The time has come. I’ve felt this coming on for awhile. It’s amazing, I waited for it to really hit me even though I knew it had been there. I had to wait. It finally hit me. Tonight. One week after my 49th birthday. I knew I was close.

I’m done guys. I’m done. I will remain the VP of CIAAG with Lauren but I’m done

My life has moved on. I’ve moved on. I’ve learned a lot this past year.

I don’t have it in me anymore to be an activist. I gave it my all. I did my job. I exposed a lot of stuff. I put the truth out there. Now it’s up to you to decide what you will do with it.

There are spies in here who have taken my words, screenshot them, replicated them on sick websites dedicated to harming my partner and I. You guys are sick (the ones who did this). You know that? I mean sick in ways most of us can’t comprehend. You’re obsessed and sick. I feel sorry for you. I hope you get help. The constant obsession with my words, the going into chat rooms to lie about me, make up stories, say I’m attacking you, that I’m trying to harm you…you’re fun is over. My friends know who I am and what I’m about. They know I’m not capable of what you accuse me of.

I’m done.

I’m done trying to have my voice heard. I’m done making videos. I knew I was done when I deleted my 160+ videos off periscope but I tried to fight it. I tried to deny myself what I knew in my heart. I didn’t think I wanted to be done until I realized I really did. I felt like I had to keep going at my own expense. I tried to hide it from myself. I tried to convince myself it wasn’t true but the more I tried to lie to myself…the more evident it became. It’s over…I’m done.

My identity as an activist is over. I will still work with my friends on the back end but I’m done. Those of you who wanted to harm me? Don’t waste your time because I don’t care.

I used to look. I used to see what you said about me. I don’t look anymore. You can’t hurt me now. I don’t care about you or your words. Go lie about someone else. I’m gone, you can’t lie about me anymore.

Lauren and I have moved on to bigger and better things but activism isn’t in my heart anymore. My passion is gone and I’m no longer going to try and force myself to pretend it’s there.

Please (those of you who tried to hurt me and continue to lie) don’t bother taking credit for this, it has nothing to do with you.

This has to do with me.

I’ve gone through a major life transformation. I felt it coming on a little over a year ago. I knew this wasn’t going to be me for the rest of my life. I knew activism wasn’t my end goal nor my final destination. Tonight it has finally hit me.

The transformation has been completed.

I know what I’m doing and where I’m going.

I’m not leaving because of you.

Im leaving because of me.

I’m still “here” but I’m not.

I just see myself differently now. My heart has left and you can’t harm me anymore.

I will not be turning Twitter back on. I’m going to let my account lapse. I’m tired of being Shasta the activist. It’s time for me to just be Shasta now. Just Shasta Rayne. The one who is a wife, friend, mother. She’s not an activist anymore. I’m not your whipping toy anymore.

I’ll always be around but it’s different now.

I’ll still be working with Lauren. She’s my best friend. I’m loyal. I believe in her. I believe in CIAAG. I will always stand firmly besides my best friend. She’s a great lady. For those of you who’ve chosen to believe lies about her, you’re doing yourself a disservice. I’ve never had a better friend. We’ve never been in an argument, yelled at each other or been angry at each other. She’s never lied to me, hurt me or stolen from me. She gives me credit when I just don’t think I deserve it. She’s a phenomenal woman, mother and friend. I will ALWAYS support her. For those of you who don’t support her, you’re missing out. I’ve been with her almost every single day for the past 3 years. I was there to feel her baby kick her for the first time, I have been there to help her when she’s been attacked and now I get to experience the joy of watching her dreams come true…watching her succeed despite those who spend their days trying to harm her. She’s stronger than most and has my undying love and respect.

I’ll always be here for her and for those of you who are my friends. You know who you are.

I’ll still be CIAAG. I’ll still do what I can to help this movement but my heart has moved on. I have to be honest. It’s time for Shasta to move on now.

I’m tired.

I did what I set out to do. I achieved it.

It’s over.

Good luck.

there seems to be a dedicated VERY SMALL MINORITY within the chronic pain community that seems DAMN DETERMINED to destroy – RUN OFF as many major chronic pain advocates as they can. It appears that the DEA is – ONCE AGAIN – going to reduce the number of opiate doses that the pharmas can produce in 2022…

How many more intractable chronic pain pts are going to have their meds reduced/eliminated and how many more are going to be made house/bed/chair confined ?  Basically, more and more chronic pain pts are being placed under HOUSE ARREST.

Many more chronic pain pts will end up dying premature deaths and/or committing suicides from the complications of the comorbidity issues as more and more have their meds reduced or lost.

They claim that there are 100+ million chronic pain pts… I doubt that there is 0.01% of that number are actively involved with trying to rectify all the harm that is being done to the chronic pain community as a whole.

There could be < 100 dissenters that are the driving force behind instigating all the in fighting and causing an increasing number of active advocates to just throw in the towel.

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CVS sometimes forces people to use its pharmacies — now the Supreme Court will weigh in

https://www.rawstory.com/cvs-supreme-court/

It’s a practice long complained of in Ohio.

CVS Health and other massive corporations often use their pharmacy middleman subsidiaries to force people to get the most expensive class of drugs from the businesses’ own mail-order pharmacies. Some call the practice “patient steering.”

CVS and companies such as UnitedHealth and ExpressScripts/Cigna say the arrangements save patients money. But some patients, oncologists and other health providers say it threatens lives.

Now the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to weigh in. In a little more than a month, it will hear arguments in a California case in which AIDS patients are claiming the practice discriminates against them.

Known as “pharmacy benefit managers” or PBMs, the middlemen work with insurance companies or government programs like Medicare and Medicaid to facilitate prescription-drug transactions. They negotiate rebates with drugmakers, decide what drugs are covered and they determine how much to reimburse pharmacies that dispense drugs as part of their health plans.

But the function that’s in dispute in the California case is how PBMs structure their pharmacy networks.

Each of the big three PBMs is affiliated with a major insurer and each is part of a corporation that is among the 13 largest in the United States. And the combined PBMs are estimated to control well over 70% of the pharmacy-middleman marketplace.

They’re also frequently in direct competition with the retail pharmacies whose reimbursements they control. CVS owns the nation’s largest retail chain and each of the big three owns a mail-order pharmacy for “specialty drugs” — the most expensive class of medicines, which can cost upward of $100,000 a year.

Increasingly, the big-three PBMs have been saying they won’t cover super-expensive specialty drugs if patients get them at their oncology centers or their AIDS clinics. It’s increasingly the case that the only way PBMs will cover them is if patients get them through the mail from a PBM-owned pharmacy.

Critics say the point is to pad profits, but the PBMs maintain that they do this to help their customers.

“To keep costs down, plan designs offered by pharmacy benefit managers often impose the most restrictions on ‘specialty’ drugs,” CVS said in its petition asking the Supreme Court to take up the case. “These medications have special shipping, administration, or storage requirements; treat rare conditions; or are very expensive.”

It added, “Pharmacy benefit managers often control the disproportionate costs and complexities of specialty drugs by contracting with specialty pharmacies that have expertise in the ‘unique handling, storage, and dispensing’ requirements of these medications. Increasingly, pharmacy benefit managers rely on specialty pharmacies that deliver by mail.”

However, many patients complain that especially when they have complex conditions that require equally complex drug regimens, mail-order service is vastly inferior to the services they get in-person from pharmacy professionals.

In 2018, Elvin Weir, a now-deceased cancer patient, described to The Columbus Dispatch how late or improperly filled mail-order cancer prescriptions had often delayed the rest of his treatment as his disease worsened. And officials at oncology centers said the arrangement disrupts the collaboration between their pharmacists and oncologists treating conditions that can be not only complex, but also change rapidly.

The plaintiffs in the original California case made much the same argument.

“For people living with HIV/AIDS, strict lifetime adherence to antiretroviral therapies (ART), consisting of complex combinations of pharmaceuticals consumed daily, is vitally important, and can be literally a life-or-death matter,” the AIDS Healthcare Foundation wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief.

“For people living with HIV/AIDS, so-called specialty pharmacies and pharmacists that focus on HIV/AIDS and in-person treatment provide demonstrably superior care than do mail-order pharmacies and retail pharmacies,” it added. “Coercing people living with HIV/AIDS into using only mail-order pharmacies is thus guaranteeing inferior care and worse health outcomes, and is disability discrimination by both intent and impact.”

A panel of the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals last December said that among its mistakes, the lower court in the CVS case didn’t acknowledge that face-to-face interactions with pharmacists were part of the benefits to which plan members are entitled.

The Ninth Circuit ruled that CVS’s mail-order policy might discriminate against the disabled because it “burdens HIV/AIDS patients differently because of their unique pharmaceutical needs. Specifically, they claim that changes in medication to treat the continual mutation of the virus requires pharmacists to review all of an HIV/AIDS patient’s medications for side effects and adverse drug interactions, a benefit they no longer receive under the program.”

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, CVS is disputing the plaintiffs’ legal argument that the mail-order policy violates the law because it has a “disparate impact.”

In other words, the AIDS-afflicted plaintiffs are saying that even if on its face the policy applies equally to everybody, it’s still illegal discrimination if it has a discriminatory effect against part of a protected group: the disabled. CVS, on the other hand, is arguing that so long as its policies aren’t intentionally discriminatory, they’re OK.

The law puts “federal-funding recipients on notice that intentional discrimination is illegal,” its petition says. “Schools cannot discipline students with attention-deficit disorder more harshly on that basis. Towns cannot target group homes for individuals with disabilities with uniquely onerous zoning requirements. Employers cannot refuse to hire someone solely because she is in a wheelchair. And health plans and anyone else subject to (federal health care laws) cannot facially exclude patients with disabilities simply because they have disabilities.”

“Courts do not need to rewrite (the law) and insert a nonexistent disparate-impact standard to accomplish Congress’ goals,” CVS argued.

The health care company noted that appellate courts have issued differing opinions in the matter. That, presumably, is the dispute the Supreme Court hopes to settle by taking up the case.

Oral arguments are slated for Dec. 7.

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Could this be the FIRST PBM that they have caught with their hand “in the cookie jar” and apparently the only way that this PBM – and maybe other PBM’s can show a profit that they want/expect is to OVERBILL ?  But something tells me that there will be “more dominoes to fall ”  I have noticed that in the last couple of years… the major PBM’s have been acquired or merged with mostly very large insurance companies… maybe so that they can “bury” – what some believe is obscene profits – in the parent corporation financial statements.  Only time will tell on this… but… it would seem that numerous bureaucratic entities are taking ever closer looks at many of these PBM’s.

Centene, the nation’s largest Medicaid managed care company, is planning to stop its work as a PBM, according to reporting in the Ohio Capital Journal. Executives last week said the company is issuing a $30 billion request for proposals in 2022 for an outside contractor to take over the work. Centene settled a suit with Ohio over over billing in Medicare earlier this year for $88 million but admitted no wrongdoing. Centene also agreed to multimillion dollar settlements with Mississippi, Arkansas, and Illinois over billing inaccuracies.

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Woman gets $688.35 ER bill for spending 7 hours in the waiting room — without being treated

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/woman-gets-688-35-er-bill-for-spending-7-hours-in-the-waiting-room-without-being-treated-11635794483

The woman says Emory Healthcare told her, ‘You get charged before you are seen. Not for being seen.’

A Georgia woman spent seven hours waiting for emergency room staff to check out her head injury, and left before receiving any treatment. But the real headache began when the hospital billed her almost $700 for the visit a few weeks later. 

“I didn’t get my vitals taken, nobody called my name. I wasn’t seen at all,” Taylor Davis told a local Fox affiliate. 

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Ron and I were at Butler U around the same time and we each had our own independent pharmacies in adjacent cities in southern Indiana.  Indiana is typically a <R> dominated state. Currently our legislature has a <R> majority and our Governor is <R> and Ron is/was in his  third term <R> Senator.  Ron’s District was a rather small district – 46 I think – and it can be politically PURPLE.. and Ron had already announced – earlier this year –  that he was not going to run for a 4th term in 2022…  I  guess that the <R> party does not have a “strong candidate” for the 46th district, so they elected to take it “out of action”  I guess that this shows that within any particular political party… politicians really can’t count on their colleagues in their own party. – NOT TO STAB THEM IN THE BACK… Perhaps the particular party it is more about what the opinion of what is good for the party and not what is good for a particular colleague and/or the constituents that they represent in a particular district.

Southern Indiana lawmaker quitting after split over GOP redistricting

https://www.whas11.com/article/news/politics/ron-grooms-indiana-senator-resigns/417-957e3719-f8a5-4495-b7af-68d3fccd10d4

Ron Grooms was the only Republican senator to vote against the new GOP-drawn election district maps and decided to resign with a year left in his term.

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Could it be that some of the data on prescribers that the DEA uses to come to the conclusion that a prescriber is providing controlled substance outside of valid medical necessity …. be THEIR ESTIMATED NET WORTH ?  You see when our judicial system uses the Civil Asset Forfeiture Act… the assets can be confiscated without filing any charges and the ASSETS THEMSELVES is the guilty party…  because the judicial system can just “believe” that the assets were obtained using illegal obtained monies…  If a prescriber – before the DEA VULTURES start circling – creates irrevocable trust(s) to shelter all their assets because they have made themselves virtually PENNILESS… and all their assets in the irrevocable trust are managed by the Trustee of the trust and the trustee is bound by the directives outlined in the trust as to what money from the trust can be used to fund and if the trustee violates any of those directives – like turning over assets to our judicial system – would cause the trustee to be put in jail for violating the directives in the trust.  Most trustees of such trusts tend to follow the instructions in the trust TO THE LETTER. Since a irrevocable trust is a LEGAL DOCUMENT… those in our judicial system, clearly understands the details around a irrevocable trust.  Our judicial system does not always follow the “letter of the law” nor the “intent of the law” but their individual interpretation of the law.

When Data Becomes Due Process

https://daily-remedy.com/when-data-becomes-due-process/

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Two blood pressure medications recalled over carcinogen concerns

https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/two-blood-pressure-medications-recalled-over-carcinogen-concerns/

The FDA says two blood pressure medications from Lupin Pharmaceuticals are being recalled. Find out which medications are affected and why.

The US Food and Drug Administration announced a recall last week for two medications made by Lupin Pharmaceuticals that treat high blood pressure (also known as hypertension). The medications, tablets of Irbesartan and tablets of Irbesartan and Hydrochlorothiazide, are being pulled over concerns they may contain unsafe amounts of N-nitrosoirbesartan, a probable carcinogen. 

According to the FDA, Lupin hasn’t received any reports of illness, but the company is recalling the medication out of an “abundance of caution.” 

The affected medications include:

• Irbesartan tablets in 75 mg, 150 mg and 300 mg doses
• Irbesartan and Hydrochlorothiazide tablets in 150 mcg / 12.5 mcg doses
• Irbesartan and Hydrochlorothiazide tablets in 300 mcg / 12.5 mcg doses 

People who are currently taking the recalled medicine are “advised to continue taking their medication and contact their pharmacist, physician, or medical provider for advice regarding an alternative treatment,” the FDA said.

Lupin is reaching out to wholesalers, distributors and others that carry the medicine and arranging for the return of the recalled products, according to the recall statement.

Customers or distributors can call (855) 769-3988 or (855) 769-3989 from 9 to 5 ET with questions about the recall. 

High blood pressure is extremely common in the US — almost half of all adults (47%) have high blood pressure determined by a 130 or higher systolic reading, an 80 or higher diastolic reading or taking medication, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Uncontrolled high blood pressure raises a person’s risk for heart disease and stroke, and hypertension is also a risk factor for more severe COVID-19. 

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

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Civil Asset Forfeiture Victim Gets His Money Back!

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