"Healthcare reform is long overdue in the U.S.," said the lead author of a new study. "Americans are needlessly losing lives and money."
Covid-19 has killed more than one million people in the United States over the past two years, but more than 338,000 of those lives could have been saved if the country had a universal single-payer healthcare system such as Medicare for All. Continue reading →
In my multiple writings on the Medicare Advantage scam, the most common two responses I get (besides, “Thanks, you may have saved my life!”) are, “I’ve never had a problem with my Advantage plan,” and “If it’s so bad, how come so few people are saying so?” Continue reading →
WASHINGTON—A draft U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion eliminating abortion rights angered women and pro-choice advocates and sparked a political war on both sides of what anti-abortionists have made their cultural issue keystone for 49 years. Continue reading →
The human body has to be robust. It would have to be, considering the toxins that pervade our existence. It would have to be, considering that government fails to protect us from fungicides, pesticides, pollutants. It would have to be, considering that plastics have been found in our blood, in our lungs, in breastmilk, in babies’ urine. Continue reading →
It has been several years since Dr. Thomas Insel left his post as director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to collaborate on mental health solutions with Google Life Sciences, an arm of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, now known as Verily. Insel is not the first or last government official to treat himself or herself to the riches of the industry revolving door (Louisiana Rep. Billy Tauzin surfaced at PhRMA after overseeing Medicare legislation; CDC director Julie Gerberding surfaced at Merck ). But Insel has a disturbing former cronyism record that should not be forgotten. Continue reading →
While obesity is growing around the world, it is especially evident in younger generations, who used to be thinner than their thick-around-the-middle elders. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, almost 1 in every 3 college-age Americans is now obese—the “freshman 15” has morphed into the “freshman 30.” Continue reading →
In 2011, FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg, an Obama nominee, lamented that the government could not find enough experts who were not funded by drug makers to serve on advisory committees and recommended that the FDA’s conflict of interest rules be loosened. Continue reading →
When we think of those who harm children, we usually think of men. Child molesters of various stripes are overwhelmingly male. Continue reading →
Drugs can help us, but not when we use them too long, for the wrong things, or when better treatments are available.
Americans might be the most medicated people in the world thanks to aggressive drug-maker marketing and favorable regulation. But drugs can be over-prescribed, conditions over-diagnosed, and less expensive non-drug treatments slighted. Here are common dangers to watch for in your and your family’s medication use. Continue reading →
The Supreme Court may soon overturn half a century of legal precedent on abortion. Here’s one idea to protect their rights.
Late January marked the 49th anniversary of Roe. V. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. It could very well be the last. Continue reading →
Hyper-capitalism has systematically weakened regulations to help capital at the cost of consumers. The verdict on the Elizabeth Holmes case simply illustrates the growing post-’90s disregard for consumers.
The verdict on Theranos founder and former CEO Elizabeth Holmes, who was tried for fraud in a U.S. court, was guilty. Theranos was a company set up by Holmes and her former partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani and had promised to revolutionize blood testing. Their advanced biotech equipment—they claimed—would provide results for a whole battery of tests with just a few drops of blood. In its heyday, Theranos was worth more than $9 billion, and Elizabeth Holmes was looked at as “the next Steve Jobs.” She was also the face that launched $724 million in stock sales to private equity firms and venture capitalists. Holmes figured in Time’s 2015 list of the 100 most influential people of the year and was feted by Wall Street as the “world’s youngest self-made female billionaire.” Continue reading →
If passed, a new bill would establish a streamlined, publicly funded single-payer health care system in California, paid for by progressive taxes—in the face of dogged opposition from corporate profiteers.
Imagine living in a society where a medical diagnosis does not trigger crippling fears of the cost of treatment and prescription drugs, where switching jobs or being laid off didn’t include considerations around health insurance coverage, where trips to the emergency room don’t generate thousands of dollars in bills, and where the out-of-pocket cost of seeing a doctor is zero. Continue reading →
While the federal government only seems to consider care for COVID-19 patients and protection against the coronavirus to be its responsibility, those struggling with other ailments and lacking insurance are on their own.
There has been a Jekyll-and-Hyde quality to American health care over the past two years. The federal government under the previous administration of Donald Trump, as well as the current one of Joe Biden, has carved out what can be characterized as the “COVID-19 exception,” inconsistently intervening to help people avoid the virus or recover from it, while standing by as Americans struggle with other ailments. In doing so, it has exposed the vast fissures of a broken system into which millions of Americans routinely fall, some, never to emerge. Continue reading →
New animal epidemics ignored
You would think as COVID-19 has now killed 5.54 million, there would be greater vigilance about other brewing zoonotic epidemics. Yet even as 41 countries now have outbreaks of avian influenza, called HPAI or H5N1, including the US, there is little to no reporting on the threat in the US press. The attitude still seems to be “wait and see” as it was with COVID-19 though cases surfaced six months before any action was taken; have we learned nothing? Continue reading →
The loss of disabled and chronically ill lives due to COVID-19 is no less tragic or preventable.
Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, there’s been a disturbing caveat to the casualty reports. Many of the dead, the reports say, had “comorbidities”—other conditions that left them especially vulnerable to the virus. Continue reading →
"I feel like we're entitled to expect our Supreme Court justices to be better role models. Or, at least, to have an ounce of decency," said one observer.
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s refusal to wear a mask at in-person proceedings—forcing his colleague and liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor to take part remotely due to health concerns—sparked backlash Tuesday, especially given the court’s current attack on women’s reproductive health. Continue reading →
More than 1,500 physicians warn that the experiment threatens "the future of Medicare as we know it."
A Trump-era pilot program that could result in the complete privatization of traditional Medicare in a matter of years is moving ahead under the Biden administration, a development that—despite its potentially massive implications for patients across the U.S.—has received scant attention from the national press or Congress. Continue reading →
In 2011, FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg, an Obama nominee, lamented that the government could not find enough experts who were not funded by drug makers to serve on advisory committees and recommended that the FDA’s conflict of interest rules be loosened. Continue reading →
The pharmaceutical industry and its allies in the Republican Party are reportedly teaming up to craft challenges to congressional Democrats’ drug price reform plan in the hopes of convincing the Senate parliamentarian—an unelected functionary—to help tank the proposal. Continue reading →
I have often reported on the drugmaker ruse of “disease mongering” or “selling sickness”—floating symptoms of scary diseases that you may have right now with convenient online, “symptom quizzes” for you to self-diagnose and verify. Long gone are the days when the medical establishment assured you that you were well (“take two aspirins and call me in the morning”) thanks to direct-to-consumer advertising. Continue reading →
If you’re like most people, you never heard of the prescription drug Humira until 2013. That’s when Abbott Laboratories spun off AbbVie, to aggressively market the rheumatoid arthritis (RA) drug which went on to become the top selling drug by 2019. Continue reading →
Last year, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation found almost 6,000 food items contaminated with microbes, excessive food additives and agricultural/veterinary drugs –– and memories of melamine in milk and U.S. pet food heighten concerns. Continue reading →
Organizers take to the streets to call on Big Pharma to halt its assault on popular reforms to lower prescription drug prices.
Armed with a “STOP PHARMA GREED” banner and a large, menacing image of a greedy industry executive, member leaders from People’s Action rallied in front of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) Washington, D.C., headquarters last week to protest drug companies’ relentless pursuit of profits at the expense of everyday people. Continue reading →
"I don't want to see it drawn out to as far as the House has proposed," Sen. Bernie Sanders said during a recent press call.
House Democrats’ 2,465-page reconciliation package includes a plan to add dental benefits to Medicare, a proposal that is overwhelmingly popular with U.S. voters and—according to advocates—urgently needed to assist the tens of millions seniors who have been forced to go without crucial care. Continue reading →
A month before the COVID-19 shutdowns, the Wall Street Journal reported that many young people are seeking “accommodations” such as greater time allotments at work for their anxiety, PTSD, depression and other mental conditions. Of course there is much less anxiety zooming from your couch but the issues will no doubt return when workers do. Continue reading →
The ongoing COVID disaster
Pollsters have advised Joe Biden to declare COVID over. But the pandemic revealed all the shortcomings of a political system which is dedicated to austerity and to protecting capitalist interests.
Posted on March 24, 2022 by Margaret Kimberley
Nothing shows the abject failure of the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris administration like the continuing toll of COVID-19 deaths in this country. A pledge to end the COVID pandemic was a centerpiece of their 2020 campaign. They promised to improve upon Donald Trump’s disastrous handling of the crisis which resulted in the deaths of 385,000 people in 2020. Biden and Harris had 446,000 COVID deaths as of their first anniversary in office. The total COVID death toll is expected to reach 1 million by the end of March 2022. Now an Omicron subvariant, known as B.A.2, is becoming the dominant variant. The U.S. usually follows Europe in its COVID rates, and, on that basis, scientists are predicting a new wave in the next two to three weeks. Continue reading →