Divide —> Conquer —> Control the willing —> Destroy the weak ?

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Pharmaciststeve

wethepeopleOur founders created a government that was suppose to be

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth

Congress was suppose to operate with PART-TIME CITIZEN LEGISLATORS and composed of three different branches:
LEGISLATIVE
JUDICIAL
EXECUTIVE
There was no concept of a “shadow government” of un-elected regulators.. that takes the laws passed by Congress and create REGULATIONS and or… when they get the whim to accomplish something… reinterpret a law creating new regulations that allows them to make their goals legal.
In fact, Congress can pass laws that don’t have to pass any constitutionality test before they are implemented and can/will be enforced until some entity outside of the government challenges the law in our court system.
No one really knows how many unconstitutional laws that there are on the books … at all levels of government (Fed/State/Local).
If you don’t believe that the bureaucracy isn’t trying to divide/conquer .. just look at all the internal groups that are having a class conflict, that they have help created
rich vs poor
sick vs health
white vs black
legal vs illegal
Republican vs Democrat
I am sure that there are other groups or sub groups.
The bureaucracy has shielded itself from any lawsuit by sovereign immunity, they can create unconstitutional law… enforce unconstitutional laws.. and their enforcement is usually done with coercion, intimidation and force.
The DEA has the prescribers, pharmacies/Pharmacists, drug wholesalers, drug manufacturers acting like a whimpering child, sitting in a corner because someone has taken away their favorite toy.
Congress has given the insurance industry immunity to the Sherman Antitrust Act .. so they can do things that are ILLEGAL for any other business or individual to do.
Those who are suffering from chronic diseases can be ones that suffer the most. As the insurance industry decides which medications that they will pay for and which ones they will not… basically … practicing medicine without a license.
They know that they are increasingly dividing some groups.. take the chronic pain community.. how many hundreds or THOUSANDS of Face Book pages are there ?… How many have sent letters to their Congressional Representative… and the letters that you  get back all have some of the same phrases… they state that they understand your issues… they emphatic with your issues.. BUT.. they are concerned about drug abuse.
How many hundreds of on-line petitions have been created that need 100,000 signatures for them to even look at the petition.. and a few have even gotten a few thousand to sign.  The only one that I know that exceeded the renumber of signatures.. to get them to look at the petition –  was one that was calling for the resignation of the head of the DEA… and the OUTCOME ???   I have not seen anyone new as the head of the DEA.
We may be approaching the point of no return very soon…the Nov 8th election..  Normally 99% of Congress that goes for re-election… gets re-elected… that happens again this election… it will just re-enforce their belief that they are doing “a good job” and to continue doing what they have been doing… they fact that Congress has a SINGLE DIGIT APPROVAL rating makes no difference to them.
Over the last decade, both parties have controlled Congress at some point in time… how is your life today in comparison to how it was a decade ago. If it hasn’t improved any and/or gotten worse… would suggest that none of those in Congress … regardless of their party affiliation… doesn’t change how things are being done in Congress.
If I was a member of Congress and 99% get re-elected.. I would figure that there is not really 100 -116 million chronic pain pts…  the chronic pain community has no unity… because there is enough numbers within the chronic pain community to determine ANY ELECTED OFFICE.
The bureaucrats have decided that substance abuse is a direct cause of prescription opiates.. and they have decided that they are going to “save the addict”…part of the program is continually reducing the opiate doses that are being prescribed.  If you are a chronic painer.. guess where you fit into that equation.
If the chronic pain community DOES NOTHING… means that you GET NOTHING… except may be digging their own grave.
How things evolve over the 2 next year.. will not depend on “george” or some knight on a white horse coming along to SAVE THE DAY..

Filed under: General Problems | 1 Comment »

Opiates & Alcohol don’t mix.. but.. under age drinking is OK

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Pharmaciststeve

The last year has been a life-altering experience, both for me and my entire family, as we learn to live without the presence of our two oldest sons. It is amazing that one decision, a short moment in time, could change the course of our future forever. Our sons Nick and Jack passed away on June 14, 2015 after attending graduation parties with friends. What we now know is that they were participating in underage drinking, and at some point during the night they were both offered a pill and they took it. The pill they took was oxycotin. I was they one to discover Jack unresponsive in his bed, and later that morning paramedics pronounced Nick dead in our basement.
Nick and Jack’s story is one you have likely heard before, and will likely hear again, and that is why we have created the 525 Foundation. We plan to do everything we can to prevent a story like theirs to come across your news feed again, affecting another family as tragically as ours. Life is so precious, and young people often feel invincible, and we feel it is our duty to spread the knowledge necessary for young adults to make smart decisions so that they can make the most of their futures.

Found this on FB.. from what it sounds like the graduation party was AT THEIR HOUSE… was the alcohol their parents’ and where did the Oxycodone come from..  From the parent’s medicine cabinet… didn’t say anything about someone else dying or anyone being charged with providing the Oxycodone illegally that contributed to both kids death.

Maybe the parent’s OUTRAGE is because they didn’t provide proper supervision for the party in their house and/or didn’t lock up their alcohol and/or condoned the under age drinking.

I feel sorry for their loss, but.. there seems to be a lot of guilty to go around for this bad outcome.

 

Filed under: General Problems | 2 Comments »

Methamphetamine Fact VS Fiction

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Pharmaciststeve

“Methamphetamine Fact VS Fiction and Lessons from the Crack Hysteria” by Professor Dr.Carl Hart

If you can’t find the time to listen to the entire one hour + of this presentation… start at about 49 minutes into the presentation and watch about 3-5 minutes.. that will provide you with the “gist” of the entire presentation

Filed under: General Problems | Leave a Comment »

From the “Horse’s mouth” on the “CDC GUIDELINES”

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Pharmaciststeve

stevemailboxDr. Houry response

This is a letter from the head of the CDC in response to a inquiry from a healthcare professional concerning the real details of the CDC guidelines on opiate dosing.

The guidelines DO NOT BEAR THE WEIGHT OF LAW… but that does not mean that certain state bureaucrats and/or Federal bureaucrats will take these guidelines and jump to the presumption that they should bear the weight of law.

In some of the “bureaucratic fiefdoms” that some bureaucrats oversee .. like the VA healthcare system… interpretations of guidelines become the rule over all they oversee.

Only Congress can create laws… and it is the regulators (our shadow government) that write regulations from those laws.. but.. for these regulators to take “guidelines” from other regulators/agencies and start creating new regulations as they would as if it was a law passed by Congress.. they have clearly stepped over stepped their legal authority.. BUT.. unfortunately the only way that they are pushed back to where they have authority may take a legal route.

 

Filed under: General Problems | 4 Comments »

What’s in a epidemic ?

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Pharmaciststeve

They claim that one person dies of a drug overdose – all drugs.. not just opiates every 19 MINUTES… and they claim that is a epidemic..

HOWEVER… one person dies EVERY MINUTE from the use/abuse of Alcohol/Nicotine.. but that does not meet our society’s definition of a EPIDEMIC ??

Filed under: General Problems | 8 Comments »

A picture is worth a 1000 words .. what is a video worth ?

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Pharmaciststeve

stevemailboxCartoon-CameramanS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really appreciate your website and the information it provides. I was recently denied my daughters ADHD medication at both CVS & Walgreens. We recently moved from OH to IN and I was hoping you could help with some advice on how to file a report.

 

 I am currently in Walgreens again this morning and I am waiting to see if another pharmacist would be willing to call my daughters doctor to insure that this prescription is a real prescription since the other pharmacist said it was not (valid prescription) and threaten to call the cops if I did not leave. I have never been treated with so much disrespect I am still shocked by it all.

Please advice what action I can take.

This showed up in my inbox today… This is another example of why everyone should video/audio record ALL THEIR INTERACTIONS with the Rx dept staff.  I hope some day that this Pharmacist pulls this trick on a pt that is in the legal profession…Accusing a pt trying to pass a forged Rx… maybe even false arrest… and filing a false police report.

This Pharmacist is accusing the pt of trying to pass a FAKE PRESCRIPTION…  If he knew that it was a FAKE PRESCRIPTION it was his duty to confiscate the prescription. To prevent that it wouldn’t get filled and he should have called the police and had the person arrested..

Why didn’t he ?… probably because he was not POSITIVE that it was a FAKE PRESCRIPTION.  He had NO PROOF.

While Walgreens can’t force a pharmacist to fill a particular prescription.. that is the practice of pharmacy and the chain – itself – is not licensed to practice pharmacy.

I wonder if Walgreens condones such “unprofessional manners” with customers ?

This is another good example why pts with controlled meds should patronize independent pharmacies ( Mom & Pop).  The BIG CHAIN STORES’ revenue is growing at such a pace that the stock market is happy with their revenues/profits. The Independent pharmacy depends on filling prescriptions to put bread/butter on their table.. they are less likely to refuse to fill valid Rxs.

Here is a link that will help you find a independent pharmacy in your area by zip code http://www.ncpanet.org/home/find-your-local-pharmacy

If you have prescription insurance (drug card) … your copay is going to be the same as you pay in the chain.. since your insurance company determines what you pay and is defined in your insurance policy.

Filed under: General Problems | 5 Comments »

When healthcare professionals with ethics and politicians interact ?

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Pharmaciststeve

N.C. Flap Exposes Ugly Side of State Health Decisions

Political intrusion into public health all but inevitable

http://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/generalprofessionalissues/59676?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2016-08-17&eun=g578717d0r&pos=5

The recent resignation of North Carolina’s state epidemiologist, Megan Davies, MD, who charged her superiors with “mislead[ing] the public,” made plain the often tense relationship between the professional staff in state health departments and their political appointee bosses.

Davies’ abrupt resignation was the fallout of internal debates within North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) over how to address increased levels of chemicals in the private wells of people living near the state’s 32 coal ash impoundments at 14 sites. Those debates were revealed in a series of sworn depositions given to attorneys from the Southern Environmental Law Center and other advocacy groups as part of a lawsuit against Duke Energy.

State toxicologist Kenneth Rudo, PhD, in his sworn deposition released Aug. 2, asserted that officials from the administration of Gov. Pat McCrory urged state health officials to sign off on a letter to well owners, telling them their water was safe to drink.

And Davies testified that State Health Director Randall Williams was concerned about the political fallout from maintaining a do-not-drink order that had been sent to well owners.

Rudo was accused of perjury by McCrory’s chief of staff Thomas Stith in an unusual late evening press conference last week. The administration has since backed off that accusation, but on Wednesday morning the two departments released a joint editorial savaging Rudo, saying he exaggerated health risks and questioning his scientific integrity. That was the last straw for Davies.

In her resignation letter, Davies said the departments had deliberately presented a “false narrative” in the editorial.

The episode (recounted in detail here) revealed an increasingly politicized atmosphere within DHHS, leaving an impression of a department where decisions may have been made to reflect political expedience, rather than protection of the public.

And accusations of political intrusion into public health are not confined to North Carolina, as states elsewhere wrestle with issues in which economic interests may collide with residents’ environmental and health concerns — such as “fracking” of deep natural gas wells, not to mention the Flint, Mich., water crisis.

Interviews with former health officials in North Carolina and other states, some of whom asked not to be quoted, suggested that the Tarheel State is not alone.

Pressure from Above

Jeffrey Engel, MD, served as North Carolina’s State Epidemiologist from 2002 to 2007 and then as State Health Director from 2009 to 2012 before he was replaced by former Gov. Bev Perdue. Now, he’s executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, based in Atlanta.

He said he experienced pressure in his old jobs and has also heard from some of his members about political pressures.

 

“There is a lot of partisan stuff going on,” he said, citing how different states have approached threats such as Zika virus and Michigan’s response to the water crisis in Flint.

“Then there’s always the differences between a red state and a blue state in terms of their view and philosophy on the role of government,” Engel said. “It’s the issue of the nanny state. ‘Are we overreaching? What is the role of government here?'”

Engel also said elected officials can hold the risk of termination over the heads of state health officials, who are often “at will” employees who serve at the pleasure of their executive. He said resignations are rare, because many professionals are reluctant to risk their family’s security on principle.

“That’s why it took an incredible amount of courage for Megan to do what she did and she was able to do it on her terms, which is the highest principle I can think of,” he said, noting there are few positions for a high level physician executives like Davies to move to.

“This is a decision to derail her career and she had her eyes wide open about that,” he said, calling Davies an “outstanding medical epidemiologist.”

Davies, a former CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer and an 8-year veteran of the department who has served in multiple high-level positions and risen to national prominence, wrote of her “terrible loss” in leaving a job that “brings meaning to my life.”

Balancing Act

David Gifford, MD, MPH, formerly the state health director in Rhode Island, talked about being from one political party working under a governor from the other party.

“We had different views on things, but we never went there,” said Gifford, who held his position from 2005 to 2011. “And if we had to go there, I’d have to make a decision as to whether I could work for the governor or not.”

Gifford talked about the wide swaths of gray area that occur in science and in communicating risks, especially those posed by environmental health issues.

“There is nothing that’s risk free and there’s nothing that the public is more concerned about than infection and toxic exposure,” he said. “People have different levels of risk tolerance, how do you communicate that?”

“The fundamental reason is that the science is often not as strong as it is in communicable disease and protection,” Engel concurred. “The toxicity of some of these contaminants when you’re talking about safe drinking water is a little less certain than, say, a contaminated food supply or a child in a classroom with measles.

“No one will fight with you if you’re excluding that child from their classroom until that disease is over and no one will fight with you when you close the restaurant down when you find out that their salad bar is contaminated with Salmonella. But there’s always fuzziness on some of these toxicology issues around drinking water.”

Gifford noted many members of the public have a low tolerance for risks they don’t understand, even as they engage in more risky behaviors such as smoking or driving over the speed limit.

Both Gifford and Engel noted that environmental health risks are particularly thorny, with recommendations that change frequently as the science evolves.

“You’re always having to balance multiple positions,” Gifford said.

But Gifford bemoaned the way that these issues of public health have become so politicized, from both sides of the aisle.

“The discussion is always about who is to blame and how to prevent it from happening again and do it quickly,” he said, noting the media adds to the problem, in its search for sensational stories with easy-to-understand heroes and villains.

“It’s rarely an individual to blame and it’s never black-and-white as to how to solve the problem.”

In this environment, it’s hard to blame an governor’s administration for wanting to control messages about public health risk, “because every time something completely outside their control happens, they get blamed for it.”

The trick, he said, is striking the balance between minimizing or overstating a risk.

“If the communications are not well-crafted to appropriately communicate a balanced risk you can create more people who are afraid of a mosquito in the room,” he said.

That’s why Davies spoke up. In an interview Thursday, she said she felt that what the administration and her own department was doing was undermining public health.

“They accused public health of being unprofessional and irresponsible and I couldn’t leave that out there,” she said, worrying that this erosion of trust would undermine the public’s health in the event of an emergency such an outbreak or natural disaster.

Gifford concurred, saying that an administration that minimizes risks to public health can put its own political future in peril.

“When you start politicizing all these things, it takes away from being able to inform the public about them,” he said.

Filed under: General Problems | 1 Comment »

Naloxone “catch and release” prgm is working so well

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Pharmaciststeve

26 heroin overdoses over 4 hours in 1 West Virginia city

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/26-heroin-overdoses-over-4-hours-1-west-virginia-city

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — Officials in a West Virginia city are warning people about an especially dangerous batch of heroin after authorities responded to 26 overdoses in within a four-hour span.

The rash of overdoses came Monday in the city of Huntington, which sits in Cabell County along the Ohio River in the western part of the state. Gordon Merry, the county’s EMS director, said at a news conference Tuesday that the heroin the users had taken was laced with a strong substance, but authorities aren’t sure what it is.

Many of the overdoses were in an area surrounding one apartment complex in the city, he said, leading officials to believe the cases were connected. He said the amount of calls that were received overwhelmed responders.

“Just to give you an idea, when the first few came in, three ambulances were already out dealing with overdoses,” Merry said.

For a half-hour span, there were no ambulances available in the county to send, Cabell County EMS assistant supervisor David McClure added.

Merry said eight of the victims were revived Monday using the opioid-overdose-reversing drug naloxone and others by a manual resuscitator called a bag valve mask to stimulate breathing. One victim was given three doses of naloxone.

Cabell County responded to 39 overdose calls in all of August 2015.

There have been more than 440 overdoses in Huntington from all types of drugs this year through mid-July.

“As a public health problem, this is an epidemic of monumental proportions,” Dr. Michael Kilkenny, director of the Cabell-Huntington Health Department, said. “We really must stop the demand side of the equation. We must attack the issue of addiction.”

Filed under: General Problems | 2 Comments »

Fewer scripts written when medical marijuana is an option

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Pharmaciststeve

By the Numbers: Medical Marijuana

Fewer scripts written when medical marijuana is an option

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/Medicare/59740?xid=NL_breakingnews_2016-08-18&eun=g578717d0r

Two dozen states legalized marijuana for medical use, yet there has been little research into how those policies affect clinical care. Using data from Medicare Part D, Ashley C. Bradford, MD, MPH, and colleagues, set out to see how practices in states with such laws vary from those that don’t.

In a paper for Health Affairs, Bradford compared the average annual daily dose prescriptions for drugs that treat nine conditions shown to be affected by marijuana. Bradford’s team found that, with the exception of two conditions, drugs were prescribed less often in those states that have medical marijuana laws.

The difference was most pronounced in prescriptions of drugs to help relieve pain.

Bradford went a step farther, calculating the cost savings to Medicare from medical marijuana policies were about $165.2 million in 2013 alone. At that time, only 17 states and the District of Columbia had implemented such laws.

“We forecast that if all states were to have adopted a medical marijuana laws by 2013, total spending by Medicare Part D would have been $468.1 million less in that year than it would have been had no state adopted such a law,” Bradford wrote.

Filed under: General Problems | Leave a Comment »

New State Law Regulates Health Insurers’ Prescription Drug Policies

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Pharmaciststeve

New State Law Regulates Health Insurers’ Prescription Drug Policies

http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2016/08/16/new-state-law-regulates-health-insurers-prescription-drug-policies#.V7R44wZVlJk.blogger

Late last week Gov. Bruce Rauner signed legislation regulating health insurance protocols that require patients to start treatment with the least expensive version of a medication their doctor prescribed, even if it means the treatment could fail.

“One of the things insurance companies do sometimes is they’ll say that every single patient, no matter his or her circumstance, must first be started on the cheapest medicine on the insurance company’s formulary (or list of covered medications),” said Mark Heyrman, a clinical professor of law at the University of Chicago specializing in the rights of the mentally disabled.

“Every insurance company is required to have medications to treat all illnesses, so they’ll say, ‘We’ll allow the following medicines to be prescribed but you must start every patient on the absolute cheapest medication.’

“The only way a doctor is allowed to prescribe a more expensive medication is for you to fail on the cheapest, then you move to the next cheapest medication, and then if you fail on this, you’ll move to the next cheapest medication,” Heyrman said.

The practice is known as step therapy. The new law doesn’t eliminate it, but adds some exceptions to it and makes the appeal process more transparent.

“Say I’m on a medication and it’s working for me and I’m stable, and my insurance changes and this medicine is covered under my new insurance. Because I’m stable on this drug, I don’t have to start the step process over again,” said Illinois Rep. Laura Fine (D-Glenview), who sponsored the legislation. “I can keep taking my medication. Prior to this legislation even if you were stable [on a prescribed medication] you’d have to start over if your insurance changed.”

Exceptions to step therapy are also allowed if doctors submit documentation on behalf of their patients showing that a specific medication was already tried and either failed to treat the patient or the patient experienced intolerable side effects.

Fine knows the practice well.

“I was very familiar with [step therapy] because my husband had gone through this six years ago. He was in a bad car accident and he lost his left arm as a result of it,” Fine said. “The doctor knew which medication would work best for him and it took months for our insurance company to cover that. He had to try and fail at two others before he could try this one.”

Step therapy can delay treatment as patients are required to try multiple medications and create more work for doctors who may have to call insurance companies to see if a prescribed medication will be covered or file an appeal when a patient is denied that medication, according to the Alliance for Patient Access, a national network of physicians advocating for patient access to approved therapies and appropriate clinical care.

If a cheaper medication can effectively treat a patient, Heyrman says “there’s nothing wrong with that,” but there are situations that warrant the use of more expensive medications.

“Failure can be catastrophic for the patient. It is often the case that the doctor and the patient will already know that the cheapest medication won’t work,” he said. “There are some medicines in my area of mental health that are not recommended for people who have hypertension or who are overweight or who have diabetes. No reasonable doctor would start you on that medication, and the doctor has a sound clinical reason for not choosing that medication and choosing something else.”

The legislation is the culmination of a yearslong process and compromise, Fine says.

“I worked with advocates and the insurance companies. We found a middle ground that’s really going to help a lot of people,” she added.

The law goes into effect Jan. 1, 2018.

Follow Kristen Thometz on Twitter: @kristenthometz

Filed under: General Problems | 1 Comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »