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Medicare Drug Negotiation Is A Sham

by RDavis | Activism

If you want a good example of meaningless political activity and wishful thinking look to the current announcement that there will be negotiations for price cuts for 10 drugs in the Medicare drug program. People need to be reminded that Medicare D, the drug program created many years ago, was a gift to the pharmaceutical industry and did little to help seniors struggling to pay for medication. It has increased the profits of drug companies and that is no accident.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 mandated that the federal government negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry and now the Biden administration is trying to get PR mileage because they are going to “try” to negotiate to lower prices for 10 drugs commonly prescribed for seniors. I say try because big pharma is already lining up all of their legal teams to fight the negotiation process. It will be hard for the drug company CEO’s to buy another vacation home if profits are not maximized.

Brattleboro and VT COVID-19 Regional Dashboard Summary – September 2023

by cgrotke | Health

Here’s the September 2023 dashboard summary. We continue semi-regular COVID-19 dashboard numbers from the Vermont Department of Health, and MA and NH counties that surround Brattleboro, as long as they continue providing them.  Scroll down the new comments for the latest.

VT and MA seem to be doing weekly updates, near the end of the week. Variant updates and NH updates are every two weeks now.

Note that MA stats are the only dashboard that has remained steady and unchanged.  Most reliable of the three, in my humble opinion.

Supreme Court Poised To Make The Sackler Family Accountable

by RDavis | Activism

The Sackler family (primarily the Machiavellian Richard Sackler) the people who owned Purdue Pharma the company that promoted and pushed Oxycontin, have evaded criminal prosecution so far. They became big time drug dealers and pimps with a stable of sales whores as they created the opioid epidemic that persists.

A 2020 New York Times article cites a study by the Economic Research Bureau noting that, “And 65 percent of the growth in overdose death rates between 1996 and 2017 could be attributed to the introduction and marketing of OxyContin.” Oxycontin was put on the market in 1996 and it was aggressively marketed by people who showered doctors and other prescribers with gifts and a lot of misinformation to persuade them to give the drug to their patients.

The Sacklers were directly involved in all of the unethical and immoral tactics that surrounded the marketing of Oxycontin. All accounts make it clear that all they cared about was making a lot of money and they cared little for the lives they were ruining in the process.

Medicare’s Death Spiral

by RDavis | Health

Americans who rely on Medicare for comprehensive health insurance are being assaulted by the forces of the American insurance industry. It’s nothing new. In 2003 the Medicare program was revamped and a new product, Medicare Advantage (MA), was created.

MA was created to privatize the Medicare insurance program and it is succeeding. People are lured in by low premiums and add-ons such as gym memberships and other lifestyle benefits. But MA is not the kind of insurance you want when you get sick. It works a lot like a managed care plan, meaning it is not portable from state to state and a lot of claims end up being denied that would have been easily accepted by traditional Medicare (TA).

What Do Tiggers Like?

by Lise | Pets

The Tigger character from Winnie the Pooh is definitely based on life, and here’s how I know.  We have these two kittens, you see, and being relatively new to the planet, they’re curious about everything, especially food.  If food appears, no matter what the food is, both kittens (but especially youngest) have to come and investigate.  And this is how we discovered that tiggers like…

Gang Attack in Brattleboro

by RDavis | Living

Brattleboro Vermont is a quiet town for the most part. Sure, we have our share of some of the world’s worst problems, but we handle them well and the quality of life for most residents is something to be envied. I never thought I would be terrorized by a gang of roving masked thugs in my safe little town.

On July 24 as I sat in my hot tub, as I do most nights, a pair of beady eyes framed by a facial mask stared at me over the edge of the tub. At first I thought I might be having some sort of hot water related hallucination but, sure enough, a raccoon had climbed the steps to the tub and decided to stare me down.

Vermont Progressives Take On Climate Change

by Lise | Activism

This is the summer that climate change got real for me, and after reading Richard Davis’ piece a few days ago, I realize I’m not the only one.  It may not be possible for us to solve all the problems of climate change (and environmental damage) that are underway now, but it’s been occurring to that even if the chances seem to be nil, I still owe it to the planet to care and to try to do my best to help out, or at least, not be part of the problem.  And yet, even setting the bar this low, it’s still hard to believe our efforts matter.  

But there’s impetus in numbers, and I was happy to see that the Vermont Progressive Party has decided to start organizing people to work together on the issue of climate change.  Their current project is focused on the state agency of transportation, VTRANS, in an effort to influence their thinking on climate change and how they spend $7 million in federal funds.

Huge Health Insurance Rate Hikes: Public Comment through 7/24

by ESchwartz | Health

Blue Cross and MVP Health Care want to raise rates by an average of 15.5% and 12.8% for individuals and 14.5% and 12.5% for small businesses. The affected plans are the ones people buy through Vermont Health Connect. This comes as an estimated 29,000 Vermont residents are being kicked off of Medicaid and forced to go uninsured or buy these expensive private plans.

If you are impacted by the rate hikes you can comment to the Green Mountain Care Board (GMCB), the state’s regulatory body. If you or your small business are currently purchasing one of these plans, if you are at risk of losing Medicaid, or if you are uninsured due to cost, you are or will be affected by these rates.

The Body Is Dying

by RDavis | Activism

When a body is close to death organs start to fail. The kidneys lose their ability to filter out poisons, the gastrointestinal tract slows and stops moving and processing food, muscles waste away and the brain slips into a stage of fog until the big sleep takes over.

I can’t help but think that there are a lot of comparisons to the way we die and the way in which our planet is decaying and looking more and more like a body nearing death. We look to global warming and blame it for many of the disasters that are unfolding. The warming of the planet is much like a deadly disease that has taken over the body.

When a disease takes hold that has little hope for slowing or stopping the body knows that death is at hand and systems move into a different mode.

Is it possible that our planet knows that it is on a death spiral and that the catastrophes we are experiencing a part of the process of the death of a planet?

SelectKitten Update

by cgrotke | Pets
14 weeks kitten

When we last left off in mid-June, Bianca and Margot were almost 10 weeks old and fending off a potentially life-threatening virus.  Quick update: everyone did well, which includes these two plus their siblings being fostered elsewhere and their still-wild brother living with Mom in the yard.

It was a long, stressful period for me, though. Nothing was certain. It was a day-by-day, hour-by-hour project until they were in the clear. That meant that I got to spend much of June and early July sitting on a bathroom floor in quarantine with them.  Lise was assigned to keep things as normal as possible for our existing cat in the rest of the house.

I did lots of special cleaning to keep things safe. It was like the start of COVID… washing everything, and not being sure if the virus was lurking about.

Medicaid Bait and Switch

by RDavis | Health

One of the best things that happened as a result of the COVID pandemic was the rules relaxation and resulting expansion of this country’s Medicaid program. There also were a number of other factors that contributed to a major increase in Medicaid enrollment. The bottom line is that this country finally started to move in the right direction with its Medicaid program.

According to the National Library of Medicine, “From 2017 to 2019, national Medicaid enrollment declined by 2.6%. The COVID-19 pandemic reversed this course abruptly, with Medicaid enrollment increasing by 15.5% from February 2020 relative to April 2021. While existing research points to massive job loss as one primary driver of this increased enrollment, this study found that approximately three-fourths of Medicaid enrollment growth could be traced to declines in the rate of disenrollment relative to 2019, with only one quarter explained by higher rates of new enrollment during the March to October study period.”