How has Big Pharma responded to the dire and uncertain circumstances facing American’s health and pocketbooks? By jacking up prescription drug prices and likely jabbing patients not just in the arm but also the wallet for a prospective coronavirus vaccine. As the online news and politics site Politico reported: “Drug makers raised the price of….
Continue ReadingArchives for July 2020
Aged, ill, and injured get shabby treatment at ‘care’ facilities across country
To paraphrase the late, great writer and activist Maya Angelou, nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are showing the public in the middle of this pandemic just truly what they are. It is hard to believe, still, the shabby way they are treating the aged, sick, and injured. Just consider this sampling of recent….
Continue ReadingAs Covid-19 infections soar and deaths rise, should kids go back to school?
The nation’s biggest health worry now has fallen on the country’s little people: As Covid-19 infections have exceeded 3 million and the disease has killed at least 134,000, how many parents will send their kids back to school soon, especially as the coronavirus pandemic spikes in the South and West? President Trump and Education Secretary….
Continue ReadingFor Big Pharma, a $648M bribery settlement and heat over anti-viral’s price
Big Pharma focuses relentlessly on always making a buck, no matter the cost to the rest of us, and even a viral pandemic that infects 2.8 million Americans and kills roughly 130,000 of us won’t interrupt the corporate rapaciousness. That’s the reality that federal prosecutors have reminded the public about with an announced $678 million….
Continue ReadingOpioid abuse and overdoses surge anew, worsened by Covid-19 pandemic
With the novel coronavirus crushing the economy and helping to fuel joblessness, individuals’ isolation, and increasing hopelessness and despair among the already troubled, the opioid drug abuse and overdose crisis again is worsening — and fast. As the Washington Post reported of what had been one of the nation’s leading public health nightmares before the….
Continue ReadingConcerns spike as police seek to medicalize tactics that end in arrest deaths
The national outage over authorities’ excessive use of force, especially against black men, may take law enforcement, first responders, politicians, and critics into a murky and nightmarish area — call it the unfounded medicalization of official control. Two fatal flash point cases — involving African Americans George Floyd in Minneapolis and Elijah McCain (shown, right)….
Continue ReadingWith half of a terrible ’20 now done, can federal torpor on pandemic change?
The nation shudders into the second half of 2020, months deep into an unchecked Covid-19 pandemic that has infected 2.8 million Americans and killed roughly 130,000 of us. America has become the coronavirus’s outbreak epicenter, its would-be travelers shunned by leading nations around the world as too risky to allow without quarantines or outright bans…..
Continue ReadingNursing homes ‘dumping’ residents and defying ordered safeguards
Owners and operators of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities have mounted a “nimfy” (Not My Fault) defense for the tens of thousands of deaths and infections of their residents during the Covid-19 pandemic. They claim they did the best they could under tough circumstances. And now they want not only special legal protections….
Continue ReadingAs J&J ‘trims’ talc loss to $2.1 billion, Bayer sees $10-billion-plus Roundup fix
Leave it to corporations, even with the pressure of the civil justice system, to figure billions of ways to never say they are sorry — and to leave consumers hanging about problematic products and practices. Johnson and Johnson just won a pyrrhic victory, prevailing in an appeals court, so a Missouri record $4.69 billion loss….
Continue Reading