Disrupting the Status Quo and Making Meds Cheaper with Dr Alex Oshmyansky

MAKING MEDS CHEAPER (W/DR. ALEX OSHMYANSKY)

• From March 10th, 2021

What if we could cut out the medicine middle man and save billions in drug costs? Here’s a doc who partnered with Mark Cuban to do just that.

Check out the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company here. (note: we are NOT sponsored by Mark Cuban…yet, lol)

Full video and transcript here. 

I recently heard a fascinating podcast by r Zubin Damania(aka ZDoggMD).  He was talking with Dr. Alex Oshmyansky about making medications in the US more affordable.  Dr Oshmyansky partnered with Shark Tank's Mark Cuban to start a new company to do just that. 

One of the most interesting things Dr Oshmansky talked about was the convoluted system that has developed in the US for getting medications to patients, getting them on the insurance company approved med lists so that they are covered, among other shenanigans.  It sounded like a lot of wheeling and dealing that should be illegal, but isn't.   All this time, we've been wanting to blame the drug companies for such high prices, when in actuality, it's the middlemen (pharmacy benefits managers and paperwork filers, ie Caremarks and Cignas) who are keeping prices intentionally high -- only because the market will bear it.  

Meanwhile, people who really do needs certain meds are going without because they can't afford it, or don't have insurance to cover it, or are homeless ... 

The Cost Plus Drug Company stands to disrupt that whole pay-to-play drug system.  They are not in it to make money.  They just want to break even.  They do the work of getting FDA approved to make certain generic medications that are not expensive to make, and then they make them available for cheap.   

I am looking forward to seeing how Cost Plus disrupts the current system and makes the world a better place for a lot of people!

Our Pandemic Story with Dr Abraham Verghese

 

"Stories are how we make sense of the world."

Dr. Abraham Verghese wrote one of my all-time favorite novels: Cutting for Stone.  Not only is Dr. Verghese a novelist, but also a practicing physician and Stanford Professor of Medicine.   

Here he talks with Dr Zubin Damania (aka ZDoggMD) about The Power of Story and the current pandemic, and why it matters.  

Do yourself a favor and recharge with this wonderful hour of hopeful, inspiring, thoughtful conversation about how pandemics transform society.    You won't regret it!

Listen on Sound Cloud.

Transcript, audio podcast, and links.

Listen to a previous ZDogg interview with Dr Verghese.  

Masks May Do More than We Think: ZDoggMD talks with Dr Monica Gandhi

This is recent episode from ZDoggMD' podcast.    

I'd read cited the NEJM article last month and was intrigued with the idea of variolation, so I was happy to hear one of the authors talk about it in this discussion with Dr. Zubin Damania (aka ZDoggMD).   Dr. Gandhi also goes over the current state of the evidence re: face masks.  I was pleased to hear that I was familiar with all the studies she talks about concerning the efficacy of masks to prevent transmission of respiratory infections.  Dr. Gandhi comes from a background of treating patients with HIV, and has a different approach to convincing people to take care of themselves and others, whether it be wearing condoms or face masks.  No shaming here. ;-)

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!  

Here is the PubMed citation for her article: 

Facial Masking for Covid-19 - Potential for "Variolation" as We Await a Vaccine.
Gandhi M, Rutherford GW.N Engl J Med. 2020 Sep 8. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp2026913. Online ahead of print.  PMID: 32897661

Masks May Do More Than We Think (w/Dr. Monica Gandhi)

From ZDogg's introduction to this episode:

What if masks acted to reduce severity of COVID-19 infection for the WEARER, fostering immunity like a vaccine and allowing a full societal reopening?

Dr. Monica Gandhi is a UCSF professor of Medicine in the division of HIV, infectious diseases, and global medicine. She and her colleagues recently proposed just such a theory in the New England Journal of Medicine. In this fantastic interview she outlines the emerging data in support of the idea that masks may do more than we think.

Here’s a NY Times piece about her proposal, and here’s a paper she co-authored in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

And here’s ZDogg's piece on masks that summarizes some of Dr. Gandhi’s work.

Full Transcript is available at ZDoggMD.

References (directly from Dr. Gandhi) :

Viral inoculum theory: Higher viral inocula or “dose” linked to severity of disease

Well described in animal studies and some human studies for respiratory and GI illnesses -higher infective dose thought to lead to faster/greater pathogen replication, leading to a more aggressive and damaging innate inflammatory response, or overwhelming adaptive immune response- all leading to more severe disease.   This is a hypothesis for diseases in which immunopathology plays a role in viral pathogenesis, such as COVID-19 (Rouse BT, Sehrawat S. Immunity and immunopathology to viruses: what decides the outcome? Nat Rev Immunol. 2010;10(7):514-526)

Some evidence for the “viral inocula” theory for SARS/MERS. Evidence in SARS-CoV-2 fom degree of illness in household contacts/ health care workers at beginning of pandemic.  Papers supporting viral inoculum theory. [43 more citations available at ZDogg's site.]

Why You Ain't Getting a Covid-19 Vaccine in Time

Dr. Zubin Damania, (aka ZDoggMD and Doc Vader--and yes, he's a real doctor) explains why we'll be waiting a while for a Covid-19 vaccine ...  It's a serious discussion on why we can't expect a quick fix and why getting a vaccine right doesn't happen overnight.  

You may know him from the ZDogg rapper medical music videos or the Doc Vader videos, expressing the dark side of medicine and the American health care system.  He channels anger into humor in the hopes of making a better world. He also has a serious side where he does these educational videos about health care topics in plain language.  He also offers serious programs and discussions where physicians can get CME credits, too.  

• Who is ZDoggMD?   Dr. Zubin Damania leads a passionate tribe of healthcare professionals towards a vision of Health 3.0, with in-depth conversations with medical thought leaders, merciless and uncensored satire, and takedowns of pseudoscientific nonsense spread by celebrities in the lay media. ZDoggMD Industries is the digital production studio behind Incident Report LIVE, the Interweb’s #1 medical news and entertainment show.

• Zubin Damania is an American physician, comedian, Internet personality, musician, and the founder of Turntable Health, a direct primary care clinic in Downtown Las Vegas that was funded by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Before moving to Las Vegas, Damania was a practicing hospitalist at Stanford University for 10 years. Wikipedia