With congressional leadership expected to imminently release the text of omnibus government funding legislation, Politico revealed Monday that Democrats are preparing to join with Republicans who have demanded an end to Medicaid policies enacted because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Continue reading
At least two million people in the United States are incarcerated in 122 United States prisons. Little is known about the prisoners themselves. Did their background condemn them to bad behavior or did they just make grievous mistakes? Do they suffer from mental illness sometimes masquerading as criminal behavior? Can they change their life path? A mental health specialist with 25 years of direct experience provided counseling services to pre-trial detainees in Chicago’s notorious Cook County prison system, agreed to this interview. Continue reading
Reproductive rights advocates, attorneys, and family members of people who have died as a result of Poland’s stringent abortion ban were among those who testified before the European Parliament in Brussels on Thursday, calling on the body to take every available action to protect Polish people from “conservative politicians” whose ban has led to at least six deaths so far. Continue reading
LGBTQ+ rights advocates on Tuesday applauded a ruling by a federal court in Washington State which upheld the state’s ban on “conversion therapy,” saying the ban will continue to save lives. Continue reading
Losing two coworkers to domestic violence over a three-year span left Emily Brannon and other members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 310L reeling. Continue reading
Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday opened an investigation into the devastating health impacts that state-level GOP abortion bans and restrictions have had on pregnant people across the U.S., citing the litany of horror stories published in local and national newspapers in the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Continue reading
Reproductive healthcare advocates on Tuesday recoiled at a harrowing report describing how one Texas woman’s wanted pregnancy became a “dystopian nightmare” after she suffered potentially deadly complications but was still initially denied lifesaving care under the state’s extreme abortion ban. Continue reading
The UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima had appealed before the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference in Geneva that the world would face a grim future if patent waivers did not take place. At a press conference, Byanyima had said, “In a pandemic, sharing technology is life or death, and we are choosing death.” Continue reading
Florida’s outbreak of listeria has so far led to at least one death, 22 hospitalizations and an ice cream recall since January. Humans get sick with listeria infections, or listeriosis, from eating soil-contaminated food, undercooked meat or dairy products that are raw, or unpasteurized. Listeria can cause convulsions, coma, miscarriage and birth defects. And it’s the third leading cause of food poisoning deaths in the U.S. Continue reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Stop me if this sounds familiar. 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
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Medical debt is a rip-off
Health care giants aren’t just making care more expensive. They’re putting Americans in debt bondage.
Posted on July 21, 2022 by Jim Hightower
Many big business CEOs turn out to be grifters who rip off consumers, workers, and others. But the corporate con artists I consider most vile are those who profiteer from people’s health care needs. Continue reading →