review. You must write a review of 100 characters or more on your doctor to qualify for the free music. Hurry! This offer is available for a very limited time.

The state of Florida should be applauded for bringing a new level of price transparency to the purchase of pharmaceutical drugs there. Last June, Florida's Attorney General set up MyFloridaRx.com, an online database where residents can enter their county, city, drug and dosage for a list of pharmacies and retail prices for the medication. The state service is not unlike what Vimo offers in the way of health insurance or medical procedure shopping – making prices that were previously invisible totally transparent. An important point was made by Attorney General Charlie Crist on the Web site: "Most pharmacies do not advertise or even display drug prices."

Fortunately, that's starting to change. As more and more Americans demand greater transparency, some stores are starting to deliver it, and actually advertise better prices in prescription drugs. Wal-Mart recently began offering a line of 100 generic drugs for $4 a month, and Target stores has followed suit. In Florida, where 17 percent of the population is 65 and over, the demand for transparency is greater than anywhere else in the nation.

MyFloridaRX.com has already started to cause drug prices to drop in Florida. For instance, the pain drug Neurontin used to cost as much as $666 in Miami-Dade County. "After MyFloridaRx.com, now, we see that $666 drop to about $142," Christa Calamas, Secretary for Florida's Agency for Healthcare Administration told Public Radio's Marketplace Money. "And I can't explain why there is such a disparity between pharmacies for one drug, same dosage."