Government–Mandated Waste Drives Up Prescription Drug Co$t$

Just Like Food “Expiration” Dates, Drug “Expiration” Dates Are Also Fake… And It’s Co$ting You BIGTIME

Hospitals and pharmacies are required to toss expired drugs, no matter how expensive or vital. Meanwhile the FDA has long known that many remain safe and potent for years longer.

The box of prescription drugs had been forgotten in a back closet of a retail pharmacy for so long that some of the pills predated the 1969 moon landing. Most were 30 to 40 years past their expiration dates – possibly toxic, probably worthless.
But to Lee Cantrell, who helps run the California Poison Control System, the cache was an opportunity to answer an enduring question about the actual shelf life of drugs: Could these drugs from the bell-bottom era still be potent? 

Cantrell called Roy Gerona, a University of California, San Francisco, researcher who specializes in analyzing chemicals. Gerona had grown up in the Philippines, and had seen people recover from sickness by taking expired drugs with no apparent ill effects.

“This was very cool,” Gerona says. “Who gets the chance of analyzing drugs that have been in storage for more than 30 years?” 

Pharmacist and Toxicologist Lee Cantrell tested medicines that had been “expired” for decades. Most of them were still potent enough to be on shelves today. (Lee Huffaker for ProPublica)

The age of the drugs might have been bizarre, but the question the researchers wanted to answer wasn’t. Pharmacies across the country in major medical centers and in neighborhood strip malls routinely toss out tons of scarce and potentially valuable prescription drugs when they hit their expiration dates.

Gerona and Cantrell, a pharmacist and toxicologist, knew that the term “expiration date” was a misnomer. The dates on drug labels are simply

Your Child May Not Truly Be Allergic To Penicillin

Reported penicillin allergies in children usually inconsistent with true allergy

Jul 3, 2017

Clinical Essentials from Pediatrics

Takeaway
• Parent-reported penicillin allergy symptoms in children presenting to the emergency department (ED) are likely inconsistent with true, immunoglobulin E-mediated allergy when evaluated by the 3-tier penicillin allergy questionnaire.

• Data demonstrate that the true incidence of penicillin allergy is 0.004%-0.015%.

Why this matters
• Because of time constraints and invasiveness associated with standard allergy testing, an allergy pediatric questionnaire may optimize first-line penicillin use in children presenting with the ED with parent-reported penicillin allergies.

• Data suggest that the majority of reported pediatric penicillin allergy symptoms (eg, maculopapular rash, hives, vomiting, diarrhea) are actually low risk for true allergy.

Study design
• This study evaluated 597 children between the ages of

Mobile Alabama MD & Medical Practice Settle Medicare, Medicaid & TRICARE Fraud Claims

The Department of Justice, United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District, announced that Mobile, Alabama physician Dr. James Matthew Crumb, MD (AL license number MD.24535, AL Controlled Substances Certificate ACSC.245, National Provider Identifier: 1629079793 ) a Physical Medicine and Rehabilitative physician who currently practices as Mobility Metabolism and Wellness (MMW), and a local neurosurgeon group Coastal Neurological Institute, P.C. (CNI), 3280 Dauphin Street, Suite A, Mobile, AL 36606-4060, (NPI:1740212174), have collectively paid $1.4 million to settle allegations that they violated the False Claims Act (“FCA”) by engaging in fraudulent schemes to maximize payment from the Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE health care programs.

In late December 2015, the United States Attorney’s Office filed a civil lawsuit against Defendants CNI, Crumb, and MMW, on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense, alleging that the Defendants knowingly billed federal health care programs for

Does $2.9M Jury Verdict Put Western State Hospital, Lakewood, WA On The Ropes?

For those unaware, with well over 800 beds, Western State Hospital is the largest psychiatric hospital West of the Mississippi River. And unfortunately, it has a pockmarked history, and was in jeopardy of losing over $65M in Federal funding from CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) because of gross negligence at the hospital so severe that it was in jeopardy of losing ALL it’s CMS funding.

With well over 800 beds, Western State Hospital, Lakewood, WA is the largest psychiatric hospital West of the Mississippi River.

Chronic rampant abuse and neglect has ranged from staff sexual abuse of patients, patient-on-patient and patient-on-staff violence,  numerous escapes by criminally violent murderers – which caused the CEO to be fired by the Governor, and “wait-listing” dementia patients which may result in the new CEO’s incarceration. They no longer have national Joint Commission certification. The list of criminal wrong-doing at the facility is extensive, and violence alone has cost millions in hospital bills for staff and patients, including time lost from work, and lawsuits.

As the hospital faced inevitable death from loss of $65M in federal funds, a veritable federal hatchet, the state legislature made last-ditch efforts to salvage a rotten-to-the-core system by hiring hundreds of staff, and approved a TEMPORARY pay increase, with retention bonuses, and made other efforts to put lipstick on a dead pig.

According to one senior staff member

#Trump’s Billionaire Care

“We don’t have it; we can’t afford it, and we don’t make enough to be penalized at the end of the year so either which way it goes we don’t have the money to pay for it,” he said. 

Under the Affordable Care Act, millions more Americans now have insurance through online exchanges and Medicaid. But like the Wallaces, many still lack coverage, especially in states like Tennessee where elected leaders declined to expand Medicaid. 

The Wallaces were camped out on a blanket outside Red Bank High School in Chattanooga on a Friday afternoon, the day before the clinic was set to open Saturday morning.

They said they make too much money for Medicaid, and they looked into an Obamacare exchange plan but couldn’t afford the premiums. 

President Trump has promised to replace the ACA with something better. But the Congressional Budget Office estimates a plan passed by the House of Representatives would leave 23 million more Americans uninsured, and Senate Republicans have yet to reveal the details of their plan. 

Are you over 65 & taking statin meds? Know anyone who is? It may not be worth it.

If you’re a prescriber, consider this research. If you’re a patient, or know someone who is, consider this for your, or their well-being.

—//—

Statins Have No Primary CVD Prevention Benefit To Older Patients

Takeaway
Statins offer no benefit for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in adult patients aged ≥65 y.

Why this matters
“[S]tatins may be producing untoward effects in the function or health of older adults that could offset any possible cardiovascular benefit,” say the study authors.

Study design
Researchers conducted post hoc secondary data analyses of patient data from a randomized, open-label clinical trial (N=2867; age, ≥65 y; 49.4% women; all without evidence of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease); patients were assigned to either a treatment group receiving pravastatin sodium 40 mg/d or a usual care (UC) group.
Funding: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; AstraZeneca; Bristol-Myers Squibb; Pfizer; National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences; The Stroke Foundation.

Key results
Hazard ratios for all-cause mortality in the treatment group vs the UC group were

How can you know if you’re in an Emotionally Abusive Relationship?

Just because there’s no physical violence, does that mean a relationship isn’t abusive?

No.

The adage, “can’t see the forest for the trees” is particularly true in emotionally abusive relationships, and it’s not uncommon for men and women in them to be unable to identify the relationship as being abusive.

Why is that?

It goes back to 1973 and an unsuccessful bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden in which two perpetrators – both repeat offender prisoners – took four hostages, three women and one man. Over the six days they were held, the hostages began to identify and sympathize with their captors.

Hostages in the Norrmalmstorg Kreditbanken bank vault, Stockholm, Sweden. The 1973 robbery gave rise to the term “Stockholm Syndrome” which characterized a scenario in which captives sympathized with their captors.

As the standoff was ending, police called for the hostages to come out first, but the four captives – who protected their abductors to the very end – refused. One female hostage, 23-year old Kristin Enmark, called out, “No, Jan and Clark go first—you’ll gun them down if we do! We want to leave with the robber!”

When police seized the gunmen, two female hostages cried sympathetically, “Don’t hurt them – they didn’t harm us!”

When interviewed by investigators and others following the crisis’ conclusion, the hostages reported fearing Law Enforcement Officers’ rescue effort attempts, and felt their captors were protecting them from harm. The bonds formed during that stand-off had become so strong that there were reports of one female hostage who had been engaged to be married to one of the kidnappers – which was later discovered to be false, though it is true that one hostage developed a Legal Defense Fund to help pay the perpetrators’ criminal defense costs.

Researcher Ian K.Mackenzie wrote
in “Journal For Police Crisis Negotiations”
that Stockholm Syndrome consisted of:
“strong emotional ties that develop between two persons
where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.”

Psychological researchers utilizing the FBI’s Hostage Barricade Database System (HOBAS) – the only entity that compiles national statistics on crisis incidents (hostage, barricade, and/or suicide) which are used in research and decision making – found that

Remember American Nurses: 100 years ago WW I’s first casualties – Edith Ayers & Helen Woods

Mrs. Edith Ayres, Illinois Training School Nurse of the Class of 1913. Mrs. Ayres was the first American female casualty of WWI, and was buried with military honors at her home in Attica, Ohio.

Among the first casualties of World War I were two Army Nurses – US Army Nurse Corps Edith Ayers, of Attica, OH, and USANC Helen Burnett Woods, of Evanston, IL who were attached to Base Hospital 12 aboard the USS Mongolia – a passenger vessel which was converted into an armored troop carrier and hospital for the Army March 1917 – en route to France, and died 20 May 1917. Also wounded was Miss Emma Matzen, of the Illinois Training School, Class of 1913.

Miss Helen Burnett Wood was a Nurse graduate of the Evanston Hospital Training School, and was one of the was the first two casualties of WW I.

At that time, military Nurses held no rank.

Woods was attached to the U.S. Army Base Hospital, No. 12, also known as the Northwestern University Base Hospital, because a majority of its personnel came out of the university. In May 1917, she received her official orders to join the Base Hospital staff on its way to New York where the staff would embark for Europe.

The two women were on the Mongolia’s deck observing various weapons firing and were struck by fragments of the 6-inch gun’s propellant caps which had ricocheted off a stanchion.

Their deaths were so shocking to the nation, especially to their respective communities, that following their accidental, and untimely deaths, a Senate hearing – “Casualties Aboard Steamship “Monogolia”” before the Committee on Naval Affairs – was conducted. {Local file, PDF: Casualties Aboard Steamship Mongolia Hearings}

Mrs. Edith Ayres was a graduate of

Deceit And Treachery Continue In #ALpolitics

In case you’ve been under a rock for the past 4 years or more, Alabama’s two-term Republican Governor Dr. Dr. Robert Bentley, M.D. was forced to resign from office amidst ongoing impeachment proceedings resulting from a sex & corruption scandal in which he significantly abused the power of the office for personal gain, then under pressure, and facing possible felony charges, entered a plea agreement in which he pled guilty to two misdemeanor campaign finance violations, agreed to other court-ordered stipulations including never again to “seek or serve in any public office,” pay fines & court costs, surrender campaign funds, render Community Service as a physician, submitted his resignation, whereupon Republican Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey – formerly State Treasurer – took office as Governess.

It seemed most everybody was happy as a lark.

Until…

Until those damn pesky reporters started snooping around the back door.

Then, it turns out, they found evidence that strongly suggests she isn’t in good health, and so much so to the extent that her ability to govern and think clearly may be called into question.

According to an investigative report and story by Josh Moon, a Journalist with Alabama Political Reporter, “Gov. Kay Ivey’s office declined to confirm on Thursday that she had been admitted to a Colorado hospital for “stroke-like” issues in April 2015, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency all but did.

Which Are The Best & Worst States For Registered Nurses?

Like most segments of the economy, the nursing industry is in a state of significant transition under the weight of major socioeconomic dynamics — from the aging U.S. population to the student-loan crisis to concerns about the future of key entitlement programs. But such concerns are not unique among recent graduates, regardless of industry.

More specific to nursing professionals are the various day-to-day demands placed on them, such as mandatory overtime, overstaffing, unionization and allegations of systemic disrespect. Despite those challenges, however, aspiring nurses have much to look forward to upon certification. Nursing occupations are some of the most lucrative careers with the lowest unemployment rates in the U.S. In fact, the industry is expected to grow at more than double the rate of the average occupation through 2024.

With such bright projections, WalletHub’s analysts took stock of the nursing industry to help registered nurses, particularly the newly minted of the bunch, lay down roots in areas that are conducive to both personal and professional success. We did so by comparing the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 18 key metrics that collectively speak to the nursing-job opportunities in each market. Below, you can check out our findings, expert commentary on the state of the nursing industry as well as the methodology we used to conduct this report.

BIG INSURANCE Companies Fear Single Payer For ONE Reason

A friend had shared the opening paragraph, upon which I remarked.

My response follows.

“At the risk of stating the obvious, I feel compelled to note that insurance companies do not exist to provide health care. They exist to make money. Big money. Big money at your time of greatest vulnerability. This happens by raising income as much as possible and limiting “risk” as much as possible. Now go ponder the implications.”

—/—

And that is the single greatest reason why a

LET MY PEOPLE GO!

The Exodus

Frans Francken I. Hans skola: Den rike mannen och Lazarus. NM 429 (Frans Francken I, aka Frans Francken the Elder (1542-1616), His school: The rich man and Lazarus.)

I have seen your religion, and I hate it.
I have heard your doctrine, and I loathe it.
Take away your empty praise songs,
your vacuous worshiptainment.
Your mouth is full of religious words,
but your proverbs are salted manure.

“The sick deserve to be sick.
The poor deserve to be poor.
The rich deserve to be rich.
The imprisoned deserve to be imprisoned.”
Because you never saw him sick, or poor, or in prison.

“If he had followed police instructions,
if he had minded the company he keeps,
he would not have been killed,”
You say in the hearing
of a man hanging on a cross
between two thieves.

“People who live good lives
do not have pre-existing conditions,” you say,
carving these words over the hospital door:
“Who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he was born blind?”

“It is the church’s job, not the government’s,”
say you fat sheep,
defending your fat shepherds,
shoving and butting with shoulders and horns,
while you foul the water,
grass,
and air,
and scatter the hungry sheep.

You watch the melting glaciers and say to the waves of the sea,
“this far shall you come, and no farther,”
as if your will could change the weather,

Money Trumps Life: GOP politicians are the Death Panelists about which Sarah Palin warned.

Calling out EVERY TRUMP VOTER!

Sarah Palin’s “Death Panels” are now Donald Trump & the GOP’s gift to you!

They WILL kill you & your grannies, grandpas, kids, wife, relatives, family, and YOU!

DO NOT BE DECEIVED!

In their world, Money Trumps Life!

—

By Yvonne Foster

“I have atrial fibrillation and arthritis, my husband is pre-diabetic and has had heart surgery, our daughter is asthmatic. None of this is through any fault of our own.

“I have shed tears today not only for my family but millions of others like us. What is going to happen to all these people? Healthcare should not be something available only to the rich.

“I have seen evil before, but I’ve never looked this kind of evil in the eye until I looked at Trump and

Can We #RepealAndReplace #ObamaCare?

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka ACA, or more often as “ObamaCare”) might be analogized to an onion, insofar as:
1.) It has many layers, and;
2.) Peeling back the layers may cause tears.

Enacted in 2010, it has been decried primarily by Republicans, none of whom voted for the bill’s passage, either in the House, which approved it 219-212 with 34 Democrats voting “NO” – or in the Senate, which approved it 60-39 along party lines, with 1 Republican (Jim Bunning, KY) “Not Voting.”

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act contains nine titles, each addressing an essential component of reform:
1.) Quality, Affordable Health Care For All Americans
2.) The Role Of Public Programs
3.) Improving The Quality And Efficiency Of Health Care

4.) Prevention Of Chronic Disease And Improving Public Health
5.) Health Care Workforce
6.) Transparency And Program Integrity

7.) Improving Access To Innovative Medical Therapies
8.) Community Living Assistance Services And Supports
9.) Revenue Provisions

Immediate improvements through reform included:
• Eliminate lifetime and unreasonable annual limits on benefits
• Prohibit rescissions of health insurance policies
• Provide assistance for those who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition

• Require coverage of preventive services and immunizations
• Extend dependent coverage up to age 26
• Develop uniform coverage documents so consumers can make apples to apples comparisons when shopping for health insurance

• Cap insurance company non-medical, administrative expenditures
• Ensure consumers have access to an effective appeals process and provide consumers a place to turn for assistance navigating the appeals process and accessing their coverage
• Create a temporary re-insurance program to support coverage for early retirees

• Establish an Internet portal to assist Americans in identifying coverage options
• Facilitate administrative simplification to lower health system costs

While no law is perfect – and the ACA is not perfect – there are provisions within it which many think worthy of keeping, notable among them, provisions for guaranteed coverage, prohibiting cancellation, extending dependent’s coverage, removing annual & lifetime limits,

Remembering Alabama OB-GYN Dr. Larry Stutts, MD, DVM

“Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.”

-Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), Rambler #2 (March 24, 1750)

Dr. Larry Stutts, MD, DVM was elected as a Republican to Alabama State Senate District 6 in 2014 by a 70-vote margin. His 36-year-old patient Rose Church, RN died 10 days after giving birth in 1998 because he refused to order a $5 test, and sent her home from the hospital early.

After narrowly winning election in 2014 by 70 votes in Alabama State Senate District 6, Dr. Larry Stutts, MD, DVM, a Republican, immediately wrote a bill (SB289) to repeal Code of Alabama Title 27-48-2, commonly known as “Rose’s Law,” which unanimously passed the House & Senate and become law in 1999.

“Rose’s Law” was written in response to the death of Stutts’ patient, Rose Church, a 36-year-old Registered Nurse, who died of a heart attack 10 days after giving birth to a girl in 1998 at Helen Keller Hospital. A simple $5 test could have saved her life, but Stutts’ refused to order the test, and sent her home early.

“Roses Law” gave women in Alabama a legal right to remain in hospital for 48 hours after a normal live birth, 96 hours if the birth was Cesarean or presented a complication, and required insurers in Alabama to pay for the stay.

Stutts’ bill (SB289) would have repealed “Rose’s Law,” and would have also repealed a State law requiring physicians to

Rethinking Addiction

Perhaps you’ve studied the 12-Step program, or perhaps you’ve practiced it. I have done both. Practicing it was not as a matter of addiction, or any such thing for myself, but instead, was a part of my personal spiritual growth and development.

Over the years, I’ve heard commentary, or news features which interviewed people with divergent perspectives on 12-Step programs, most notably which were skeptical of them, and were thoughtfully seeking answers themselves for the “whys and wherefores” of substance abuse, whether it’s long-term or temporary, and whether it is a genetic fault, or if it is a personality or character flaw in response to external or internal stressors. In other words, it’s the classic “Heredity vs Environment” argument.

As I have come to view it, there is validity for both sides, but I think the stronger case is made for a combination of environment and character flaw, instead of genetic defect.

—/—

“In his recent book, The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry, Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor from Harvard Medical School, looked at Alcoholics Anonymous’s retention rates along with studies on sobriety and rates of active involvement (attending meetings regularly and working the program) among AA members. Based on these data, he put AA’s actual success rate somewhere between 5 and 8 percent. That is just a rough estimate, but it’s the most precise one I’ve been able to find.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/

The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous
By Gabrielle Glaser, April 2015 Issue
Its faith-based 12-step program dominates treatment in the United States. But researchers have debunked central tenets of AA doctrine and found

#Suicide Surge Has Small Alabama Town And County Talking #ALpolitics

A surge in suicides in a small Alabama town and county has people talking.

With 7 suicides in less than two full months this year (2017), the rate is almost half what it was all last year (2016) – 15.

Unfortunately however, it seems for the greatest part, that’s all they’re doing… talking.

It’s the NIMBY problem in full bloom.

But as Christians, we are called to “bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

When we not only pretend that these, or other human problems – including healthcare – don’t exist, or ignore any potential discussion or solution, we also deny Christ, who said

Late Term #Abortion Story

Should the government tell you what you can, and cannot do with your body?

We chose to have a funeral and now have a spot in a Blacksburg cemetery where we can visit her whenever we are near. Having a gravesite, I know, was a huge help in the grieving process for Matt.

Are you now government property?

Are you a slave?

Are you not entitled by law to FREEDOM to decide for yourself what is good, and best for yourself?

Or, are we in a “Nanny State” in which politicians and bureaucrats tell you what to do, when to eat, what to wear, where to live, who to love, and when to shower?

Lindsey Paradiso, and her husband Matt, had to make an untenable choice because their unborn infant daughter was diagnosed with a disease from which she would most likely not live… not even a few days.

And indeed, her heart stopped beating before she was at term.

I am so lucky to have such a strong and wonderful man to stand beside. We had just been admitted to the hospital for labor induction after having Omara’s heart stopped.

—/—

https://www.facebook.com/lindsey.shaffer/posts/10105763587970982

This ultrasound photo was the first time I really began to understand what was going on.

This is ending a wanted pregnancy.
This is late-term abortion.

It was

End ObamaCare’s Health Insurance Monopoly

Fact is, “ObamaCare” – which is properly known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or ACA for short – though it’s monikered with POTUS Obama’s name, was largely a Republican brainchild from the über-conservative Heritage Institution.

The cornerstone of the act is predicated upon two items which are the very heart of the act: 1.) Guaranteed Coverage, and; 2.) Community Rating.

In was, in essence

Yet Another Real Life Story And Reason Why #Abortion Should NOT Be…

A longtime, and dear friend recently chose to share her own very personal story.

I share it here with her permission.

Though I am certain she would not object, I have chosen to omit her name.

The reader should be aware that Ethan is her and her husband’s young boy, and firstborn.

Used With Permission

—/—

This is private, but I am going to put it out there to put a face on an issue for some of my friends.

On Tuesday, I lost two great sources of hope for the future. One was the election, but the other was more personal. Midday, before the polls ever closed, and right as I was returning one turf to Headquarters to pick up another, I got a phone call that brought me to my knees.

I was pregnant, ya’ll. I was 11 weeks on Election Day, and it had been a dicey start, but we thought we had made it. We were already discussing adorable ways to make it FB official. We anxiously awaited the results of this genetic test that would tell us the sex, so we could hopefully rest a bit easier if it was a girl (because of the pattern of kidney disease in my family).

The doc gently informed me that it was a little boy, and he had trisomy 18. Either I would naturally miscarry, or I would watch my baby die a slow and painful death over the course of a few days, months, or maybe a year. My worst nightmare was coming true, and I was terrified that I would