Why are many doctors refusing to stock the cervical cancer vaccine?
February 7, 2007 Behind the scenes of private medical practices across the United States, a battle has been raging with insurance companies over reimbursement practices. The fight is specifically regarding the amount of money a doctor or practice gets back from an insurance company for biologics, or drugs that are derived from living organisms. Vaccines fall into this category, since most vaccines are composed of a form of the very virus they’re protecting against. The battle seems to have come to a head with Gardasil , the “cervical cancer vaccine” that protects against strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) that cause 70 percent of cervical cancers. And cervical cancer kills almost 4,000 women every year in the United States alone. Worldwide, the number could be in the hundreds of thousands. So Gardasil is a big deal. But many people are finding it difficult to get their daughters injected with it. The problem appears to be about a medical reimbursement practice called ” buy and b
