A photo of a meeting at The Other Side from the group's Facebook page

22-year-old Chris Reed of Algonquin wants to give young former addicts a place to indulge in some R&R — recovery and recreation, that is. The former heroin addict and president of the recovery nonprofit New Directions Addiction Recovery Services has — with the help of some fellow recovery patients — led the charge in creating “The Other Side,” a completely volunteer-funded “sober bar” set to open in Crystal Lake, Illinois at the end of the month.

Although alcohol and substance abuse are often stratified in everyday conversation, they are rooted in similar dependencies and have a fair amount of interplay. Substance abusers are much more likely to have an alcohol dependency than vice versa, and young people between the ages of 18 and 24 are at the highest risk of having co-occurring alcohol and substance abuse problems. That’s why The Other Side aims to be a space in which young Americans recovering from a drug habit can take a breather — without the temptation of booze and its potential to cause a relapse. “If you’re choosing a sober lifestyle, this will be a healthy atmosphere. It’s an important place for people in recovery,” Reed told the Daily Herald. “We’re still young, and we want to hang out. You can’t hang out with 40 people at your house.”

The whole effort is not-for-profit, intertwined with other recovery groups, and will hopefully become an additional therapeutic resource for recovering addicts:

The Other Side is not a business — everyone involved is keeping a day job, and it’s only open four nights a week, Thursdays through Sundays. Any money raised will fund drug education and treatment initiatives by their nonprofit and others, including Wake the Nation, a Facebook-based drug awareness group led by New Directions board member Cassandra Wingert, 23, of Western Springs. [...]

Falling somewhere between “nightclub” and “rec center,” The Other Side is opening in the warehouse loft space behind Reed’s construction company on Berkshire Drive. It has room for people to relax on couches, watch TV, play pool or video games, listen to live bands, or dance along with a disc jockey. There will be security, and people will be carded at the door to make sure they’re at least 18 years old — and sober. [...]

The Other Side’s creators hope their bar will help people in various stages of recovery by providing them a place to go, and a place to be with others who understand the struggle of addiction.

The space also features photographs of late addicts who succumbed to their struggles with drugs — a solemn reminder of what can happen without a robust support system for Americans who are trying to get clean. Social exclusion, loneliness, and isolation are all significant risk factors for both mental illness and substance abuse, making group-based recovery efforts particularly important. What makes efforts such as The Other Side promising is that they close the gap between the social and therapeutic spheres of recovery, giving former addicts a place to be with both non-addict and addict friends.

The New York Times recently reported that rates of ADHD diagnosis among school-aged children has risen to 11 percent — a record high. That number is partially a consequence of more accurate ADHD diagnoses — but it presents a stark choice for parents debating the best treatment options for their kids. Medications such as Adderall and Ritalin are a common choice — but a new analysis of previous ADHD studies suggests behavior training “that teaches parents to understand their children’s needs” might be a better long-term care option for young children.

The new study, led by Dr. Alice Charach of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, examined eight past analyses on the effect that parental behavior training “which consists of about 10 to 12 sessions that teach parents how to better understand their child” had on preschoolers with ADHD. Those studies found that the parent-oriented treatment led to about the same behavioral improvement in children as medication, but without causing the negative side effects associated with ADHD drug use by young kids:

“The main thing is really helping the parent understand their child and read their child,” [Charach] said.

For example, the sessions may help parents understand their child acts up after an hour of being at a birthday party, and that they should leave earlier.

Only one “good” study evaluated Ritalin use in preschoolers. That study showed a similar improvement in behavior, but the preschoolers were at risk for side effects, including irritability and slowed growth.

“For whatever reason children in this age group are more sensitive to the Ritalin side effects,” said Charach.

Questions surrounding the long-term efficacy of ADHD medications have stirred debate among pediatricians and psychiatrists. In a 2012 editorial for the New York Times, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development argued that there is considerable evidence showing that medication was effective in the short-term, but “after three years, these effects had faded, and by eight years there was no evidence that medication produced any academic or behavioral benefits.”

Early intervention by parents trained to approach their children in an appropriate way could end up being more beneficial in the long term, and could be particularly effective in a regimen that also includes medications if necessary. That’s particularly important considering that ADHD has lingering long-term effects well past childhood and is a strong indicator of co-occurring mental illness in both adults and children.

Still, beneficial or not, the question of costs will weigh heavily on parents considering the potentially high out-of-pocket costs associated with the personalized training sessions. A combination of factors — including poor reimbursement rates by government insurance programs and private insurers to mental health care providers, as well as a lack of school-based resources for treating mental health — could price out parents looking to take advantage of this treatment approach.

On Monday, India’s Supreme Court rejected a patent application by pharmaceutical giant Novartis for Veenat, a generic version of the company’s top-selling cancer treatment drug Gleevec. As the New York Times reports, public health advocates cheered the decision as a major victory for the country’s low-income population, as continued access to the affordable generic could save millions of lives. But the underlying differences in how intellectual patents function in India versus the U.S. also reveals a major source of Americans’ inflated prescription drug costs.

India, which exports $10 billion worth of generic medications every year, didn’t pass a robust intellectual property patent law until 2005. This law allowed for patents on medications discovered after 1995. At first glance, that would appear to qualify Novartis to pursue a patent on Veenat. But as the Times explains, the Indian justices concluded that an older, patented Gleevec version was too similar to the post-1995 version to qualify the later iteration as a “new” drug — a heightened standard of scrutiny that the U.S. does not share:

In 1993, Novartis patented a version of Gleevec that it later abandoned in development, but the Indian judges ruled that the early and later versions were not different enough for the later one to merit a separate patent. [...]

Anand Grover, a lawyer who argued the case on behalf of Cancer Patients Aid Association in India, said the ruling had a sweeping effect since it confirmed that India has a very high bar for approving patents on medicines.

“What is happening in the United States is that a lot of money is being wasted on new forms of old drugs,” Mr. Grover said. Because of Monday’s ruling, “that will not happen in India.”

Indeed, the vast majority of drug patents given in the United States are for tiny changes that often provide patients few meaningful benefits but allow drug companies to continue charging high prices for years beyond the original patent life.

In a classic example, AstraZeneca extended for years its franchise around the huge-selling heartburn pill, Prilosec, by performing a bit of chemical wizardry and renaming the medicine Nexium. Amgen has won so many patents on its hugely expensive erythropoietin-stimulating drugs that the company has maintained exclusive sales rights for 24 years, double the usual period.

This culture of Big Pharma companies reauthorizing U.S. drug patents by instituting negligible changes to the “inactive ingredients” in their products perpetuates high costs for both the American people and public insurance plans that must subsidize the price of expensive, brand name drugs. Pharmaceutical companies’ ability to extend their intellectual property protection (IPP) is a consequence of a series of laws that were passed beginning in the 1980s. While these laws were meant to encourage drug innovation, they have also had the adverse effect of extending patents on certain drugs’ active ingredients to as many as 20 years, as this data compiled in a National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation report shows:

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According to a new Consumer Reports investigative study published Thursday, there is rampant variation in the price of generic drugs as large U.S. pharmacy chains — including CVS, Rite Aid, and Target — mark up the prices of generic drug versions for common medications by as much as 18 times what wholesale chains like Costco charge. That price variance ends up costing Americans, who spend an average of $758 out-of-pocket on drugs every year, hundreds of dollars in unnecessary spending each month.

Consumer Reports compiled the data by contacting hundred of pharmacies throughout the country and asking what their drug prices were for generic versions of Lipitor, Plavix, Actos, and other common medications. The results were striking, with pharmacy representatives claiming that the higher prices were necessary for covering overhead, and considering that selling medication constitutes most of their revenue and profit margins:

Costco was the least expensive overall, and you don’t need to be a member to use its pharmacy. A few independent pharmacies came in even cheaper, though their prices varied widely, as did grocery-store pharmacies. The online retailers Healthwarehouse.com and FamilyMeds.com also had very low prices. On the other end of the spectrum, CVS, Rite Aid, and Target had the highest retail prices. [...]

A representative of CVS told us that its retail drug prices reflect other services offered by the chain, including drive-through windows, automated prescription refill systems, free outreach programs to help make sure patients are taking their prescriptions correctly, and 24-hour pharmacies. Costco pharmacies, the cheapest overall, are open only from 10 a.m. to 7 or 8:30 p.m. and are typically closed on Sundays.

“Big-box stores such as Costco and Walmart use the pharmacy as a traffic builder for their stores, whereas traditional chain stores, such as CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens, make the majority of their revenue and profits from the pharmacy,” says Stephen W. Schondelmeyer, Ph.D., Pharm.D., a professor of pharmacy economics at the University of Minnesota.

The study’s full findings are illustrated in this chart:

The use of generic drugs — rather than their brand name counterparts — actually drives down spending on medications, consequently lowering Americans’ out-of-pocket costs and government spending on public insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But the Consumer Reports investigation suggests there are significantly more savings to be had.

This isn’t the first time generic drug makers have been in the news this week. On Monday, the Supreme Court took up Federal Trade Commission (FTC) v. Actavis — which one expert dubbed “the health care reform case of 2013″ — a case centering on the legality and antitrust implications of so-called “pay for delay” arrangements in which brand name drug makers pay off their generic drug counterparts to delay a drug’s generic version from entry into the market. If the FTC winds up winning that case, it could save Americans and the government billions of dollars on drug costs every year. But as this new report demonstrates, they could save much more if pharmacies stopped jacking up their rates to startling degrees.

In addition to the high-profile cases on marriage equality that are slated for consideration this week, another crucial legal battle that begins on Monday could have huge implications for the future of the health care industry. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) v. Actavis could save consumers and the government hundreds of billions of dollars in health care spending, prompting one plaintiff to dub it “the health care reform case of 2013.”

The case centers on the widespread and arguably collusive practice of “reverse payment” settlements — commonly referred to as “pay for delay” — between brand name drug manufacturers and their cheaper generic drug counterparts. Such arrangements involve brand name drug makers paying off generic manufacturers to delay a generic drug’s release into the market, allowing the brand name producers to further profit off of their significantly more expensive drugs:

Congress saw the difference that generic drugs could make in health care spending when in 1984 it passed the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act, also known as the Hatch-Waxman Act.

That law, together with amendments passed roughly 20 years later, encouraged generic drug makers to challenge the patents protecting lucrative brand-name drugs.

But a loophole in the law has turned the theory of patent infringement on its head, allowing a brand-name company to pay the generic drug maker to keep its low-price version off the market for a given number of years. That is the opposite of how a patent-infringement case is usually settled, with the generic infringer paying the brand-name patent holder. Thus, the deals are known as “reverse payment” settlements.

These schemes cost American consumers as much as $3.5 billion every year by delaying access to relatively cheap generic drugs and keeping prescription drug costs unnecessarily high, despite recent drops in drug spending driven by the greater use of generics. In fact, brand name drugs only constituted “18 percent of the total prescriptions written by doctors in 2011 but 73 percent of consumer spending,” and Big Pharma companies use the massive profit margins produced by that dynamic to effectively silence their competitors by offering a deal that’s too good to refuse. Brand name and generic drug makers — who both have plenty to gain financially through the shoddy arrangements — argue that such deals are actually beneficial for the consumer, as expensive patent lawsuits between the two industries could end up delaying a generic drug’s release even further.

But that argument is a smokescreen that ignores Congress’ original intent in passing the Drug Price Competition Act. It is an unintended consequence — as confirmed by none other than bill author Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) himself. In an amicus brief filed with the Court urging the justices to side with the FTC, Waxman wrote, “The Hatch-Waxman Amendments’ intention was to promote competition by generic drug manufacturers. The possibility of agreements such as those involved in this case is an unintended consequence of the legislation. Hatch-Waxman was never intended to foster such agreements, still less to render the antitrust laws’ prohibition of anticompetitive agreements among competitors inapplicable to agreements allowing generic manufacturers to exact a potion of a brand-name manufacturer’s monopoly profits in return for withholding entry into the market.”

As the health reform law approaches its third birthday, Obama Administration officials are noting that one of its provisions has already helped seniors on Medicare save $6.1 billion on their prescription drug costs.

Obamacare ensures that more prescription drugs are covered under Medicare by closing the “donut hole” coverage gap. Even as the cost of prescription drugs has continued to rise, the health law gives discounts to Medicare beneficiaries so seniors continue to be able to afford the medication they need — one of its most popular provisions. On Thursday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that more than 6.3 million Americans in the Medicare program have saved more than $6 billion on prescription drugs.

Since the Affordable Care Act first began phasing in reforms to Medicare’s drug coverage in 2010, the recorded savings for seniors have been steadily growing. And according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it won’t cost as much to close the donut hole’s coverage gap as initial estimates predicted. Ultimately, making drugs more affordable means that people will take them more regularly, ensuring seniors stay healthy and their medical costs are lower. In fact, the estimated 90 million Americans who don’t take their medications as directed represent the biggest root of wasteful health spending in the United States.

A full 90 percent of seniors with Medicare plans are satisfied with the prescription drug coverage they can access through the program, largely because of the savings they’re now experiencing. And those savings are likely to increase. This year, Obamacare increases Medicare’s prescription drug discounts to about 52 percent of the cost of most brand name drugs and 21 percent of the cost of covered generic drugs.

According to a new report by the children’s medical safety advocacy group Safe Kids Worldwide, “a parent or caregiver calls a poison control center after a young child gets into medication, or is given the wrong dose of medicine” every single minute due to unsecured pills and bottles.

In a press release accompanying the report, Safe Kids Worldwide CEO Kate Carr said, “Ask any parent, and they will tell you they store medicine where children can’t get them. But they might not be thinking of pills stored in purses, vitamins left on counter tops or a diaper rash remedy near a changing table.” The findings, summarized in a report infographic below, support results from a 2012 study by the group finding that child poisoning deaths from medications doubled between 1979 and 2006:

A new report by Express Scripts Holding Co. finds that, while the total costs of U.S. drug payments rose slightly last year, 2012 was the first time in two decades that spending on drug treatments for common ailments such as high cholesterol and diabetes declined. That drop is largely due to Americans’ increasing use of generic — rather than brand name — medications to treat the conditions.

As Reuters reports, brand name companies have the freedom to charge higher rates on their prescription drugs for a set period of time before their patents lapse into the public domain, allowing expanded use of less costly generic drugs — a practice that is also encouraged by Obamacare:

The lower prices for common drugs came after the patents on branded versions ran out, putting cheaper generic competitors onto the market. Big pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer Inc and Merck & Co hold the patents on drugs for about a decade after they start selling them. Then competitors like Teva Pharmaceuticals Ltd can start selling their own generic versions.

President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul law rewards the use of generic drugs as a way to decrease healthcare spending, which rose about 4 percent last year and accounts for about 17 percent of gross domestic product.

The patent for Pfizer’s Lipitor, a cholesterol treatment that was once the world’s best-selling drug, expired in November 2011. Cheaper generics hit the market soon after, which sharply reduced spending on treatments in 2012.

“The move towards lower-cost generic alternatives has had a tremendous impact,” said Sharon Frazee, vice president research and analytics at Express Scripts.

Falling drug prices can have a tangible impact on Americans’ treatments for obesity-related illnesses that take a particularly large toll on the nation’s health. For example, the cost of high cholesterol medication fell by 10 percent for a 30-day supply — which quickly adds up for Americans who have chronic conditions like excess cholesterol and diabetes.

But Americans are denied the full benefits of falling generic drug prices due to the abundance of so-called “pay-for-delay” schemes between brand name and generic drug companies — when brand name drug companies pay off generic drug manufacturers in exchange for their consent to delay the release of a drug’s generic version into the market, a method of maximizing the brand name drug’s profitability. The Supreme Court is set to take up a case — Federal Trade Commission v. Watson Pharmaceuticals — to determine whether or not such schemes violate consumer protections and antitrust laws.

And the outcome of that decision could have a significant impact on U.S. health care expenditures. Considering the fact that the new report found the overall increase in national drug spending was driven by the high costs of specialty drugs for arthritis, cancer, and hepatitis C, which “accounted for 24.5 percent of the nation’s total spending on prescription drugs,” encouraging the production of generic prescription drugs could go a long way towards lowering health care costs.