Posted on 02/04/2008 7:51:11 AM PST by TheThirdRuffian
Tennessee was Fred Thompson's turf until the Senator-turned actor abandoned his 2008 presidential hopes on January 22 with his name still on the ballot and early voting already underway. His departure has left the state's Republican primary race tightly split between John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, while Hillary Clinton, who has long enjoyed the loyalty of state Democrats, is expected to easily carry the Democratic primary on Super Tuesday, thanks in part to party faithful who remember her husband carrying the state in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections with favorite son Al Gore as his running mate.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Senators who weakened drug bill got millions from industry
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-05-10-senators-drug-bill_N.htm
I have a problem with the whole mess thats why I want a president who will take them on and pass the legisaltion to put the pacs out to pasture and demand strict rules on advertising.
Trying to turn arond the facts, to get yourself off the hook for a statement about how the pharma greed is good,
will not change the facts.
Fred doesn’t even have the energy to get up and oppose McCain. Sad state of affairs.
I understand Fred is in the hospital, by the bed of his mother who is dying, like he has been basically every day now for several weeks.
Sorry he isn’t dancing around like a monkey for you, but he has priorities.
By Greed I mean Pushing Oxycotin and controlled substances through untrained dr.’s in the cover of pain clinics, while being wined and dined, paying off the hill through pacs,
lying about the addiction problems and avoiding prosecutions by paying of huge fines for all of this law breaking. as in my post above.
But again Your assumption was Romney defending these pirates, was okay because greed on the market is good.
The negative consequences out weigh the profit motive, therefore McCains stance to clean this up and the other ills in this market, are my sentiments and I will vote for him because the pacs will be out of biz, the paahrmas will become accountable.
Don’t forget that McCain’s Amnesty would wipe out his otherwise fiscal conservatives stances completely.
Making 30 million low-wage illegal aliens legal would open the welfare system floodgates. They won’t make enough money to pay income taxes, but they’ll sure milk all they can from Welfare, Foodstamps, Secion 8 Housing, Medicaid, Free School Lunch programs, etc.
Amnesty will mean a defacto increase of hundreds of billions of dollars in additional ‘safety-net’ social spending. McCain touting his killing the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ and saving a few hundred million is ridiculous in comparison.
If McCain is the nominee, I’m writing Fred’s name in November.
And you don’t have the energy to think of an original untruth. Go with the lame stuff.
If Fred’s name is on the ballot here in MA, tomorrow, I’m voting for him.
Well Fred certainly wasn't a McCain supporter THIS year. He's been out of the race for several weeks, and he hasn't endorsed anyone yet. I don't think he's likely to do so.
Not quite. Mitt's plan requires folks to have health care, but doesn't require a government run system. Folks can choose among the private plans available, though the Commonwealth doesn't allow folks to buy only catastrophic plans and have large HSA's.
Most folks in MA still have plans with their employers. It was those who are self-employed, work for companies too small to offer plans, those who couldn't get private insurance, or just hadn't bought insurance in the past, because they couldn't afford it, or just didn't feel like buying it, who were affected by the requirement.
It actually worked well for us, because we were coming up on the end of the COBRA coverage, which cost us over $13K a year, and since hubby is self-employed, we would have had difficulty getting a plan without it being egregiously expensive. We got the high deductible plan for about $8400 a year and put some money in an HSA.
Being that I’m on six medications for a heart problem that developed recently, I’m all for Big Pharma, especially since the ones I’m on have been around so long, they’re now generics and part of the WalMart $4 per prescription program! WooHoo!
Well, when you put up your own money to do the R&D on a wonder drug, taking the risk, and not knowing if it will succeed or fail, let us know.
There are lots of people using OxyContin, who are very thankful for the existence of the drug, because it has eased their pain. There have been all kinds of prescription drugs, through the years, that ‘kids’ and adults have decided to abuse. Rudy Giuliani didn’t cause the problem, and neither did the drug company.
OXY IS ADDICTIVE and CREATING CRIME!!!!!
MORE CONTROL NEEDED MORE DRs. NEED TRAINING IN
USING IT IN TREATMENT
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5699873/The-OxyContin-epidemic-and-crime.html
National data consistently indicate, however, increases in the number of new pharmaceutical abusers (but not solely oxycodone) and narcotic-related emergency incidents. During the 1980s, the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reported generally fewer than 500,000 people yearly who first used prescription drugs for non-medical purposes. By 1998, the number of first-time users was at 1.6 million persons. Since then, persons reporting at least one non-medical use of OxyContin have increased from 221,000 in 1999 to 1,900,000 in 2002 (National Survey on Drug Use and Health 2003). Federal data indicate that emergency room visits involving oxycodone increased with the introduction of OxyContin. Between 1990 and 1996, emergency room treatment of oxycodone remained stable. After 1996, when OxyContin was first marketed, the number of oxycodone-related emergency room visits skyrocketed from 100 in 1996 to nearly 15,000 in 2002 (Clines and Meier 2001; Emergency Department Trends 2003). Nonetheless, emergency rooms that treat drug-related emergencies report that oxycodone (there is no separate category for OxyContin) is mentioned by patients in less than one percent of all cases (viz., 0.95%). Oxycodone ranks 18th, with alcohol first, acetaminophen sixth, and ibuprofen 13th in frequency of mentions (see Table 1). Although OxyContin use and its connection to drug-related emergencies have increased, oxycodone products evidently remain far less widely used than rhetoric often suggests.
OxyContin diversion and containment
Illegal acts by doctors and pharmacists are the primary means of diverting narcotics, some of which are illicitly sold. Some narcotics users “doctor shop” to find physicians who write prescriptions; in some cases they find multiple doctors to write multiple prescriptions. In some regions of the United States (and particularly in southern Appalachia), “pain clinics” are the primary source of OxyContin prescriptions (many of which result in illegal diversion). But over-prescribing remains the single most common source for OxyContin (and for other oxycodone and hydrocodone narcotics) (Johnson 2003a; OxyContin: Pharmaceutical Diversion 2002).
Alliance for Human Research Protection
AHRP is a national network of lay people and professionals dedicated to advancing responsible and ethical medical research practices, to ensure that the human rights, dignity and welfare of human subjects are protected, and to minimize the risks associated with such endeavors.
US Epidemic: Controlled Prescription Drug Abuse—Teen Drug Abuse Triples in 10 Years_CASA
Sat, 9 Jul 2005
“Our nation is in the throes of an epidemic of controlled prescription drug abuse and addiction,” said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA’s chairman and president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. “While America has been congratulating itself in recent years on curbing increases in alcohol and illicit drug abuse, and in the decline in teen smoking, abuse of prescription drugs has been stealthily, but sharply, rising.”
A report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia Universithy (CASA) about a survey of 979 physicians and 1,030 pharmacists from July 21 to October 31, 2004, provides shocking findings about the explosive abuse of addictive prescription drugs:
“From 1992 to 2003, abuse of controlled prescription drugs grew at a rate twice that of marijuana abuse; five times that of cocaine abuse; 60 times that of heroin abuse.”
CASA notes: “The explosion in the prescription of addictive opioids, depressants and stimulants has, for many children, made their parents’ medicine cabinet a greater temptation and threat than the illegal street drug dealer.”
What the CASA report avoids is holding the real culprits of the epidemic accountable:
This health epidemic is a conseaquence of the irresponsible prescribing of controlled prescription drugs which have been widely advertised. CASA acknowledges that the problem was NOT caused by illicit street junkies, but the report fails to nail the obvious culprits who enticed the public—including impressionable children—to take drugs that promised to make them feel better than ever. This drug epidemic is the consequence of a physician-pharmaceutical orchestrated crime.
The medical / psychiatric community and its professional organizations—especially the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Institute of Mental Health. The AMA and APA are even now attempting to persuade the FDA to withdraw the newly required label warnings about the risks posed by antidepressants and stimulant drugs.
Physicians and medical institutions that have grown wealthy from their collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry have created a drug addiction epidemic that puts the community’s safety at risk.
Perfectly healthy children, teenagers, pregnant women have become victims of professional drug pushers who are licensed by the government.
These same partners in crime have a major financial investment in ensuring a seamless steady flow of new customers for the most expensive psychotropic drugs. To accomplish that goal, they have embarked on a massive hunting expedition to ferret out undetected mental health problems in children—on the basis of a flawed questionnaire whose purpose was designed to expand the client base. TeenScreen has been unleashed in schools across America—although no such diagnostic method has ever been validated.
Nevertheless, TeenScreen has the seal of approval of state mental health offices and the President’s New Freedom Commission report—a commission that was riddled with conflicts of interest. Indeed, the NFC promoted the most controversial psychotropic drug prescribing guide—TMAP (Texas Medication Algorith Project)—to ensure that the most expensive drugs whose hazardous effects are only now being revealed to the public.
Contrary to its claims that TeenScreen “does not receive financial support from and is not affiliated with any pharmaceutical companies” http://www.psychsearch.net/revised_getting_started_guide_final.pdf the Tennesse State Department of Mental Health / Mental Retardation acknowledges in an official publication that:
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