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CVS Pharmacy Fined $75 Million for Allowing Large Quantities of Pseudoephedrine Sales in Violation of Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act
Come on CVS this is frakking unacceptable and I, for one, will NOT shop at your stores for a while. What don’t you understand about the law?CVS Pharmacy Inc. has agreed to pay $75-million in fines for allowing repeated purchases of a key ingredient in the making of methamphetamine in at least five states that also led to a spike in Southern California drug trafficking, authorities said Thursday.
The largest U.S. operator of retail pharmacies will pay what federal prosecutors said is the largest civil penalty under the Controlled Substances Act.
The company also will forfeit about $2.6-million in profits earned from the sales of pseudoephedrine, which can often be found in cold medicine and is used to make meth.
Authorities said CVS didn’t provide enough safeguards to monitor how much pseudoephedrine someone was buying, and the company violated federal drug regulations Arizona, Georgia, California, Nevada, and South Carolina and possibly 20 other states.
“This case shows what happens when companies fail to follow their ethical and legal responsibilities,” said U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. “CVS knew it had a duty to prevent methamphetamine trafficking, but it failed to take steps to control the sale of a regulated drug used by methamphetamine cooks as an essential ingredient for their poisonous stew.”
The company was expected to pay the $75-million fine by Friday. The remaining forfeiture is due within 30 days.
I mean isn’t this enough incentive to obey the law?
Methamorphosis as a result of chronic Methamphetamine abuse
Thanks CVS for turning your back on your American customers.Some executive at CVS should be prosecuted criminally for this gross megligence and maybe this will wise up the industry to obey the law.
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UCLA School of Dentistry Receives NIH Meth Mouth Research Grant
Examples of Meth MouthAnd, there is much more research required to break the cycle of methamphetamine addiction.
he UCLA School of Dentistry will use a $1.86 million award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to expand research reported in the Journal of the American Dental Association on the relationship between methamphetamine use and increased dental disease.
“Given that dental disease is a prominent comorbidity of methamphetamine use, dental professionals are in a unique position to help in the early detection of undisclosed MA use and participate as integral members of a collaborative care team tending to those who use MA,” the UCLA research team said in JADA 2010 Mar; 141(3): 307-318.
Dr. Vivek Shetty, a professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery and the project’s principal investigator, aims to
build on research described in JADA as “one of the first systematic investigations of the meth mouth phenomenon.” More information on Methamphetamine Use and Oral Health (Meth Mouth) is available at www.ada.org/goto/meth. -
United Kingdom National Health Service: Patients Being Made to Die Prematurely?
Maybe the death panel talk by Sarah Palin was NOT all BS. Look at what they are doing in Britain with their socialized National Health Service and how physicians are now upset and making charges.In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.
Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.
But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.
As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis†in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.
Is this a lesson for the Obama Administration and health care reform?
You betcha.
Americans do NOT want this nightmare.
Mr. President, LESS government in health care – NOT MORE.
Flap does not want some Obamacare government bureaucrat in Washington pulling the plug on my life or that of my loved ones.
Technorati Tags: National Health Service, Obamacare
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Obama: $ 787 Billion Economic Stimulus “Has Worked As Intended”
The President might try a different embellishment.President Barack Obama said his $787 billion stimulus bill “has worked as intended†as he pushed back against Republican criticism that his recovery program has failed to rescue the economy.
“It has already extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have lost their jobs in this recession,†Obama, who is traveling today in Ghana, said in his weekly Saturday radio and Web address. “It has delivered $43 billion in tax relief to American working families and business.â€
Were it not for the stimulus program, the president said, “state deficits would be nearly twice as large as they are now, resulting in tens of thousands of additional layoffs — layoffs that would affect police officers, teachers, and firefighters.â€
In the weekly Republican response, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia said the stimulus bill was “full of pork- barrel spending, government waste and massive borrowing cleverly called ‘stimulus.’â€
“The plain truth is that President Obama’s economic decisions have not produced jobs, have not produced prosperity, and have not worked,†Cantor said.
He said the Republicans want reductions in tax rates that he said would help middle-class families.
In asking for public patience, Obama said the recovery act “wasn’t designed to restore the economy to full health on its own, but to provide the boost necessary to stop the free fall.â€
I thought the economic stimulus pushed by the Democrats and Obama was all about JOBS? You know, like in putting people back to work.
Not to bailout bloated state governments, like California, who refuse to live within their means without more and more taxes.
The spin is not going to play too well and the polls reflect the public’s displeasure. But, to spin results and ask for patience?
This is not going to fly, Mr. President.
Listen to Republican Congressman Eric Cantor from Virginia:
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) delivers the weekly Republican address on the economy, the Obama Administrations trillion-dollar “stimulus” spending bill that isnt working, and Republican efforts to offer better solutions.
Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Economic Stimulus, Porkulus, Eric Cantor
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Opposition Group to Obama’s Health Care Reform Launches Television Ad Campaign
Conservatives for Patients Rights Action Fund today kicks off a $1 million+ television ad campaign featuring prominent British and Canadian doctors who warn of patients actually dying as they wait for care, and of losing control of their own health care choices in a society where the government has taken over the health care system. The ads detail how the United States Congress has begun copying government-run health care policies which failed in these countries.The summer Congressional health care reform game is afoot. Today Conservatives for Patient’s Rights Action fund begins a $ million ad campaign.
A conservative group opposed to President Barack Obama’s plans for health care reform launched Thursday a $1.2 million television advertising campaign slated to run through the July 4 recess.
The 30-second spot, set to run on Fox News Channel and CNN, blasts Obama’s push for a government-run, public insurance plan as a part of any health care reform legislation. The ad buy was placed by Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, a group that operates both as a 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4).
The ad features video of a bulldozer crushing written text that reads: “HEALTH CARE CHOICE.â€
Here is the latest ad:
Stay tuned as the media wars continue to heat up.
Technorati Tags: Conservatives for Patient’s Rights, Obamacare
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Poll Watch: Only 24 Per Cent Rate Health Care Reform as Most Important of Obama’s Priorities
Political Cartoon by Michael Ramirez
So says the latest Rasmussen poll.Thirty-six percent (36%) of U.S. voters say cutting the deficit is the most important of the four priorities the president cited in a speech to Congress in February, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. That’s up from 32% in March.
At the same time, 24% rate health care reform as the most important of Obama’s priorities, down from 29% in the earlier survey.
But a growing number of voters (63%) – up from 54% in March – also see cutting the deficit in half as the goal the president is least likely to achieve.
Just after the president’s speech, 42% named deficit reduction as the top priority while 24% said health care.
And, why?
Americans voters fail to see the utility of Obamacare. In other words: “What’s in it for me?”
The last time Congress tried to overhaul the health care system, most Americans didn’t see any personal stake in it, other than possibly the rationed care the critics warned them about.
Today, White House officials gave another example of how they’re going to help lawmakers make a better case this time. They released a report predicting that most Americans’ income will go up if the federal government can get health care costs under control.
The report, “The Economic Case for Health Care Reform,†by the Council of Economic Advisers, predicts that the annual income for a typical family of four would be $2,600 higher in 2020 than it would have been without an overhaul — and nearly $10,000 higher in 2030. That’s because the increases in efficiency and lower deficits would help the economy grow faster than it would have otherwise, according to the report.
There is nothing but higher taxes and SLOWER economic growth as a result of Obamacare in the future and Americans know that the Obama Administration is spinning the issue.
There has been something very odd about the logic of the Democrats’ case on health-care reform the past few months. Rather than focus on access and the uninsured, as they have usually done and as Obama did during the campaign, they’re talking about their massive expansion of the government’s role in American health insurance as a way to save money, and focusing a lot of attention on the (unquestionably pressing) need to control health care costs. The trouble is, they don’t actually have any plan to control health-care costs.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report this morning that offers a good example of this peculiar approach. It’s basically a 50-page explanation of how wonderful it would be if we could reduce the rate of growth of health-care spending. It’s called “The Economic Case for Health Care Reform,†and it makes a strong case. But it’s not a case for Obama-style health-care reform. In fact, the examples it offers of the causes of rising health-care costs are mostly examples of government-driven inefficiency, especially in Medicare, which hardly argues for a government run insurance “option.â€
This is a very interesting tactic by Obamacare universal health care system advocates to promote long term cost savings by allowing the government to have more control of the health care system. You see the federal government already controls 50 per cent of the system with Medicare but Obama wants to control it all. To think that Obama and Democrats argue that entitlement costs will be reduced by creating a vast NEW ENTITLEMENT does not make any sense.
Flap does not think Obamacare will go very far in this Congress.
Technorati Tags: Obamacare, Barack Obama, Socialized Medicine
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President Obama Turns Up the Heat on Health Care Reform – Obamacare Must Be This Year or Never
President Barack Obama is introduced by American film producer and CEO of DreamWorks Animation Jeffrey Katzenberg at a Democratic National Committee fundraising event at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, Wednesday, May 27, 2009
In a plea to his political supporters, President Obama today siad that if Congress does not deliver health care reform legislation by the end of the year the opportunity will be lost.“If we don’t get it done this year, we’re not going to get it done,” Obama told supporters by phone as he flew home on Air Force One from a West Coast fundraising trip.
Obama’s political organization, Organizing for America, invited campaign volunteers to a midday conference call to describe a nationwide June 6 kickoff for its health care campaign. The president’s message to his re-election campaign-in-waiting was simple: If volunteers don’t pressure lawmakers to support the White House’s goal on health care, Washington would drag its feet and nothing would change.
“The election in November, it didn’t bring about change. It gave us an opportunity for change,” Obama said.
The presidential plea came as lawmakers prepare for an aggressive schedule of work aimed at producing comprehensive health care overhaul bills in the House and Senate by August.
But, Obama is leaving the details, including how to pay for his Obamacare reforms, to Congress and there is NO consensus on how to change the health care system.
Obama may have a permanent campaign organization in place but governing is more. The fact is the President has NO definitive plan, especially how costs will be distributed or should I say be redistributed.
My bet is that health care reform (Obamacare) stalls this summer as the economy refuses to quickly improve and the Congress’ attention is diverted there.
And, next year, forget it – it is an election year.
Technorati Tags: Obamacare
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Poll Watch: 50 Per Cent Say More Taxes on Alcohol OK to Fund Universal Health Care
But, 40 per cent say no.Fifty percent (50%) of Americans favor increasing taxes on beer, wine and other alcoholic beverages to help provide health insurance for every one in the country.
Forty percent (40%) are against such tax increases, and 10% are not sure in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of women support more taxes on alcohol, compared to 42% of men. Both men and women under the age of 40 are more supportive of higher taxes on alcoholic beverages than their elders.
Sixty-two percent (62%) of Democrats think an increase in so-called “sin taxes†on alcohol is a good idea, but 54% of Republicans disagree. Adults not affiliated with either major party are closely divided on the question.
But, the problem with sin taxes is that consumption may decrease as the taxes increase. So, overall tax revenue may remain flat. The government cannot really rally an expensive Obbamacare restructing of the American health care system based on beer and wine sales.
Then, there is the problem of bootlegging from Mexico and the soverignity of the American Indian reservations where folks won’t pay any tax at all.
Raising sin taxes to fund Obamacare or socialized medicine = FAIL.
Technorati Tags: Obamacare
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Poll Watch: 54 Per Cent of Americans NOT Willing to Pay Higher Taxes to Provide Health Insurance for All
So says the latest Radmussen poll.
Thirty-two percent (32%) of American adults say they’d be willing to pay higher taxes so that health insurance could be provided for all Americans. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 54% say they’re not willing to pay more in taxes.
Most Democrats (54%) are willing to pay higher taxes to expand health care coverage. Most Republicans (77%) are not. As for those not affiliated with either major party, 29% are okay with the higher tax bill and 60% are not.
Other recent polling shows that just 35% of Americans rate the U.S. health care system as good or excellent. However, 70% of those with insurance rate their own coverage as good or excellent.
Most folks would love to see their neighbor have universal medical care – as long as THEY don’t have to pay for it.
This will be the major obstacle to President Obama’s attempt at reforming the health care system (Obamacare) – shifting the costs to society or, in other words, nationalism or socializing the system like in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Obamacare
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American Health Care Leaders Say Obama Overstated Cost Control Promises
U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a statement on health care reform to the media on the South Drive near the Oval Office of the White House in Washington May 13, 2009. With Obama are (L-R) Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Vice President Joe Biden, Rep. George Miller (D-CA), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Charlie Rangel
(D-NY)The war over Obamacare or President Obama’s universal health care reform has started.Hospitals and insurance companies said Thursday that President Obama had substantially overstated their promise earlier this week to reduce the growth of health spending.
Mr. Obama invited health industry leaders to the White House on Monday to trumpet their cost-control commitments. But three days later, confusion swirled in Washington as the companies’ trade associations raced to tamp down angst among members around the country.
After meeting with six major health care organizations, Mr. Obama hailed their cost-cutting promise as historic.
“These groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment,†Mr. Obama said. “Over the next 10 years, from 2010 to 2019, they are pledging to cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year — an amount that’s equal to over $2 trillion.â€
Health care leaders who attended the meeting have a different interpretation. They say they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts.
“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding that has caused a lot of consternation among our members,†said Richard J. Umbdenstock, the president of the American Hospital Association. “I’ve spent the better part of the last three days trying to deal with it.â€
Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, said “the president misspoke†on Monday and again on Wednesday when he described the industry’s commitment in similar terms. After providing that account, Ms. DeParle called back about an hour later on Thursday and said: “I don’t think the president misspoke. His remarks correctly and accurately described the industry’s commitment.â€
If anyone thinks the private health care industry is going to troll over for Obamacare, you have another thing coming. Obama’s proposal is for an eventual government take over of America’s health care industry. It is an end around and the bureaucratic corporations are now just realizing their demise in the grand scheme.
Look for limited cooperation from the health care beomouths of PHARMA and the AMA – just enough to not look like obstructionists.
And, cost controls? Who is going to enforce it?
The government?
What a joke. they cannot control ther own costs.
Technorati Tags: Obamacare