Rates of American kids on government healthcare, upon whom the future of the West hinges, are prescribed “multiple psychiatric drugs to take simultaneously” at shocking rates, per a new study from the University of Maryland.
Related: Diverse Fat Activist Gets Paid to Lie to Children About Nutrition for Corporate Profit
As I reported on recently at PJ Media, the marketers of semaglutide (Ozempic) are now going after America’s obese children — a huge and, as of yet, largely untapped market for them to move more product into at a clip of over $1,000/month in many cases.
But Ozempic is far from the only drug the pushers are hawking to kids.
Via New York Times (emphasis added):
Growing numbers of children and adolescents are being prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs to take simultaneously, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Maryland. The phenomenon is increasing despite warnings that psychotropic drug combinations in young people have not been tested for safety* or studied for their impact on the developing brain.
*As was the case with the COVID shots, the public — in this case, kids — is the collective guinea pig in this pharmaceutical experiment. Of course, their long-term effects are unknown, and of course, the industry and the Public Health™ regulators who de facto work for the industry don’t concern themselves with the health of kids when billion-dollar windfalls are on the line.
The incentives are all wrong.
Continuing:
The study, published Friday in JAMA Open Network, looked at the prescribing patterns among patients 17 or younger enrolled in Medicaid from 2015 to 2020 in a single U.S. state that the researchers declined to name. In this group, there was a 9.5 percent increase in the prevalence of “polypharmacy,” which the study defined as taking three or more different classes of psychiatric medications, including antidepressants, mood-stabilizing anticonvulsants, sedatives and drugs for A.D.H.D. and anxiety drugs.
It is not surprising that kids enrolled in government healthcare (Medicaid) have the highest prevalence of multi-psychotropic-drug use, given that the government simply foots the bill for whatever drug no questions asked (although the study didn’t compare with non-Medicaid children). That’s what lobbying money can do.
More interestingly, per the study itself, white kids and kids in foster care had higher rates of “polypharmacy” use than non-white kids and kids not in foster care, respectively:
This is a sequential, annual, cross-sectional study using Medicaid eligibility files and fee-for-service and managed care medical encounter claims from 2015 to 2020 from a single US state. For each annual cohort, we included youths who were 17 years or younger, had received at least 1 pharmacy claim for psychotropic medication, and had 90 days or more of continuous Medicaid enrollment…
Psychotropic polypharmacy was significantly more likely among youths who were disabled (AOR, 3.68; 95% CI, 3.34-4.05) or in foster care (AOR, 3.31; 95% CI, 2.93-3.74) relative to youths in the low-income group…
Individuals who identified as other races (including individuals identifying as American Indian, Asian, Hispanic, or Pacific Islander, or other races) (AOR, 0.54; 95% CI, 0.50-0.59) had significantly lower odds of psychotropic polypharmacy than White individuals.
