Help The Middle ClassNews and Information For The Heart Of America
Health Care Bill Update: Closing The Medicare ‘Doughnut Hole’ Will Actually Cost Seniors (Washington Post)
Six years after Congress added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, Democrats in the House and Senate are poised to make a central change that they and most older Americans have wanted all along: getting rid of a quirk that forces millions of elderly patients with especially high expenses for medicine to pay for much [...]
FROM THE “THESE GUYS PUT MONEY INTO MY PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN” DEPARTMENT:Obama Flips On ‘Low Cost Drugs’ Campaign Promise, Sides With Pharmaceutical Companies (And Higher Costs) (Washington Post)
On the campaign trail, Barack Obama vowed to take on the drug industry by allowing Americans to import cheaper prescription medicine. “We’ll tell the pharmaceutical companies ‘thanks, but no, thanks’ for the overpriced drugs — drugs that cost twice as much here as they do in Europe and Canada,” he said back then.
On Tuesday, the [...]
SWINE FLU UPDATE – NOVEMBER 6TH
More than 38 million doses of vaccine against pandemic H1N1 influenza are now available for ordering, 11 million more than were available last week and double the number available two weeks ago, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said today. Another 8 million doses are expected to arrive next week “if everything [...]
Special Report: More Than 1M Preemies Die In First Month Annually
More than 1 million babies born prematurely die each year before they are a month old, the March of Dimes said Sunday in the first comprehensive global report on premature births.
The organization suggested the situation could worsen if the rate of premature births increases.
Each year, 12.9 million infants — or nearly 10 percent of the [...]
Most Babies Born This Century Will Live To 100
Most babies born in rich countries this century will eventually make it to their 100th birthday, new research says. Danish experts say that since the 20th century, people in developed countries are living about three decades longer than in the past. Surprisingly, the trend shows little sign of slowing down.
In an article published Friday in [...]
Democrats And Republicans ‘Poke Holes’ In Health Care Plan. Question Deal Obama And Baucus Did With Drug Makers
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) faced an early test of his leadership Wednesday after fellow Democrats challenged the $80 billion deal he struck with drug makers to help pay for health-care reform.
Nearing the end of a 13-hour opening day of work on Baucus’s bill to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, several committee members [...]
Manufacturing Overload Causes Delays In Swine Flu Deliveries
Faced with an unexpected delay, health officials are trying to counter new problems with swine flu vaccine production including a logjam at factories that put the precious liquid into syringes.
The newest calculations show the nation won’t have the long-promised 120 million doses ready to dispense by Oct. 15, but just 45 million instead. It appears [...]
Thousands Line Up for Promise of Free Health Care
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — They came for new teeth mostly, but also for blood pressure checks, mammograms, immunizations and acupuncture for pain. Neighboring South Los Angeles is a place where health care is scarce, and so when it was offered nearby, word got around.
For the second day in a row, thousands of people lined up on [...]
From The Huffington Post: Internal Memo Confirms POTUS & White House Cut Secret Deal With Big Pharma
A memo obtained by the Huffington Post confirms that the White House and the pharmaceutical lobby secretly agreed to precisely the sort of wide-ranging deal that both parties have been denying over the past week.
The memo, which according to a knowledgeable health care lobbyist was prepared by a person directly involved in the negotiations, lists [...]
OPINION / Dr. Andrew Weil – Let’s Take the Stomachache Out of Health Care Reform: One Patient’s Story
In discussing health care reform, it’s easy to become mired in statistics and abstractions, so let’s examine it in personal terms. Here’s the story of a patient I saw recently that provides a specific example of what medicine does now — and what, in my view, it must learn to do.
The man was relatively healthy, [...]
