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  • Medical Racism Is Fueling the Black Overdose Crisis, Advocates Say

    A activist speaks passionately as people behind him display signs decrying the NYPD's handling of the opoid crisis

    Quána Madison is diagnosed with multiple conditions that send pain coursing through her entire body on a daily basis. Madison is also a Black woman, and medical professionals don’t always believe her.

    The pain became too much to bear on a summer day in 2017. Madison felt new pain and was unable to walk, so she checked into an emergency room near her home in Denver, Colorado. Before the visit was over, Madison says, she was assaulted, accused of “drug-seeking” and made to fear being arrested.

    Madison has lived with chronic pain for years, but her pain worsened after she suffered a life-threatening complication from a preventive hysterectomy and oophorectomy performed after she was found to be at risk for cancer. By 2017, Madison was diagnosed with several chronic pain syndromes, including fibromyalgia and peripheral neuropathy, along with autoimmune diseases, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Madison says she left a doctoral program after the school failed to provide accommodations. She often woke up screaming from pain in the middle of the night.

    At the emergency room, a nurse arrived to draw a blood sample. Madison’s medical conditions make having blood drawn painful and, following the advice of a doctor she’d previously seen, Madison explained to the nurse that she may cry out. She requested a warm compress to ease the pain, but the nurse refused. The nurse tried multiple times to draw blood and failed. Madison was in tears, but she says the nurse was frustrated, gripping her arm tightly. Madison asked to see another nurse. The nurse, who was white, accused Madison of exaggerating her pain in order to get painkillers, an all-too-common experience among Black people seeking medical care. Madison took out her phone to record a video.

    Two people sit in an outdoor garden, one white and the other Black
    Quána Madison and her partner, Zachariah White, near their home in Colorado. Madison suffers from multiple painful conditions, but medical providers have withheld painkillers and accused her of “drug seeking” amid a nationwide crackdown on opioid prescribing.

    “I’ve learned as a Black woman that if I don’t record something or have a witness, I am not believed until I show the recording, and I’ve had to use that strategy multiple times to get basic care,” Madison said in an interview.

    The nurse lunged for the phone as Madison began to record. Alarmed, Madison’s partner, who is white, attempted to calm the nurse down. The nurse announced that she was calling the police and left. A police officer arrived and began asking questions and Madison feared she was going to jail. The nurse told the officer that Madison was looking for drugs.

    “All I could think of think was: I have to logically explain this step by step so I don’t get arrested. I was terrified that I was about to get arrested if [the officer] doesn’t believe me,” Madison said, adding that she never asked the nurse for painkillers. “I hadn’t even made it to, how are we going to manage my pain?”

    Finally, a supervising doctor intervened and drew Madison’s blood himself. The police officer eventually left. Still in overwhelming pain that rendered her nearly immobile, Madison was told to find treatment somewhere else.

    It wasn’t the first time Madison experienced racism in the medical system. After the hysterectomy and oophorectomy surgery, which involve the removal of the uterus and ovaries, Madison was left in extreme pain without receiving a painkiller for nearly two hours until she finally called a family member and begged them to contact the hospital. Afterwards, she was prescribed far fewer painkillers than white people she knows who underwent the same procedure, and she is routinely denied referrals to pain specialists.

    Stories like Madison’s receive little attention in the media despite well-documented racism and bias against patients of color across the health care system, especially against Black, Latino and Indigenous patients. Years of research shows that Black (as well Latino and Asian) patients are far less likely to receive pain medication than white patients and are systematically undertreated for pain, often because providers wrongly believe Black people have a higher pain tolerance or suspect they are “drug seekers” abusing or selling painkillers. The latter racist bias, of course, is rooted in the war on drugs that has targeted Black communities for decades.

    Black Overdose Deaths Spike

    Around the same time that a nurse called the police on Madison, a team of researchers published a study comparing rates of fatal drug overdose between the white and Black populations. Starting in the early 1990s, painkiller prescribing became more liberal for white patients thanks to changes in medical thinking and marketing by pharmaceutical companies, the team reported, but prescribing remained low among Black patients. By 2010, the rate of fatal overdose involving opioids was twice as high among whites than Black people. Critics of “overprescribing” concluded that discrimination had spared an estimated 14,000 Black lives, even if Black patients were more likely to be left in agony by racist prescribers.

    However, the federal data analyzed in this study is probably inaccurate and clearly does not tell the whole story. Overdoses are often the result of a combination of drugs, including alcohol, and errors on death certificate are very common. In 2018, analysts revealed that tens of thousands of deaths involving black market synthetics such as fentanyl and its analogues had been attributed to prescription drugs by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Last year, researchers concluded that the public was “misled” for more than a decade to believe that, as one White House report put it, “opiate overdoses, once almost always due to heroin use, are now increasingly due to abuse of prescription painkillers.”

    While experts say pain pills did shape the crisis early on, particularly in whiter communities, rapid reductions in prescribing and the availability of crushable pills pushed users toward an increasing volatile heroin supply. Other measures were also taken. Oxycontin, for example, was reformulated to deter injection drug users. After 2010, rates of fatal overdose among Black and white people converged and continued to climb.

    By 2018, as patients on long-term opioid therapy struggled to obtain medication or even see a doctor, many experts agreed that painkiller “overprescribing” was not causing the overdose crisis. The American Medical Association declared a “multi-factorial” crisis that could no longer be viewed through “a prescription opioid-myopic lens.” Overdose death rates among Black people more than doubled from 2011 to 2015, researchers noted, but the increase could not be explained by the “shift” from prescription painkillers to heroin seen in white communities.

    Deep racial disparities in health care and a lopsided response to the overdose crisis are now associated with an alarming spike in death. The estimated number of fatal drug overdoses in the U.S. hit a record over the past year, surpassing 100,000 deaths — roughly a 30 percent increase over 2018-2019. Experts say the current approach to the crisis is not working, especially in communities of color.

    A National Institutes of Health study released in September found that fatal overdoses among Black people across four states increased by 38 percent between 2018 and 2019 while there was little change among white people and other groups. In New York, overdose deaths declined by 18 percent for white people but stayed stable among the Black population, suggesting that Black patients did not benefit equally from addiction treatment and overdose prevention efforts.

    “We must explicitly examine and address how structural racism affects health and leads to drug use and overdose deaths,” concluded Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said in a statement.

    “Whitewashing” the Overdose Crisis

    Over the past two decades, media outlets ran sensational stories about young people from whiter communities who were prescribed opioids and later became addicted to heroin. Although this is a real problem, and untreated trauma and mental illness have emerged as key indicators of addiction risk, research now shows that prescriptions are not the major drivers of addiction or overdose. Today, studies show the vast majority of people prescribed opioids under medical supervision do not overdose or become addicted, and most of today’s overdose victims are not yesterday’s patients.

    Meanwhile, throughout the 2000s and beyond, media observers often drew a distinction between rural and suburban white people falling victim to pain pills and Black and Brown people injecting heroin in urban areas where a legitimate prescription is more difficult to obtain. The death of actor Philip Seymore Hoffman in 2014 “crystalized a decade of media fascination with the white prescription opioid cum heroin user,” according to a 2017 analysis by the Drug Policy Alliance. The narrative about innocent white people duped by the pharmaceutical industry is just the latest “whitewashing” of opioid-related issues.

    The history of opioid consumption in the United States is cyclical; periodic increases in prescribing and use are followed by crackdowns and outcry. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, white people who could afford medical care were considered “victims” if they became addicted to painkillers, according to a 2020 paper co-authored by Sarah Wakeman, a professor of medicine at Harvard. In the 1950s and 1960s, access to family doctors allowed the upper middle class to shift from opioids to sedative and stimulant pills that carried less stigma. Meanwhile, lower-income people, immigrants and people of color who informally accessed opioids for pain and other ailments were demonized and criminalized, a type of racism that escalated when President Nixon declared the “war on drugs” in 1970.

    With white faces painted on the latest opioid scare, cops and lawmakers touted a more compassionate approach to addiction and began investing in treatment as an alternative to jail time, which leaves anyone dependent on opioids at extreme risk for overdose. President Obama tentatively embraced a “public health” approach. The Trump administration deployed similar rhetoric as law enforcement continued reducing the opioid supply. While programs remain limited and underfunded, and criminalization persists (and has even been heightened on some fronts), some policymakers began embracing harm reduction strategies such as improving access to medications that treat addiction and reverse overdoses. New York City recently announced the nation’s first legally sanctioned overdose prevention center, where people can use drugs under medical supervision and connect with services — a strategy proven to save lives.

    Black activists saw a double standard. In the 1980s and 1990s, the media fixated on the “crack epidemic” in Black communities, and the escalating criminalization that followed filled streets with police and helped make the U.S. the most incarcerated nation on the planet. By 1995, one-third of young Black men in cities were entrapped in the criminal legal system and urban neighborhoods were cast as the epicenters of addiction. Harm reduction would not enter the mainstream conversation until authorities declared an “opioid epidemic” as the media covered prescription drug abuse in white communities.

    Harm reduction and efforts to expand addiction treatment appeared to be helping in 2017 and 2018, when overdose deaths began to decline in some regions for the first time in years. Yet overdose death rates in Black and Latinx communities continued to rise across the country. Then the pandemic hit, isolating users from health supports, friends and family; 2020 would be the deadliest year on record.

    The New Victims: Pain Patients

    The opioid overdose wave has prompted a police crackdown, although its nature has been somewhat different from that of the “crack era.” Law enforcement fixates on “diversion,” the idea that prescription drugs are falling into the wrong hands — perhaps drug dealers or the “opioid naïve” white people portrayed in news stories. Thanks to a mix of regulation, electronic surveillance and old-fashioned drug raids on clinics and pharmacies that have terrified providers and put hundreds in prison, opioid prescribing plummeted by 60 percent over the last decade. The outgoing Trump administration declared that the “prescription opioid epidemic” is over, but the total number of drug overdose deaths more than doubled since 2011.

    Prescription pills are much safer than street drugs, as potency is measured down to the milligram, making it easier for users to know how much they’re taking. Yet pharmacies in Black communities are less likely to carry painkillers than pharmacies in whiter areas, and discrimination in the job market has left Black patients with fewer insurance options to cover pain management and addiction treatment. Across the country, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has suspended or revoked pharmacy licenses for dispensing painkillers, and Black pharmacists say they are unfairly targeted.

    “They treated me exactly like a criminal,” said Aaron Howard, a Black pharmacist in Florida who was raided by the DEA in 2018, in an interview.

    The DEA claimed Howard failed to “resolve” so-called “red flags” for diversion when a handful of patients were prescribed more than one controlled substance and chose his small pharmacy over others located closer to their homes. The DEA regularly tracks the distance between a patient’s address and the pharmacy where they fill prescriptions, according to multiple DEA search warrants reviewed by Truthout, but most patients are unaware of this surveillance. Howard said he’s known the patients for years, and to his knowledge, they are still taking the medications as prescribed by their doctors.

    Counterfeit pills are now common in the informal market, where people facing barriers to health care are known to seek relief. As police have aggressively pursued illegal heroin, traffickers have turned to potent synthetics that mimic heroin’s effects but can be transported in smaller packages. In some areas, low-level sellers improvise by mixing drugs into dangerous combinations when the supply of opioids runs short. At the same time, some drug dealers practice harm reduction to protect their clients by warning clients about strong batches, testing drugs for adulterants, and distributing test strips and other safety supplies. Experts say drug sellers are an under-utilized resource for preventing overdose.

    We now know that today’s overdose crisis does not stem from prescriptions. People are dying from large and often combined doses of powerful synthetic opioids in the heroin and cocaine supply, as well as drugs ranging from alcohol to stimulants and benzodiazepines. In 2019, a study in Massachusetts found that only 1.3 percent of overdose victims had an active painkiller prescription. The study was small but became the latest source of vindication for pain patients who say they face discrimination and have lost access to painkillers because doctors and pharmacists operate in fear of law enforcement. Some say they can no longer function; others commit suicide.

    The “don’t punish pain” movement is growing louder as policymakers reconsider controversial limits on prescribing and courts become increasingly skeptical of the myriad lawsuits accusing drug makers of creating the crisis with misleading advertising. (Other lawsuits were successful, of course, including the class-action case against Purdue Pharma, which aggressively pushed Oxycontin two decades ago and saw a judge overturn a $4.5 billion bankruptcy settlement protecting the Sackler family last week.) Many white pain patients are experiencing the impacts of drug policing for the first time, and they are angry about barriers to pain relief. According to the statistics, Black patients have always faced these barriers.

    A Drug War Inside the Health System

    There are no hard and fast rules in the overdose crisis; every drug user’s interactions (or lack thereof) with the medical and criminal legal systems are different. However, like Madison, Black and Brown people are more likely to be viewed as “addicts” or “criminals” rather than “patients.” A recent investigation across 21 states found that Black people were arrested for cocaine far more often than white people were arrested for opioids in 2016, and Black people were three to four times more likely to be arrested for opioids and all other drugs, despite similar rates of drug use across racial groups. Low-income people and pregnant people in particular also face intense stigma.

    The drug war is now deeply embedded in the medical system. There are huge racial disparities in access to buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid addiction that can be obtained from a pharmacy. Studies show that buprenorphine, a gold standard for treating opioid addiction and preventing overdose, is most often prescribed to white patients with private health insurance. White patients diagnosed with substance use disorders are more than three times as likely to receive a buprenorphine prescription during a visit to the doctor than Black patients diagnosed with substance use disorders, according to the American Medical Association. Patients of color are more likely to receive methadone, the other gold standard, which is subject to intense state surveillance.

    Before the pandemic, most methadone patients were required to show up in person to receive medication, creating barriers for low-income people and anyone without reliable transportation or a busy schedule. Emergency pandemic rule changes increased access to telehealth services and allowed patients to take medication home, and advocates are pushing to make these changes permanent. Still, methadone patients face red tape that most pain patients prescribed opioids do not, if they are lucky enough to have found a provider in the first place. Both methadone and buprenorphine are heavily scrutinized by police because they are also opioids, and doctors and pharmacies that provide buprenorphine have been shut down with no thought given to where patients will go next. Even as overdose deaths soar, doctors and pharmacies are wary of prescribing and dispensing life-saving medication.

    Recently, states have set up databases tracking controlled-substance prescriptions from the doctor’s office to the patient’s home address. Bamboo Health, a company formerly known as Appriss, combined Prescription Drug Monitoring Databases (PDMPs) with a plethora of personal health data to develop Narxcare, an artificial intelligence system designed to alert doctors to “drug seeking” patients and those at risk of overdose. Reporting for Wired, journalist Maia Szalavitz revealed how Narxcare’s algorithms have a “disparate impact” on women and people of color, singling out those with complex health needs and histories of trauma and even sexual abuse.

    According to the algorithm, trauma puts patients at higher risk of addiction, but advocates say prescribing decisions should be made by doctors and patients, not AI. Bamboo Health says its algorithms are not discriminatory, and the company clashed with Szalavitz after she reported that Appriss controls criminal records data that may be built into Narxcare, which could implicate people of color who are more likely to be targeted by police.

    Regardless, experts say the effects of prescription surveillance are mixed. While PDMPs are associated with fewer prescription opioid-related overdoses in some states, the decrease is offset by an increase in deaths from heroin, according to Wakeman and other researchers. PDMPs do not address the “underlying social and political forces” that contribute to addiction and overdose, Wakeman wrote, and could push patients into the illicit drug market.

    “It seems to target underprovided people who don’t have access or means in this country, and just hone in on them and punish them for it,” said Bev Schechtman, a researcher with The Doctor Patient Forum who worked with Szalavitz. “These are people who don’t have a lot of access to health care to begin with.”

    The policing of pain follows drug war logic: If there’s a drug problem (i.e., overdoses), then attack the supply. If the number of overdoses is any metric, then this strategy is failing disastrously, advocates say, and its failures are falling hardest on Black communities. A close look at the data reveals that bias against prescribing opioids to Black patients, resulting in fewer prescriptions, did not spare Black lives in the long run. Instead, Black drug users — including those with untreated pain or addiction — were quickly exposed when the supply of Oxycontin and Percocet dried up and the heroin supply became cheaper and increasingly adulterated.

    As current policies continue to fail, harm reduction efforts are calling for a “safe supply” of opioids, including prescription heroin for those at high risk of overdose.

    “To address societal biases towards those with addiction, society needs to stop viewing addiction through a divided lens,” Wakeman’s team wrote. “Clinicians need to better frame addiction as a chronic illness that can affect all people, rather than as a chronic illness when it happens among socially privileged groups and a moral failing when it occurs among minorities and other marginalized groups.”

    Without this necessary reframe, advocates say, the prescribing crackdown will continue to push doctors to discontinue chronic opioid therapy regardless of an individual patient’s needs — particularly in the case of Black patients and others on the margins. This puts patients at high risk for overdose.

    “To be able to be monitored by a [doctor] … and work together, that makes it a lot easier to prevent problems, whether it be overdose or other complications,” Madison says. “But not being able to get pain management or treatment around it means that people will go to the black market, or have mental health crises that come into play.”

    To combat racist practices in health care, Madison says individual providers must think carefully about their own racism and work to address it — but the work doesn’t stop there. Health care organizations must examine the history of medical racism and invest time and resources into understanding the lived experience of patients of color, activists emphasize. This process will take time.

    “It’s not just checking off a checklist and saying, ‘OK now we’re done,’” Madison said.

    Madison says she is lucky to live in Colorado, where medical cannabis is legal and can be used for pain, although cannabis is not as effective as opioids. Untold numbers of other people are struggling to survive with chronic pain and addiction. The overdose crisis is raging, and the assumptions of the past are not holding up. Experts say we must confront these twin realities, along with the racism within them, in order to truly move toward a public health approach and save lives.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “Get This Thing Out of My Chest”

    by Neil Bedi and Maryam Jameel

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    For the roughly 2,000 Americans who rely on it to keep their hearts going, the implanted pump is impossible to ignore.

    They feel it pressing inside their ribs when they lean over. Or they ache from the weight of its controller strapped to their shoulders. Some can even hear the device’s whirring hum deep inside their chests.

    Most of all, they now live with the stress of knowing the HeartWare Ventricular Assist Device has such serious issues — a higher rate of deaths and strokes than an alternative pump and a history of unexplained malfunctions — that the Food and Drug Administration and the device’s maker agreed this summer it should be taken off the market.

    Those who already have the heart pump, also known as the HVAD, can’t simply get it removed or replaced. The required surgery is typically considered more dangerous than leaving it in.

    They are now stuck in a medical dilemma that could have been prevented.

    Buffy Shaw, left, an HVAD patient, with her daughter, who found the recall online. (Rachel Bujalski for ProPublica)

    As we detailed in August, the FDA and HVAD maker Medtronic allowed the device to be implanted into thousands of people for years, even as federal inspectors found serious manufacturing problems, the company issued many high-risk safety alerts and people died after their implants malfunctioned. The FDA and Medtronic said they believed the benefits outweighed the risks for HVAD patients with severe heart failure, until this year when data was published showing a higher frequency of deaths and strokes compared to patients with a competing device.

    The company has pledged to do everything it can to support the remaining HVAD users. Medtronic said it would provide patients with educational materials, financial assistance and technical support. “The wellbeing and experiences of patients are vitally important to us, which is why we’ve set up patient support programs, services, and feedback mechanisms,” a company spokesperson said in a written statement.

    The FDA said it would “actively provide oversight of Medtronic to monitor their recall of the device and ensure that patient care remains a top priority.”

    But when we spoke to people across the country who are living with HVADs, they said they’d experienced little of the promised support and had encountered financial and emotional hardships.

    Here, in their own words, is what they told us.

    (These interviews below have been edited for clarity.)

    The purse where Shaw carries her HVAD equipment (Rachel Bujalski for ProPublica)

    I haven’t gotten a letter to this day from anybody saying anything about that recall.

    —Alicia Warren, a 44-year-old from Madison, Georgia, raised her two daughters alone while having heart failure. She has had the device since April 2018.

    Alicia Warren started experiencing symptoms of heart failure at age 22, shortly after giving birth to her first daughter. “They said it came from the stress on my heart from pregnancy,” she said. “I went to the hospital one night telling them, ‘I’m not feeling good, something’s wrong.’ The emergency room doctor told me, ‘Your heart rate is racing, have you smoked crack or anything like that?’ You’ve got to be kidding me. My daughter was 1 month old.

    “I did pretty well at keeping my health up and everything until around October of 2017. I was in end-stage heart failure and didn’t even know it. My kidneys were failing and my digestive system was shutting down. I’ll never say again in my life that I’m tired. Because I really know what tired is. My brothers were calling me and texting me asking what was going on, and I didn’t even have the strength to lift my finger to text back.

    “The doctor acted like he was just gonna let me die. He was like, ‘I think we’ve reached the end of your life.’ I was 40 at the time. He told my kids that and everything.” Warren’s family had her moved to another hospital. Doctors there told her she only had about a month to live unless she got a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD.

    LVAD is the general name for these heart pumps. Before June, there were two companies that sold LVADs in the United States, Medtronic with the HVAD and Abbott Laboratories with the HeartMate. The FDA found serious problems at the HVAD’s manufacturing plant in 2014 and labeled the device “adulterated.” But it continued to be implanted in patients for seven more years, even though dangerous issues persisted. In response, Medtronic said this month: “In 2014, the benefits of using the HVAD System for these patients significantly outweighed the known risks. Lives were saved and others extended.”

    Warren and 13 other HVAD users said they weren’t told about those problems. Warren and many of the others also said they weren’t given a choice between the two devices. Sometimes that was because they had had an emergency implant with little time to research the options, or, as with Warren, their doctors only offered one device.

    “I just think they should’ve went about it a different way, told the truth, and if people still want to get it, then fine. But don’t hold back the truth. Because people have died,” Warren said. “I was not informed about the issues, deaths or even the recall of the pump.”

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    Three years after she received the HVAD, Warren was surprised to find out it had been suddenly removed from the market. “Someone in the LVAD friends group posted a link, and I went and read it. And then I was like, ‘What?’ I’m sure if this was true, my doctors would’ve told me. They should’ve been straightforward with us about what was going on.

    “I haven’t gotten a letter to this day from anybody saying anything about that recall.

    “Now here I am with this thing in me, and there’s nothing I can do. It’s in me now. The only thing I can do is pray and hope I never have any issues with this thing until they get it out of me. I’m mad, but I’m still alive.”

    Five other people who still have the HeartWare pump told us they first found out about the device discontinuation from social media or news reports. Some only received a letter from Medtronic after they contacted their doctors or after we reached out to the company.

    The FDA said that Medtronic is required to inform every patient in writing and that the federal agency published a public notice of this. Medtronic wrote in December, “We sent letters to patients and set up a patient website and hotline. We’ve confirmed 90 percent of patients in the United States received our letter and we will continue to work with clinician offices to reach the remaining 10 percent who either declined delivery or for whom we had outdated contact information.”

    Pretty much everything they said could go wrong with it has gone wrong with it, except for the death part.

    —Kelly Sanchez, 54, is a former meat cutter from Beulah, Michigan, who was forced to retire early because of his heart condition. He’s been an HVAD patient since August 2016. Kelly Sanchez outside his home in Beulah, Michigan (Brittany Greeson, special to ProPublica)

    When Kelly Sanchez first got the letter announcing Medtronic’s discontinuation of the HVAD, he assumed it was nothing serious. “I thought they were sending me another card in the mail for carrying in my wallet,” he said. Then he read closer. “I was in shock. And then, of course, I’m worried. Because how much are they telling me? And how much are they not telling? Yeah, they sent me this letter. But if they’re doing all this, there’s got to be more to it.

    “Pretty much everything they said could go wrong with it has gone wrong with it, except for the death part. Neurological issues, the strokes, the clotting. The pump exchange.”

    A pump exchange is a surgery to replace the implanted heart pump with a new one if it stops working properly and the benefits of the operation now outweigh the risks. Sanchez had the operation after a clot got stuck in the device in 2017. “It sounded like a cement mixer,” he said.

    Then, in July 2019, he went golfing with his stepson Tyler Schmidt. He never got past the first hole. “I teed off, I turned around, took a step and then all of a sudden I got, they called it, stacked double vision. I was seeing a head on top of a head. Tyler rushed me up with the car and we took off to the hospital.”

    Sanchez plays pool with his HVAD external controller in a backpack. The cable connects the controller to the internal pump through a small incision in his waist. (Brittany Greeson, special to ProPublica)

    Sanchez was taken in for brain scans and doctors found that not only did he have a stroke, but he had also had four or five earlier undiagnosed ones based on the damage in his brain. Much of the damage was in the optical center. “My cardiologist flat-out told me, if you have a major stroke you can lose your vision permanently,” he recalled.

    When Medtronic discontinued the HVAD in June, the company said: “A growing body of observational clinical comparisons demonstrate a higher frequency of neurological adverse events and mortality.”

    A study published in July found that HVAD patients experienced strokes and other neurological injuries more than twice as often as those with the competing HeartMate device. Medtronic said, “This study re-confirms our reasons for stopping sales and distribution of the HVAD device.” The company also noted the study compared the HVAD to the HeartMate 3, a newer version of the competing device. That device was approved by the FDA in 2017.

    “I’m not gonna lie, we’ve been through so much stress after that first letter,” Sanchez said. “I love playing pool. I play pool three nights a week in leagues. It used to be a stress reliever. But it’s everywhere now. I mean, I can’t get away from it. With me, there’s no stress relief right now at all.”

    Kelly Sanchez’s wife, Kim, points to a sheet listing his medications and their costs. (Brittany Greeson, special to ProPublica) Kelly Sanchez shows a bucket list of places he wants to visit with his family after he receives a heart transplant. (Brittany Greeson, special to ProPublica)

    “I have diabetes and I can’t get my sugar under control because of the stress,” his wife, Kim Sanchez, said. “Every day, that thing is in his chest. And I’m always waiting. I always have my phone, right by me. When my phone rings, and it’s his number, I’m scared to death that something else has happened.”

    Sanchez’s cardiologist said they needed to get him a heart transplant as soon as possible, Kim Sanchez said. Patients no longer need HVADs once they receive heart transplants, but they need to be eligible and wait for a donor heart to become available. People who aren’t transplant candidates could have the HVAD for the rest of their lives.

    “Right now, my entire thought process is to get this thing out of my chest as quick as I can,” Kelly Sanchez said. In June, he underwent bariatric surgery to lose weight to meet transplant requirements. He lost 56 pounds by November and thought he was finally below the BMI limits. Then he learned the medical staff measured his height an inch shorter than before, pushing his BMI higher.

    “I’m frustrated, I’m angry and I’m scared because I still have this thing in my chest,” he said. “As long as I’ve lost 8 pounds by the 23rd of December, they’ll go back to the board. Now our hope is, I lose the 8 pounds, I get down to 225. And hopefully by the new year I’ll be on the list. That’s all we got right now.”

    Sanchez and his wife with their grandson Cassius at their home (Brittany Greeson, special to ProPublica)

    Those costs all add up. If we did have to pay mortgage or rent, I wouldn’t make it with my disability payments.

    —Dennis Partner, 65, is a former sales representative and truck driver from Lafayette, Indiana. He’s had his device since November 2017. He and his wife rely on disability insurance for income.

    Dennis Partner had his first heart attack at 32, while playing softball. He’d go on to have about five more, each further damaging his heart. His doctor eventually recommended the HVAD, saying it could extend his life and give him more energy.

    “I really thought the LVAD would bring back more and more movement. It never has,” he said. “I walk half a block and have to sit down and lean against something and rest. My legs just give out.”

    After the HVAD was discontinued in June, doctors increased the frequency of his checkups. The additional attention also meant additional medical costs. Partner has to drive 125 miles round-trip to get to and from his doctors’ office, and each visit requires a co-pay. “Those costs all add up,” he said. Partner is thankful that his family downsized their home and paid off their purchase. “If we did have to pay mortgage or rent, I wouldn’t make it with my disability payments.”

    Dennis Partner at his home in Lafayette, Indiana (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica)

    Then, Partner’s device controller displayed a critical alert.

    Before June, users were able to swap out their external device controllers at home if there was ever an issue. Patients told us that, after the recall, these controller exchanges are now done in hospitals. “They need to have a surgical suite and surgeon on call in case the pump wouldn’t start, to try to save me,” Partner said.

    “It was a pretty nerve-wracking drive up there. I spent the night every five minutes having to quiet my alarm. My coordinator and her helper or trainee came into the hospital room and said, ‘You ready to change it out?’ And five minutes later it was done. Luckily mine started up just fine.”

    When Medtronic discontinued the device, the company admitted there has been an issue since 2009 with the pump failing to start up. Medtronic said there had been 106 complaints related to the problem. Fourteen cases led to patients dying, and 13 others required emergency surgery to remove the devices. Medtronic said in June it still hadn’t been able to figure out the root cause of the malfunctions. The company said it was a rare problem, affecting only a small portion of devices based on the complaints submitted.

    Linda Partner, Dennis’ wife, changes the bandage on the incision that connects his HVAD pump to its external controller. (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica)

    Partner received a bill for about $47,000 for the two days he spent in the hospital for the exchange. Medicare negotiated the bill down to $29,000 and covered most of the cost, but Partner still has to pay $2,556 — a significant amount for his family, which relies on disability income.

    “I never even thought there was going to be a bill. I’m still having a hard time — I can’t get an explanation of why they installed this model when they knew there were tons of problems with it. I just don’t feel that’s my responsibility.”

    After we recently told Medtronic about patients who are struggling with new medical costs, a company spokesperson said in an email, “We anticipated patients might have concerns about medical costs, so we expanded the HVAD System warranty and are encouraging patients to contact us (1-800-635-3930) for potential coverage of non-reimbursed medical costs.”

    The expanded financial support is news to patients. The people we spoke to said they weren’t informed of it. When asked, Medtronic didn’t provide evidence that it had told patients about the expanded assistance. Days later, the company updated its patient support website, which now says it can help patients with newly incurred medical expenses.

    Medtronic told us last week it had heard from four patients in total and covered costs for two of them since June.

    Partner said he contacted the company more than two months ago to see if it could help with his medical bills. A representative said they would “see what they could do,” he said.

    The company finally reached back out to him last week, asking for more information.

    Lottery tickets pile up at Partner’s home. (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica)

    You guys messed up. You need to do something to correct this. We don’t really have a voice.

    —Buffy Shaw, 47, has had the device since 2019. She’s from Oroville, California, but spends much of her time traveling around the world as an international flight nanny for American Bully dogs.

    “It’s a nonstop lifestyle,” Buffy Shaw said about her job as an in-flight nanny for American Bully dogs. “I’ve built a bunch of clientele all over the world. It’s like I don’t ever stop.” So, when she learned she needed an LVAD, it was devastating.

    “The first six weeks were extremely difficult. Very emotional. Very everything. Just learning how to do everything again. I couldn’t walk from the chair to the front door. I’d literally go to pass out. I couldn’t hold anything down as far as food. I got sick from everything. I couldn’t take a shower by myself. I couldn’t do anything by myself.”

    Batteries for Shaw’s HVAD controller in a charger at her daughter’s home (Rachel Bujalski for ProPublica)

    Shaw said it took almost six months to adapt to having the device. She began carrying the external controller in a purse to avoid questions and was able to continue taking dogs around the world.

    Then, her daughter found the recall online. “Once I started learning exactly what it entailed, it was very depressing,” Shaw said. “I feel like they’ve used us as guinea pigs.”

    Shaw said she feels powerless as only one person — or even one of 2,000 people — up against Medtronic, a multibillion-dollar company, and the federal government. “You guys messed up,” she said. “You need to do something to correct this. We don’t really have a voice. That’s what I feel like. We don’t have a voice to make something happen. There are people that have died because of this machine.”

    Another HVAD patient, who Shaw met on Facebook, started having problems with his device in October. He needed emergency surgery to replace the pump, but he never fully recovered. He died three weeks ago. “Death. Literally all you can think about is death,” she said.

    Shaw looks at photos from her travels for work. (Rachel Bujalski for ProPublica)

    “I don’t sleep a lot as it is, which is a side effect of having heart failure, you know, sleep issues. So now it’s just stress about the recall and them not really offering any solutions to it. There’s certain things you can do, certain things you can’t do. It’s a lot of stress, like, extreme stress.

    “They should have offered something for that as far as counseling. I feel like right now, we have zero resources. My doctors always say that I’m a high functioning patient as far as this goes. I’m just super high functioning because I don’t feel like I ever want to — I’m not going to — sit home and die. I’m not going to be one of those people that just sits online and reads about people dying and all the stuff that goes on and I just have to get out of that space.”

    Shaw has visited Hawaii, France and Ireland for her job since September. “To me, that’s ideal in my situation, because I literally could drop dead tomorrow,” she said. “Right now I’m just thankful that I am able to do what I’m doing. Until I get to where I can’t anymore. It’s a very fine line. That’s for sure. It’s a very fine line.”

    Shaw with her granddaughter at her daughter’s home (Rachel Bujalski for ProPublica)

    Tell Us About Your Experience With Life-Sustaining Medical Devices

    Maya Miller contributed reporting.

    This post was originally published on Articles and Investigations – ProPublica.

  • Home Care Workers Protest 24-Hour Work Day In NYC

    Workers employed with the United Jewish Council (UJC) home care agency rallied to end the 24-hour work day and demand their stolen wages on the morning of December 16. While home care workers in New York are being forced to work 24-hour shifts for poverty wages, 11 hours worth of that pay is stolen by their employers. A coalition of worker’s rights organizations including the Ain’t I A Woman Campaign and the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops (NMASS) have been organizing alongside home care workers for years against these unjust labor practices.

    The post Home Care Workers Protest 24-Hour Work Day In NYC appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The U.S. experience: racism and COVID-19 mortality

    Are you searching for a way to highlight the negative consequences of racism? Try this: Justin M. Feldman and Mary T. Basset, in a recently published study, found that if everyone living in the United States, aged 25 years or older, died of COVID-19 at the same rate as college-educated non-Hispanic white people did in 2020, 48 percent fewer people would have died, 71 percent fewer people of color would have died, and 89 percent fewer people of color aged 25-64 would have died.

    The post The U.S. experience: racism and COVID-19 mortality appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Creeping Privatization Of Medicare

    In the early 1970s, Senator Ted Kennedy and Congresswoman Martha Griffiths introduced Medicare for All legislation in the Congress.

    It could have passed but for the efforts of a doctor from Minnesota by the name of Paul Elwood.

    Elwood believed that unless the Republicans did something to control health care costs, Medicare for All single payer would soon become the law of the land.

    So in February 1970, Elwood traveled to Washington, D.C. and met with officials in Richard Nixon’s administration to present his proposal for what he called health maintenance organizations (HMOs).

    The seeds for a managed care theology that would upend the American health care over the next fifty years were planted.

    The post The Creeping Privatization Of Medicare appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Workers at AHN Affiliate Warren General Hospital Vote to Strike

    Workers at Allegheny Health Network affiliate Warren General Hospital voted Saturday to strike, straining already fragile medical resources in rural northwest Pennsylvania. The 114 nurses and health care workers, who are members of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, issued a 10-day strike notice at the 87-bed hospital — the only acute care facility in the county. The labor agreement with workers expired in September, and negotiations were scheduled to continue Monday, hospital CEO Rick Allen said.

    The post Workers at AHN Affiliate Warren General Hospital Vote to Strike appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Survey Finds Sharpest Decline in Public Opinion About Health Care in the US

    Nurses care for COVID-19 patients in a makeshift intensive care unit at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center on January 21, 2021, in Torrance, California.

    The largest survey of its kind since the start of the Covid-19 crisis found that 38% of respondents — representing around 100 million Americans — characterized the for-profit U.S. healthcare system as either “expensive” or “broken,” an indication that the pandemic has markedly shifted public opinion.

    Gallup and West Health, the two organizations behind the new survey out Tuesday, began the polling process by asking respondents to concisely describe the U.S. healthcare system in their own words. Nearly 40% used the word “expensive” and 13% said the system is “broken” — the two most common descriptors offered by respondents.

    “The results stand in stark contrast to findings from just two years ago,” the groups note in their detailed summary of the findings. “In 2019, West Health and Gallup conducted a major survey on U.S. healthcare costs and found that close to half of Americans (48%) believed the quality of care found in the U.S. was either ‘the best in the world’ (13%) or ‘among the very best’ (36%). This was two-and-a-half times the 18% who reported that the quality of care was either ‘the worst in the world’ (3%) or ‘among the worst’ (16%).”

    According to the survey, nearly half of Americans say the coronavirus pandemic soured their view of the U.S. healthcare system, which is dominated by large insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations and imposes some of the highest costs in the world — while achieving some of the worst outcomes.

    West Health chief strategy officer Tim Lash stressed that “negative public sentiment” surrounding the healthcare system “did not form overnight or begin with Covid-19.”

    “It’s been decades in the making after failed promises by elected officials to do something to help Americans suffering at the hand of high prices for healthcare and prescription drugs,” Lash said. “However, public opinion plays an important role in the policy process, and if policymakers are listening, they have no choice but to act.”

    While far from the sole catalyst behind Americans’ changing views, the coronavirus pandemic — which has killed nearly 800,000 people in the U.S., including one in 100 older Americans — has thrown into sharp relief the massive inefficiencies and cruelties of a healthcare system whose primary objective is maximizing profit, not delivering high-quality care to all.

    “I think that Covid really illustrated just how dysfunctional the system actually is,” said one survey respondent.

    Because a majority of Americans receive health insurance through their employers, the pandemic and resulting economic calamity produced what one study characterized as the “greatest health insurance losses in American history,” with millions being dropped from their plans and forced to seek refuge in badly underfunded public programs or the hard-to-navigate Affordable Care Act exchanges.

    Additionally, hospitals have hit Covid-19 patients with massive charges throughout the pandemic, potentially discouraging many from seeking lifesaving treatments.

    Gallup and West Health’s new poll, a nationally representative survey of more than 6,600 U.S. adults, found that the percentage of Americans who reported forgoing care due to cost concerns — 30% — tripled in the three months prior to September and October, when the survey was conducted.

    Nearly a third of U.S. adults report that they could not afford quality healthcare if they needed it today, up from 18% in February. One in 20 respondents — representing around 12.7 million people — told Gallup and West Health that a friend or family member died over the past year after not receiving treatment because they couldn’t afford it.

    Overall, 94% of Americans believe the cost of healthcare in the U.S. is “higher than it should be,” the survey showed.

    “Americans have reached their breaking point,” said Shelley Lyford, president and CEO of West Health. “Between March and October, the percentage of people reporting trouble paying for healthcare, skipping treatments, and not filling their prescriptions spiked to their highest levels since the pandemic began, exacerbating another public health threat borne out of cost rather than illness.”

    Dan Witters, a senior researcher for Gallup, said in a statement Tuesday that “the sharp worsening in public opinion regarding the affordability of care and medicine is startling, and likely a result of myriad factors related directly and indirectly to the Covid-19 pandemic.”

    “From rapidly rising inflation, to deferred care pushed into 2021, to more people having to pay for Covid-19 care itself,” Witters added, “the U.S. healthcare cost crisis is now coming to a head.”

    The new survey was published as congressional Democrats continued working to finalize their $1.75 trillion reconciliation package, which includes a patchwork of healthcare provisions including expanded ACA subsidies and a prescription drug plan that was badly weakened by industry-friendly lawmakers. Other popular proposals, including a plan to add dental and vision benefits to Medicare, were dropped during negotiations.

    “At a time when one out of four Americans cannot afford their prescription drugs, maybe, just maybe, it’s time we take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is pushing for a more ambitious plan to slash skyrocketing medicine costs.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Abortion Restrictions Could Prompt an Avalanche of Attacks on Bodily Autonomy

    Protesters display cardboard cutouts of the faces of the United States Supreme Court justices

    The current fight for abortion rights is more than a domestic battle over state’s rights and individual decision making. It is a battle that fits within the broader context of self-determination and human rights. Eroding or outright eliminating the protections stemming from the landmark cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey will have tragic consequences for women and pregnant people around the country, as the protected privacy interest in personal decision-making extends beyond abortion.

    Recent reports have documented the disproportionate impact of severe abortion restrictions on people of color and low-income women and pregnant people. According to Planned Parenthood’s “Red Alert” report, 90 abortion restrictions were passed nationwide in 2021, more than any single year since Roe was passed. Written in partnership with In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, a collective of eight Black women-led reproductive justice organizations, the “Red Alert” estimates that close to half of cisgender women of reproductive age (18-49) could lose abortion access if and when Roe is overturned.

    The number increases when expanded to include all people who can become pregnant.

    In addition to affirming the necessity of recognizing abortion rights as fundamental in and of themselves, advocates connect the right to abortion and bodily autonomy to the Constitution’s broader protection of liberty. In 2018, the Center for Reproductive Rights released a report exploring the connection between the rights established in the landmark abortion cases and related rights of bodily integrity, medical decision making, marriage, contraception and sexual rights.

    “Any erosion of our right to liberty would mean losing much more than the right to abortion,” the report reads, noting the established right to liberty depends on a collection of rights without which liberty would not exist. The Supreme Court’s prior recognition of the right to abortion is grounded in rights to make medical decisions and privacy.

    Given the deep threats to both abortion rights and broader freedoms, a group of leading Mississippi reproductive health and justice organizations formed the Mississippi Abortion Access Coalition to coordinate response during the ensuing legal battle and provide resources to residents. In a press conference ahead of the Supreme Court oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the group contextualized the current battle in terms of the impact of communities across the Magnolia state.

    “People [who] are forced to carry pregnancies not only have their bodily autonomy taken away from them, they face the economic burden of raising children when they may not be able to afford [them] making families more likely to experience food and housing insecurity,” said Valencia Robinson, executive director of Mississippi in Action. Founded in 2009, Mississippi in Action approaches sexual and reproductive health advocacy through a holistic approach merging advocacy with community health.

    While Dobbs originally centered around the constitutionality of Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, the state’s legal team has made it clear it seeks to overturn abortion at the highest level.

    “Mississippi is one of 12 states with trigger bans, laws designated to ban abortion immediately if Roe is overturned,” Cassandra Welchlin, lead organizer/co-convener of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, said. “Without Roe, even more people across the south and the Midwest regions of the U.S. will be without critical access to abortion care. The autonomy to make decisions about their own bodies, lives, futures and families will be taken away.”

    A project from the Center for Reproductive Rights evaluated state reproductive health priorities, finding that states with more abortion restrictions had fewer supportive measures for overall reproductive health, such as improving the Medicaid income limit for pregnant people and restrictions on shackling incarcerated pregnant people. Mississippi was in the bottom five states along with Texas, Arizona, Missouri and Oklahoma.

    “We need to make access and information to all forms of abortion care more available so that people can safely make their own health care decisions in their communities. Abortion restrictions are medically unnecessary, based on false assumptions and have deeply racist origins,” said Michelle Colon, executive director of SHERo. “Protecting abortion access is essential to reproductive justice, the human right to maintain personal autonomy, have children, not to have children, [and] parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”

    As Colon explains, broadening the scope beyond fighting simply for abortion access addresses long-standing disparities in health and well-being that impact marginalized communities. Abortion is health care, and the decision of whether to have one is among the many personal medical decisions people make every day.

    Mississippi is not only at the forefront of limiting abortion access, but it lags in equal access to necessary sexual and reproductive health-related services compared to other states.

    “A lot of counties don’t have health departments and places where they can access birth control services, STI testing and things like that,” explained Tyler Harden, Mississippi’s state director for Planned Parenthood Southeast. “Our state has yet to expand access to Medicaid. And we know that when people are given the opportunity to take control of their health and to have access to the things that they need, then they are able to make decisions that are best for them and their families.”

    Recognizing the disparate impact on rural communities, Welchlin said Medicaid expansion is key to expanding reproductive health care. Failing to expand Medicaid creates a broader crisis of care across the state. According to Mississippi State University, more than half of the state’s population lives in rural areas and either all or a portion of the 82 counties are considered “medically underserved.” Combined with the crisis of rural hospital closures, Mississippi officials disregard people’s basic health needs.

    “Mississippi is so rural and those folks don’t have access to clinics where they can go and just get the basic care that they need in order to be whole and healed,” Welchlin said. “If the state of Mississippi and our decision makers expanded Medicaid then we’ll be able to have a robust health care infrastructure across the state where people can access contraceptive care and just even taking care of a woman who is pregnant.”

    Colon agreed, noting that marginalized communities face discriminatory obstacles to reproductive health care across the South and Midwest.

    “Mississippians [should] have the right to get the health care they need without shame, unnecessary obstacles and restrictions and government interference in our decisions,” Colon said.

    During an August interview, Colon said there were new restrictions in the state every year since she moved to Mississippi. Colon, who has been in the state since 1997, said Mississippi had been fighting issues often overlooked until a wealthier state gets slammed with a similar fight.

    She recounted the big fight in Texas in 2013 when former state Sen. Wendy Davis filibustered a bill that would have banned abortion after 20 weeks and required abortion clinics to be licensed ambulatory surgery centers. Colon said that the momentum and organizing in Texas was great, but people in Mississippi had been fighting the same fight and it barely received any coverage.

    “I wasn’t overreacting when I talked about this, you know, 20 years ago,” began Colon. “I wasn’t overreacting five years ago. And we were damn sure not overreacting last year.”

    With only three judges guaranteed to uphold Roe, Colon said this isn’t some dystopian film or book. It’s real life.

    “What people have learned now over the last 10 years, you don’t necessarily have to ‘overturn Roe,’ you just continue fucking with the existing abortion rights and hurting women and girls and people trying to get an abortion,” Colon continued. “The entire country is Mississippi, baby, whether they want to admit it or not. And so, nobody is really safe.”

    Calling Mississippi “an abortion desert,” Colon said that in addition to having only one clinic, the state has some of the most stringent anti-abortion laws in the country. Mandatory wait times, multiple clinic visits and laws targeting abortion providers that go beyond what is necessary to ensure patient safety, such as hospital-admitting privileges, all contribute to the burden on abortion access.

    Despite the so-called “culture of life” that Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves and other anti-abortion officials claim to espouse, their narrow concern for so-called life runs counter to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopted by the United States, which strive “toward preventing maternal mortality and morbidity, to secure women’s and girls’ right to equality and non-discrimination, and to ensure their right to life.”

    While federal legislative interventions are important to protecting people’s right to personal liberty and bodily autonomy, Mississippi organizers are not waiting for national saviors.

    “Our priority should be making sure that people have access to the health care that they want [and] need,” Colon said. “That means ensuring that people who want to get an abortion at a clinic or doctor’s office can do so without restrictions or barriers.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • How The Grinch Stole Medicare Protest At Humana

    Louisville, KY – On Saturday, December 11 at 11:00 a.m. EST, Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care and others will gather outside the headquarters of Humana, 500 W. Main St., Louisville, KY 40202 where they will demand an end to Medicare Direct Contracting, a program that could fully privatize Traditional fee-for-service Medicare without a vote by Congress.

    The protest with feature Steven Katz in full costume as the Grinch with the reading and performance of “How the Grinch Stole Medicare,” an original poem from National Single Payer.   Jill Harmer and the Single Payer Singers, Stephen Bartlett and his band, and singer, songwriter John Gage will perform holiday and health care music.

    The post How The Grinch Stole Medicare Protest At Humana appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Manchin Takes the Teeth Out of Democrats’ Plan for Seniors’ Dental Care

    Sen. Joe Manchin makes a statement in the Senate TV Studio on Capitol Hill on November 1, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Sharon Marchio misses having teeth for eating, speaking and smiling.

    For the past few years, after the last of her teeth were extracted, she’s used dentures. “My dentist calls them my floating teeth because no matter how much adhesive you use, if you eat something hot or warm, they loosen up and it is a pain,” said Marchio, 73, of Clarksburg, West Virginia.

    Marchio believes that losing her teeth was merely part of getting older. It’s quite common in West Virginia, where a quarter of people 65 and older have no natural teeth, the highest rate of any state in the country, according to federal data.

    Like half of Medicare enrollees nationally, Marchio has no dental insurance. Worries about the costs led her to skip regular cleanings and exams, crucial steps for preventing infections and tooth loss.

    Medicare doesn’t cover most dental care, but consumer advocates had hoped that would change this year after Democrats took control of the White House and Congress. President Joe Biden and progressives, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, sought to add the benefit to a major domestic spending package, the Build Back Better Act, that Democrats are seeking to pass.

    But those chances are looking slim because at least one Democratic senator — Joe Manchin of, yes, West Virginia — opposes adding dental and other benefits for Medicare beneficiaries. He says it will cost the federal government too much.

    In a Senate split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, losing Manchin's vote would likely sink the proposal, which is unlikely to get any Republican votes.

    Last month, the House passed the roughly $2 trillion package of Democrats’ domestic priorities that include health measures, free preschool, affordable housing programs and initiatives to fight climate change. It added hearing services coverage to Medicare but no dental benefit. The package is expected to undergo revisions in the Senate, and Democratic leaders hope a vote will happen in the chamber before the end of the year.

    In West Virginia, one of the most heavily Republican states in the country, oral health advocates and progressives say it’s disappointing that Manchin would stand in the way of adding dental coverage for Medicare recipients — particularly given the state’s poor oral health record.

    “It is unfortunate that our senator — who I respect and agree with on a lot of things — is going to draw the line on this issue,” said Fotinos Panagakos, associate dean for research at the West Virginia University School of Dentistry and a member of the Santa Fe Group, a think tank made up of scholars, industry executives and former government officials pushing for a Medicare dental benefit. “It would be a huge benefit.”

    West Virginia has the third-highest share of people 65 and older, behind only Florida and Maine. Panagakos said that nearly 300,000 West Virginia Medicare recipients would gain dental benefits under the bill. Yet, Manchin’s efforts aren’t likely to cost him politically. He is not up for reelection until 2024.

    “What political price do you pay when four other Republicans vote ‘no’ against everything?” Ryan Frankenberry, state director of the progressive Working Families Party in West Virginia, said, referring to the state’s three House members and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who all oppose the bill. “It’s a difficult argument to blame one person for not passing the benefit when every other Republican vote went against it.”

    Manchin’s opposition, Frankenberry said, stems from the need to respond to the political pressures of representing an increasingly conservative state — and arguments from conservative commentators that Medicare is becoming insolvent and increasing the federal deficit.

    Manchin, who did not respond to requests for an interview, has raised concerns about adding new Medicare spending when the Medicare Part A hospital trust fund is slated to become insolvent in 2026 if Congress takes no action. But that fund would not cover the proposed dental benefit; it would become part of Medicare Part B, which covers outpatient services such as doctor visits.

    Manchin has also suggested that new social programs being advanced by the Democrats in the Build Back Better Act should be means-tested — in essence, offering the coverage only to people with lower incomes.

    Dentists are concerned that Medicare — like Medicaid — would pay less than what they normally charge, said Richard Stevens, executive director of the West Virginia Dental Association.

    The American Dental Association has also called for limiting any new Medicare dental benefit through means testing. ADA officials say a means test would ensure the benefit is helping those who really need it and save money for the Medicare program.

    But critics say the ADA’s position is an effort by the powerful dental lobby to kill the benefit — because it knows Congress has little appetite to turn to means testing in Medicare. The program remains popular largely because everyone 65 and older is entitled to all its benefits.

    “On the surface, their position sounds altruistic,” said Michael Alfano, who is a former dean of the New York University College of Dentistry and helped found the Santa Fe Group. “But there is no interest in Congress to make it a means-tested benefit.”

    While adding a Medicare benefit would increase demand for dental services, it would also reduce what are considered dentists’ most lucrative patients, those who pay out-of-pocket and don’t benefit from insurer-discounted fees, Alfano said. “In my mind, the ADA did not have public interest at heart — they put the financial returns of dentists at the top of the ledger when developing this approach,” he said.

    Alfano said there is still hope for an eleventh-hour change in the bill. “It’s not dead, but I would be lying if I said I was not disappointed,” he said.

    West Virginia seniors have other options for getting dental coverage.

    Many get some benefits when they enroll in private Medicare Advantage plans. And in January, West Virginia added an adult dental benefit to Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for people with low incomes, giving enrollees an annual maximum benefit of $1,000. Previously, West Virginia was one of about a dozen states that either provided no adult dental benefit to Medicaid recipients or only covered emergencies.

    Through September, about 53,000 of the nearly 390,000 adult enrollees in West Virginia’s Medicaid program had used the benefit.

    Stevens of the West Virginia Dental Association said he could not explain why so few Medicaid enrollees had used the benefit, though he noted that the $1,000 maximum might not be enough to persuade some to seek care. “For people with more serious oral health conditions, $1,000 does not go very far,” Stevens said. “It’s hardly worth the time for the patient and not worth the time for the dentist.”

    Craig Glover, CEO of FamilyCare Health Centers in Charleston, West Virginia, said a Medicare benefit would help the many older patients who come to his dental clinic. He said some patients don’t return for needed follow-up care because of concerns about costs.

    Without dental coverage, older adults in West Virginia rely on community health centers — which offer a sliding fee scale based on income — and free health clinics for care. But they can still face higher costs than they can afford or long waits for care.

    The dental appointments at the Susan Dew Hoff Memorial Clinic in West Milford, where Marchio has been treated, are booked several months in advance, said office manager Gail Marsh.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • How Oregon Is Turning The Page On America’s Disastrous Drug War

    In a groundbreaking move, in 2020, Oregon voters approved the decriminalization of personal use amounts of all illicit drugs, with Measure 110 passing with a healthy 59 percent of the vote. That made Oregon the first state in the U.S. to make this dramatic break after decades of the war on drugs. Now, as other states are pondering a similar move and are looking for evidence to bolster their case for drug decriminalization, some of the initial results in Oregon are looking pretty impressive and promising.

    The post How Oregon Is Turning The Page On America’s Disastrous Drug War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US Empire Seizes UK’s National Health Service

    One of the recent roles of the Parliamentary Healthcare Committee has been to reassure the British public that any claims regarding the ‘Americanization’ of the National Health Service (NHS) were wildly overstated, “creating a climate that risks blocking the joining up of services in the interests of patients.”

    In fact, the penetration of the healthcare system by the giant U.S. insurer UnitedHealth reveals the opposite to be true, with the full extent of its influence capable of surprising even seasoned NHS watchers.

    The Health and Care Bill making its way through official channels simply reinforces this, with the bill’s centerpiece, the 42 regional-scale Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), aimed at bringing together GPs, hospitals, mental healthcare and council services. It is being effectively designed and fast-tracked by the private UnitedHealth.

    The U.S. healthcare system is of course a thing of nightmares. Insurance payments extract almost half the income of an average family, in return for which the nation consistently ranks last for access, equity, and outcomes of care in periodic studies by the Commonwealth Fund.

    The post US Empire Seizes UK’s National Health Service appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • New Orleans Has A Trash Problem. Thanks To Climate Change, Your City Probably Will, Too.

    Dealing with tons of trash isn't out of the ordinary for the City of New Orleans. By the end of Carnival season, city clean-up crews and paid volunteers collect about 900 tons of garbage on average each year. Onlookers have called the efforts "mesmerizing" to watch. More than a century of Mardi Gras celebrations have refined the city's approach to bulk garbage collection down to a science. A "parade" of sanitation workers, tractors, trucks, and street sweepers mobilize to collect the trash and clean the city after Fat Tuesday.

    The post New Orleans Has A Trash Problem. Thanks To Climate Change, Your City Probably Will, Too. appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • An Obscure Agency Is Threatening To Hand Medicare Over To Wall Street

    In the face of massive support for Medicare for All and the failure of the U.S.’s for-profit health care system, the inevitable fall of the medical-industrial complex can be predicted, if not with precision, with certainty. Everyone is aware of the impending demise, none more so than those in charge of the for-profit health care system and their supporters in Congress, as evidenced by the frenetic activity at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to transfer the traditional Medicare program to the insurance industry as fast as humanly possible. Given this urgency, physicians representing Physicians for a National Health Program delivered a petition signed by 13,000 individuals, including 1,500 physicians, to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra this week demanding the end to the privatization of Medicare.

    The post An Obscure Agency Is Threatening To Hand Medicare Over To Wall Street appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Controversial Alzheimer’s Drug Behind About Half of Medicare’s Yearly Price Bump

    Aduhelm, approved by the FDA in June despite much pushback from medical experts, is expected to be a huge burden on the health care system.

    When Biogen’s new Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, was officially approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) back in June, it was a decision that flouted overwhelming pushback from doctors in the field, dozens of whom argued that Biogen had failed to demonstrate whether the drug had any clinical value. Since then, only about a hundred Americans have been prescribed the medication — a vanishingly small amount for a disease that afflicts 5.8 million. But even as the scope of Aduhelm’s use remains limited, critics are now warning that its fiscal implications could spell disaster for American healthcare as we know it.

    Aduhelm alone, priced at a whopping $56,000 a year, has already contributed to an approximate $10 spike in monthly Medicare Part B premiums, according to a recent CNN report. Comprising about half of this year’s price increase, Aduhelm will bring the monthly cost of Medicare up from $148.50 to $170.10 — the biggest jump in dollar terms throughout the program’s entire history, according to NBC15. It should be noted that the $10 upcharge applies to all Medicare enrollees — that is, over 62 million Americans — most of whom will never directly benefit from Aduhelm. And for the drug’s actual recipients, the $10 add-on is just the tip of the iceberg.

    First, there are co-payments. Because Medicare recipients are typically required to cover 20% of Part B treatments as part of the program’s co-insurance policy, Aduhelm patients have to cough up an extra $11,600 out of pocket annually. An $11,600 copayment is already cost-prohibitive for the vast majority of Americans. But when it comes to Medicare enrollees — whose median income is roughly $30,000 a year — it’s easy to see how just a year’s worth of treatment is completely out of the question.

    Then there’s the cost of routine screening. In order to monitor the risk of brain bleeding and swelling — side-effects which occurred in about 41% of clinical patients from 2019 and may have led to the recent death of a 75-year-old woman — Aduhelm patients will also have to cover 20% of the cost of PET or MRI scans. To put this into context, the average national price range for brain MRI scans is $1,600 to $8,400. PET scans can be as pricey as $10,700. And Medicare does not guarantee coverage for either, at times leaving patients to pay for them in full.

    Unsurprisingly, Aduhelm is expected to be a massive burden on the American healthcare system.

    According to a conservative estimate by the Kaiser Family Foundation, if Medicare covered the drug for 1 million Americans, spending on Aduhelm would exceed $57 billion in a single year — $20 billion more than was spent on all Part B drugs in 2019 combined.

    Judging by the numbers alone, the U.S. healthcare system cannot afford to absorb Aduhelm, David Mitchell, founder of Patients For Affordable Drugs, told Salon. “It’s a back-breaking drug for Medicare and for Medicare beneficiaries,” Mitchell explained in an interview. “We’re going to have to confront the fact that we can’t keep paying whatever [Big Pharma] demands, because it’ll just break the bank.”

    Matthew E. Shepard, Communications Director at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, echoed Mitchell in an email exchange, expressing concerns about the “palpable impact the very possibility of this drug being covered under Medicare has already had on Medicare premiums.”

    Asked whether it found the drug’s effect on Medicare concerning, a Biogen spokesperson emphasized that “Alzheimer’s care pathway is complex and underdeveloped.”

    “We anticipate that adoption of ADUHELM, like other novel treatments, will be gradual over many years, as system-readiness and diagnosis will take time, and we expect that only a fraction of the total eligible population will be treated with ADUHELM in 2022,” Allison Parks, the Biogen representative, added.

    Aduhelm’s approval comes at a political moment in which outrage over high drug prices — and Congress’ apparent unwillingness to lower them — has reached a fever pitch.

    As it currently stands, Medicare is not legally allowed to negotiate Part B and Part D drug prices with drugmakers. That is why House Democrats have for the past two years touted the “Lower Drug Costs Now Act,” which sets out to allow for Medicare negotiation and establish price caps based on international reference points. But because the bill lacks adequate support from Congress — even though 83% of the American public supports Medicare price negotiation — companies like Biogen have near-complete authority to charge whatever they wish for their drugs, even when their actual value to society is abysmal.

    And abysmal it might very well be, critics say, in the case of Aduhelm.

    According to a comprehensive report released by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), which specializes in assessing the clinical value of pharmaceuticals as compared to their market prices, Aduhelm should actually be priced no higher than $8,300 per year — nearly seven times less than what Biogen is charging.

    David Whitrap, ICER’s Vice President of Communications and Outreach, told Salon that the group’s analysis of Aduhelm was “very unique” because ICER had “strong concerns just about the effectiveness of the drug” from the outset. “Usually, we’re looking at an FDA-approved drug that has some sort of efficacy. And it’s just more of a discussion around what a fair price is,” Whitrap said in an interview. “Ultimately, we concluded that the clinical evidence was insufficient to show whether Aduhelm provides a net health benefit for patients. And that’s an unusual evidence rating from ICER.”

    The group’s poor evidence rating was largely rooted in Biogen’s controversial use of “surrogate endpoints,” proxy measures that are assumed to correlate with actual clinical endpoints. For Aduhelm, this meant measuring the presence of beta-amyloid plaque as a surrogate for cognitive decline — an approach that typifies just one of many in dementia research.

    “Aduhelm was approved based on its demonstrated clinical effect in reducing amyloid plaque in the brain and the reasonable likelihood that removal of this plaque slows disease progression,” company spokesperson Allison Parks told Salon.

    In Biogen’s first 2019 study, called “EMERGE,” the company found that Aduhelm reduced the rate of cognitive decline (i.e., the presence of amyloid plaque) by 23%. In its second study, “ENGAGE,” these results failed to re-emerge.

    But critics say that even if administering Aduhelm causes a reduction in plaque, that doesn’t necessarily mean the drug is preventing cognitive decline.

    “I think all the evidence shows that when you reduce amyloid plaque, you don’t see a clinical benefit,” Harvard lecturer Dr. John Abramson, whose forthcoming book “Sickening” tackles Big Pharma and corruption, told Salon. “It’s a very good hypothesis — when you find that people who have Alzheimer’s disease are far more likely to have amyloid deposits — I think that’s established. But that doesn’t establish causation.”

    On a broader level, Abramson also noted that the existing relationship between the FDA and Big Pharma presents several inherent conflicts of interest — and these conflicts might raise eyebrows with respect to Aduhelm. For instance, the FDA receives a large portion of its funding from user fees, which are paid out by pharmaceutical companies to help cover the agency’s regulatory overhead as part of the 1992 Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA).

    According to an FDA fact sheet from November of last year, users fees comprised roughly 45% of the FDA’s total budget. For human drugs like Aduhelm, that number is as high as 65%, which critics say can open the door for problematic back-scratching.

    “[The FDA’s] primary client is industry and their time targets,” Abramson explained. “And there’s a lot of pressure to meet the targets that have been agreed upon to receive that PDUFA money.”

    But the full extent to which Biogen may have pressured the FDA, if at all, remains shrouded in mystery.

    According to a New York Times analysis, Biogen reportedly fostered a spirit of “close collaboration” with the FDA officials spanning back to 2019. STAT further found evidence that Biogen executives apparently leveraged backchannels with the agency months before the drug was pushed past the finish line.

    Now, two House committees are looking into the matter. And, in July, the Department of Health and Human Services launched an internal probe into whether there was any impropriety following calls for an investigation by FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock.

    It’s unclear how long Aduhelm’s development will be under federal scrutiny. But in the meantime, the drug is already forcing companies and government agencies to make tough decisions. In the private insurance industry, Bloomberg reported, numerous companies are refusing to cover the Aduhelm until more data is presented, deeming the drug as largely experimental. The Department of Veterans Affairs has likewise shot the drug down entirely, citing the “the risk of significant adverse drug events and to the lack of evidence of a positive impact on cognition.”

    For its part, Medicare is still weighing a final determination as to whether — and how much — it will cover, even though the agency has already raised its premiums to build up cash reserves for coverage, according to CNN. “It’s important to note that the Part B Premium reflects our actuaries’ best estimates of future Medicare spending and the necessary reserves to ensure we can pay claims,” a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) spokesperson told Salon.

    “CMS will post a proposed NCD and decision memorandum within six months from the initiation of this NCD analysis,” they added.

    But if CMS ultimately agrees to cover the drug, Abramson said, it will run the risk of “pulling money out of our healthcare system for the kinds of things that we know are going to be more cost effective.”

    “The big picture here is that the biotech whiz-bang takes money away from basic healthcare,” he added. “And in my opinion, that’s why the United States — despite spending an excess of $1.5 trillion a year — is losing ground rapidly in terms of population health, compared not just to the other wealthy nations, but to all the nations.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Documents Reveal Biden Admin Not Fighting For A Covid Vaccine Patent Waiver

    On November 26, as news of the new Omicron variant of Covid-19 stoked alarm around the world, the White House released a statement calling on countries to support an intellectual property waiver for Covid-19 vaccines. However, this public statement, which garnered numerous headlines, stands in stark contrast with what the Biden administration did — or did not do — behind closed doors at the WTO on November 29.

    The post Documents Reveal Biden Admin Not Fighting For A Covid Vaccine Patent Waiver appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Another Year Of Devastating Overdoses In Baltimore

    Little legislative movement in Maryland over the past two years has left people who use drugs more vulnerable and even less safe. Overdoses have been increasing for years now because the drug supply has been poisoned with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that has leaked into street drugs, making them unpredictable and lethal. You just don’t know what you’re getting. For the most part, the response to this lethal phenomenon has amounted to the all-too-typical declaration of an “opioid crisis,” which has catalyzed a combination of moral panic and a severely limited plea for “understanding” that mostly focuses on addiction and treatment.

    The post Another Year Of Devastating Overdoses In Baltimore appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Biden Is Quietly Continuing a Trump-Era Ploy to Privatize Medicare

    Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Health and Human Services, takes notes during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on June 9, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

    A Trump-era pilot program that could result in the complete privatization of traditional Medicare in a matter of years is moving ahead under the Biden administration, a development that — despite its potentially massive implications for patients across the U.S. — has received scant attention from the national press or Congress.

    On Tuesday, a group of physicians from around the nation will try to grab the notice of lawmakers, the Biden White House, and the public by traveling to Washington, D.C. and demanding that the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) immediately stop the Medicare experiment, which is known as Direct Contracting (DC).

    The doctors plan to present HHS with a petition signed by more than 1,500 physicians who believe the DC pilot threatens “the future of Medicare as we know it.”

    Advocates have been publicly sounding the alarm about the DC program for months, warning that it could fully hand traditional Medicare over to Wall Street investors and other profit-seekers, resulting in higher costs for patients and lower-quality care.

    “Everything we know about Direct Contracting should be cause to halt the pilot,” Diane Archer, the founder of Just Care USA and the senior adviser on Medicare at Social Security Works, told Common Dreams in an email. “Direct Contracting effectively eliminates the more cost-effective traditional Medicare program designed to ensure that people with complex health conditions get the care they need.”

    “The Direct Contracting experiment is likely to be both a healthcare policy and a political nightmare,” Archer argued. “We already know from the Medicare Advantage experiment that Direct Contracting won’t save money, nor will it be able to show improved quality.”

    But healthcare campaigners’ concerns have fallen largely on deaf ears in Congress and the Biden administration, which has allowed much of the pilot program to proceed as planned.

    In a phone interview with Common Dreams ahead of Tuesday’s demonstration at HHS headquarters, Dr. Ed Weisbart — chair of the Missouri chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) — said that Congress is largely “asleep at the switch” as Wall Street-backed startups and private insurance giants close in on traditional Medicare, a 56-year-old program that covers tens of millions of U.S. seniors.

    “People don’t know that it’s happening,” Weisbart, one of the physicians traveling to the nation’s capital, said of the DC experiment. “Most people in Congress don’t know that it’s happening. We’ve started having some of these conversations with congressional staff, and we’re hoping to have many more of them next week when we’re there, but it’s not on their radar either.”

    “That’s the disturbing part,” he added. “How radical the transformation of Medicare is becoming under this new model, how widespread it will be — it’ll be the entire book of business — and yet that’s occurring with neither the awareness nor consent of Congress.”

    The DC program was established by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) during the waning months of the Trump administration, which included former pharmaceutical industry executives, Wall Street bankers, and right-wing policy consultants notorious for gashing public health programs.

    Under the DC model, so-called Direct Contracting Entities (DCEs) are paid monthly by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to cover a specified portion of a patient’s medical care — a significant shift from traditional Medicare’s direct reimbursement of providers.

    DCEs are allowed to pocket the funding they don’t spend on care, an arrangement that critics believe will incentivize the private middlemen to skimp on Medicare patients — many of whom could be auto-enrolled into DCEs without their knowledge or permission.

    According to a policy brief released by PNHP, “Virtually any company can apply to be a DCE, including investor-backed startups that include primary care physicians, [Medicare Advantage] plans and other commercial insurers, accountable care organizations (ACOs) or ACO-like organizations, and for-profit hospital systems.”

    “Applicants are approved by CMS without input from Congress or other elected officials,” the group notes.

    At present, the pilot includes 53 DCEs in 38 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Drs. Richard Gilfillan and Donald Berwick pointed out in a September article for Health Affairs that 28 of the current DCEs are controlled by investors, not healthcare providers. A second tranche of DCEs is expected to debut in January 2022.

    Dr. Ana Malinow, a physician from San Francisco who is taking part in Tuesday’s petition delivery, said in a statement that “Medicare Advantage — the first wave of Medicare privatization — showed us that inserting a profit-seeking middleman into public coverage does not save money for taxpayers, but rather costs more money while also taking away care choices from seniors.”

    “If left unchecked, the Direct Contracting program will hand traditional Medicare off to Wall Street investors, without input from seniors, doctors, or even members of Congress,” said Malinow. “Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has the power to stop this Trump-era program in its tracks, and must do so now.”

    The DC experiment was launched by the Trump administration but actually has its roots in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which established CMMI with the stated goal of identifying “ways to improve healthcare quality and reduce costs in the Medicare, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) programs.”

    The ACA granted CMMI, also known as the Innovation Center, the authority to test alternative payment and service delivery models on a national scale without congressional approval — latitude that, in the hands of the Trump administration, ultimately spawned the DC pilot program.

    CMMI is currently headed by Elizabeth Fowler, who previously served as vice president of public policy and external affairs for WellPoint, Inc. — a health insurance giant that later became Anthem. Fowler also worked as chief health counsel to former Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus, a right-wing Democrat who infamously had single-payer proponents arrested in 2009 and helped ensure that the ACA did not include a public option.

    Weisbart told Common Dreams that while the creation of CMMI may have been well-intentioned, the body’s ability to “so fundamentally and radically transform a public health program that so many Americans rely on” without congressional approval or oversight is a real danger that lawmakers must take seriously.

    “Someplace there needs to be congressional oversight,” Weisbart said. “When the public does finally find out that [lawmakers] were asleep at the switch, they’re not going to be happy. This is your chance to do what democracy is intended to do.”

    The Biden administration paused the most extreme form of Direct Contracting — known as the Geographic (GEO) model — in March, but it is allowing the Global and Professional Direct Contracting (GPDC) pilot to move forward. According to CMS, the GPDC pilot is expected to play out over a six-year period.

    While lawmakers have largely been quiet about the Medicare experiment, a handful of Democratic members of Congress have echoed grassroots demands for an immediate end to the DC program in recent months.

    “We appreciate that you paused implementation of the Geographic model,” Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas.) Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) wrote in a May letter to Becerra and then-Acting CMS Administrator Elizabeth Richter. “However, we remain worried that the 53 DCEs participating in the GPDC model, a policy launched under the Trump administration, lacks oversight to protect Medicare beneficiaries’ care.”

    “As members of Congress committed to protecting Medicare beneficiaries,” the lawmakers continued, “we ask that CMS immediately freeze the harmful CMMI DCE pilot program including the Geographic model and the Global and Professional Direct Contracting Model and evaluate the impact to beneficiaries.”

    In September, Porter took part in a PNHP-hosted webinar that spotlighted the potentially far-reaching harms of the DC pilot.

    “This program was supposed to make Medicare more efficient,” said Porter. “But actually it does just the opposite. Rather than allowing patients to go to providers directly under traditional Medicare, DCEs invite insurers and investors to step in and interfere with the care that Americans get.”

    “This Direct Contracting Entity model is just one more example of the Trump administration’s many attempts to wreck a functioning, successful, popular government program for the sake of lining the pockets of its corporate donors,” Porter added. “The bottom line for Direct Contracting Entities is not to improve the quality of care. They drive up costs for patients to maximize their profits.”

    In a column earlier this month, the Houston Chronicle’s Chris Tomlinson argued that the Biden administration’s decision to allow the DC program to continue “reflects for-profit health companies and investors’ power over both political parties.”

    “Direct Contracting is also likely to kill any chance for progressive Democrats to make Medicare an option for any American who wants to enroll,” Tomlinson added. “If the government puts private companies in charge of all Medicare patients, it will eliminate any opportunity to overhaul our healthcare system truly.”

    “Next year,” he added, “millions more Americans will find themselves in privatized Medicare, and most will never know what happened.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Carers Of The World Vs. Covid-19 Criminals

    As we enter the third year of the Covid-19 crisis, two battles are underway. One is led by the carers of the world in overcrowded hospitals, fighting to end the pandemic. Another is by corporate executives in closed boardrooms, fighting to prolong it. The question at the very center of both is this — who will control medical recipes worth billions of dollars, and millions of lives? The Progressive International is mobilizing nurses unions around the world to take on Big Pharma and the governments they have captured.

    The post Carers Of The World Vs. Covid-19 Criminals appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • 2.5 Million Nurses Demand UN Probe Into Rich Countries Blocking Patent Waivers

    A medical worker fills a syringe with the covid-19 vaccine

    More than two million nurses from 28 countries across the globe filed a complaint Monday calling on the United Nations to investigate the rich countries that are blocking a proposed patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines, an appeal that came as public health experts raced to understand the newly detected Omicron variant.

    In a detailed letter addressed to Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Physical and Mental Health, dozens of nursing unions noted that “the end of this pandemic is nowhere in sight” as “Covid-19 cases continue to soar in numerous parts of the world, while pharmaceutical companies and governments have failed to ensure that critical treatments and vaccines are distributed equitably in order to respond to the pandemic.”

    “This unequal distribution of vaccines is not only grossly unjust for the people in low- and moderate-income countries who remain at high risk for contracting and further transmitting Covid-19, it also provides for the possibility for the development of new variants, some of which may be resistant to the current available vaccines,” the filing reads. “The development and spread of new variants pose a dire risk to all people around the world.”

    The complaint specifically targets the European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, and Singapore, wealthy nations that have stonewalled the patent waiver at the World Trade Organization (WTO), defying the will of a majority of that institution’s member countries.

    By blocking the patent waiver, the small group of rich nations is “endangering millions of lives around the world,” the nurses declare in a petition accompanying their formal U.N. complaint.

    “This is a clear violation of our right to health — of nurses, caregivers, and patients. So we are now taking them to court,” the petition continues. “We demand an urgent investigation into the obstruction of the waiver by these Covid-19 criminals.”

    The WTO was set to consider the patent waiver once more at its biannual ministerial conference this week, but the meeting was postponed indefinitely due to the spread of the Omicron variant.

    Coordinated by Global Nurses United and Progressive International, the nurses’ U.N. complaint was submitted as scientists and political leaders worldwide grappled with the potential threat posed by Omicron, the fifth coronavirus strain to be designated a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization (WHO). First detected in Botswana, cases of the variant have since been identified in South Africa, Australia, Israel, the U.K., Canada, and elsewhere.

    On Sunday, the WHO issued an update noting that “it is not yet clear whether Omicron is more transmissible (e.g., more easily spread from person to person) compared to other variants, including Delta.” The organization also said there’s not yet enough evidence to determine whether Omicron causes more severe disease than other variants, or whether it is resistant to existing vaccines.

    “Studies currently underway or underway shortly include assessments of transmissibility, severity of infection (including symptoms), performance of vaccines and diagnostic tests, and effectiveness of treatments,” the WHO said.

    In its complaint on Sunday, the coalition of nursing unions argues that the proliferation of variants is a predictable outcome of rich nations’ refusal to “distribute vaccines and treatments equitably to the vast majority of people of low- and moderate-income countries.”

    “Nurses and other healthcare workers have been on the frontlines of the Covid-19 pandemic response, and we have witnessed the staggering numbers of deaths and the immense suffering caused by political inaction,” the filing states. “High-income countries have procured upwards of 7 billion confirmed vaccine doses, while low income countries have only been able to procure approximately 300 million doses. This has created what public health advocates around the world have described as ‘vaccine apartheid.'”

    “It is now clear: Continued opposition to the TRIPS waiver is resulting in the violation of human rights of peoples across the world,” the document continues, citing Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. “These countries have violated our rights and the rights of our patients — and caused the loss of countless lives — of nurses and other caregivers and those we have cared for.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Washington Mental Health Workers Win Safety Strike

    Nurses and mental health techs at a Tukwila, Washington, facility have won their safety strike after three and a half months on the picket line. Under the settlement, management agreed to staff three security guards for the day shift and two for nights, as well as to restore fired workers to their positions. The contract, which covers 220 workers, also includes 5 percent annual raises over its three-year term, plus a $5,000 bonus. And it establishes staff-to-patient ratios that the union says set a new national standard for behavioral health.

    The post Washington Mental Health Workers Win Safety Strike appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Opinion | Nurses unions around the world mobilize against Big Pharma

    This story originally appeared in Progressive International on Nov. 29, 2021. It is shared here with permission.

    The pandemic rages on—not by accident, but by design.

    As we enter the third year of the COVID-19 crisis, two battles are underway. One is led by the carers of the world in overcrowded hospitals, fighting to end the pandemic. Another is by corporate executives in closed boardrooms, fighting to prolong it.

    The question at the very center of both is this—who will control medical recipes worth billions of dollars, and millions of lives?

    If more of our factories, wherever they might be, could start producing vaccines for the people in their countries, companies like Pfizer would lose their monopoly. They know this.

    As some countries roll out booster programs, less than 6% of Africa’s more than a billion people have been fully inoculated. Big pharmaceutical companies are letting the pandemic go on—and why not, according to a recent estimate, Pfizer is expected to make astronomical profits—$107bn in cumulative sales by the end of 2022 on its COVID-19 vaccines, now being dubbed a “megablockbuster.” Key to this is complete control over production, price, and profit. If more of our factories, wherever they might be, could start producing vaccines for the people in their countries, companies like Pfizer would lose their monopoly. They know this.

    Right now, the World Trade Organization is considering a proposal that would temporarily waive patent protections on vaccine recipes. Over 164 countries have supported it. But the pharmaceutical industry is fighting back, hard—through the governments it lobbies. The European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, and Singapore have successfully blocked it for over a year.

    But as the ministers convene, once again, in Geneva on Nov. 30, a new global movement is readying its fight: 2.5 million nurses are taking these COVID-19 criminals to court. In an unprecedented move, unions from 28 countries, coordinated by the Global Nurses United and the Progressive International—have filed a complaint with the United Nations alleging human rights violations by these countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, whose end, they write, “is nowhere in sight.”

    In a closed-door meeting about how to get more vaccines to the world’s poorest people, the chief executive of Pfizer attacked Dr. Tedros, the head of the World Health Organization, for speaking “emotionally” when he called for greater balance in the global distribution of vaccines. From Brazil to India, the United States to Taiwan, nurses are bringing their emotions to bear. They have been on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic response and witnessed the staggering numbers of deaths and the immense suffering caused by political inaction. From the front lines, they prepare to hold these countries to account with a rallying cry: We, who care—we bear witness. Now, we testify.

    The nurses’ complaint is not simply a legal fight: it is radical call to expose and defeat the governments that have been holding the lives of people hostage in order to service corporate superprofits.

    The nurses’ complaint is not simply a legal fight: it is radical call to expose and defeat the governments that have been holding the lives of people hostage in order to service corporate superprofits.

    The leaders of these nations have been explicit about the world they seek to build: Early in the pandemic, the UK parliament’s foreign affairs select committee called for a “G20 for public health.” This is a revealing analogy.  Much like the G20, these countries have, in effect, hijacked international institutions and actively undermined the sovereignty of other nations, while enjoying complete impunity for their actions.

    Consider the principal opponent to the waiver proposal at the WTO: the EU. In May 2020, European Parliamentarians, the only members directly elected by citizens in the EU system, voted to back the waiver to “address global production constraints and supply shortage.” Yet, for the next six months, the European Commission, which negotiates on behalf of Europe at the WTO has stubbornly resisted the waiver. This is entirely unsurprising if we look at who the European commissioners and their cabinets meet: Since March 2020, they have had 161 meetings with Big Pharma in the same time frame that they managed to meet one NGO in favour of the waiver.

    Nothing stood in their way as they throttled democracy and gave free reign to a deadly virus. Not global health organizations, two-thirds of which are headquartered in the US, UK, and Switzerland. Not international institutions, whose austerity agendas, have over decades, decimated public health systems in developing nations even as 83% of all government health spending occurred in the affluent world. Not the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—which, it turns out, urged Oxford to reverse their decision to share their vaccine technology with the world.

    The COVID-19 criminals have made their disregard for universal human rights and international law clear. It is now up to us to reclaim the enormous power that the UN charter, the WTO, WHO, and international law hold, and deploy them as tools. That is why this translational coalition is moving the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council—to investigate—and find against the governments in question.

    In the complaint addressed to Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN special rapporteur for physical and mental health, we articulated our demands:

    First, undertake an urgent mission to the World Trade Organization: For too long, these countries have been wholly unaccountable, disguising their submission to corporate interests behind technical jargon. Their days of impunity are over.

    Second, make a determination that the obstruction of the waiver constitutes a continuing breach of these governments’ obligations to guarantee the right to physical and mental health of everyone. Healthcare is our right. What we’re witnessing cannot be defined as an inefficiency in our system, or the failure of our politics — it is, in no uncertain terms — a crime against us all.

    The nurses have given their testimony: “These countries have violated our rights and the rights of our patients—and caused the loss of countless lives— of nurses and other caregivers and those we have cared for.”

    Today is the day the historic case of the Carers of the World vs. Covid-19 Criminals begins.

    Add your name here. At 100,000 signatures, the petition with your signature will reach the UN Human Rights Council.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • WHO, South Africa urge nations to lift ‘naive’ Omicron travel bans

    Common Dreams Logo

    This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Nov. 28, 2021. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.

    The World Health Organization on Sunday echoed calls by South Africa’s president for countries to eschew travel bans targeting southern Africans amid the spread of the heavily mutated Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

    “Travel restrictions may play a role in slightly reducing the spread of Covid-19 but place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods,” the WHO said in a statement calling for borders to remain open. “If restrictions are implemented, they should not be unnecessarily invasive or intrusive, and should be scientifically based, according to the International Health Regulations, which is a legally binding instrument of international law recognized by over 190 nations.”

    Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, added that “the speed and transparency of the South African and Botswana governments in informing the world of the new variant is to be commended. WHO stands with African countries which had the courage to boldly share lifesaving public health information, helping protect the world against the spread of Covid-19.”

    In recent days, dozens of nations including the United States have prohibited travelers from numerous nations in southern Africa due to concerns about the Omicron variant, which was first identified in Botswana earlier this month. On Friday, the WHO classified the new strain as a “variant of concern.”

    On Sunday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa urged nations that have imposed bans on African travelers to rescind what he called the “scientifically unjustified” restrictions.

    “The only thing the prohibition on travel will do is to further damage the economies of the affected countries and undermine their ability to respond to, and recover from, the pandemic,” Ramaphosa said. “These restrictions are unjustified and unfairly discriminate against our country and our southern African sister countries.”

    South African vaccinologist Shabir Madhi told Al Jazeera that it is “naive” for world leaders “to believe they can stop the spread of this variant with a blanket ban on countries in southern Africa.”

    “The virus has already found its way into these societies from individuals that haven’t even traveled to or come into contact with anyone from southern Africa,” he said. “In South Africa, we have one of the globe’s best Covid sequencing capacities based on our experience with treating HIV and TB. We have been ahead of the game for a while now and we are thus a victim of our success.”

    Nicole A. Errett, a professor of public health at the University of Washington, told The Washington Post that by the time countries enact pandemic travel bans, “the cat’s already out of the bag, so to speak.”

    “Omicron has already been detected in other continents,” she noted. “A travel ban could in theory buy some time by reducing the spread of new seed cases, but we are talking on the order of days to weeks.”

    Sunday’s World Health Organization statement and Ramaphosa’s call follow an admonition by WHO Health Emergencies Program executive director Dr. Michael Ryan to avoid “knee-jerk reactions” to the Omicron variant.

    “It’s really important that we remain open, and stay focused,” Ryan said on Friday.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Did You Share Personal Information With a ‘Crisis Pregnancy Center’? Tell Us What Happened Next.

    An illustration shows a person sitting in a waiting room surrounded by ominous eyes.

    Amid a new wave of restrictive laws and looming Supreme Court battles, one important aspect of America’s abortion wars has gone mostly unnoticed: how some anti-abortion groups are using patients’ private health information to promote their social agenda – affecting reproductive options for women around the U.S.   

    According to researchers, people seeking reproductive services may be unwittingly sharing sensitive information when they make contact – in person or online – with so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” many of which are run by anti-abortion organizations. In some states, these centers vastly outnumber abortion and family planning providers. And although these facilities often resemble licensed medical clinics, they aren’t always required to follow health privacy laws that regulate how personal health information is collected and shared.

    As a result, people seeking abortions might  hand over data they wrongly assume is protected by law. 

    You can help Reveal investigate how anti-abortion groups may be using your most sensitive medical information without your knowledge or consent. 

    If you’ve ever contacted a crisis pregnancy center by phone or online, searched for information, or attended an appointment, we’d like to know what happened next. Did you start seeing ads for adoption or baby-related products in your social media feeds? Were you targeted for outreach via email? Did you receive phone calls? In-person visits?

    To tell us about your experience, please use the form below. We guarantee that we will never publish your name, personal information or details of your experience without your consent. Only a small group of Reveal reporters and editors will have access to your full responses.

    Did you share personal information with a ‘crisis pregnancy center’? Tell us what happened next.

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    Byard Duncan can be reached at bduncan@revealnews.org, and Grace Oldham can be reached at goldham@revealnews.org. Follow them on Twitter: @ByardDuncan and @grace_c_oldham.

    Did You Share Personal Information With a ‘Crisis Pregnancy Center’? Tell Us What Happened Next. is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • The Right Is Hijacking Progressive Arguments to Undermine Public Health

    Demonstrators march during an anti-mandate protest against the COVID-19 vaccine as part of a "Global Freedom Movement" in New York on November 20, 2021.

    As COVID-19 has ravaged the U.S., many progressive health care activists and organizations such as National Nurses United have illustrated how the pandemic has only made worse what was already intolerable about our for-profit medical system, and continued to demand universal, publicly financed, single-payer health care. Some on the anti-vax right have instead used the “preexisting conditions” of our health care system to discredit the people and measures which are trying to stop the pandemic, often disingenuously coopting progressive arguments in the process.

    The profit-driven nature of our health care system and the pain that it causes the U.S. people have not just galvanized some in support of single-payer, but unfortunately have also helped to seed the ground for the mistrust that cynical political actors have cultivated to make people hostile to public health measures. The following are examples of said cynical political actors doing just that:

    • Former President Donald Trump has claimed on more than one occasion that doctors and hospitals are part of a conspiracy to enrich themselves by saying patients died of COVID when they actually didn’t.
    • Conservative activist Candace Owens tweeted: “‘The Covid vaccine saves lives, which is why the government is making it free!’ K. So explain to me why insulin and asthma inhalers cost so much money. If the vaccines are really about the government trying to save your life — why do life-saving medicines cost so much?”
    • One of the central talking points of the anti-vax movement has been that Big Pharma was involved in inventing or manipulating the pandemic in order to push vaccines to enrich itself.

    All of these claims are false, but they appear to some to have validity because they rest at least tangentially on facts: Hospitals and health insurance are too expensive. We are constantly bombarded with horror stories about the ridiculous expenses of medical care: $54,000 for a COVID test, $16,000 for having a baby, $1,000 for an ambulance, and those examples are all just from insured people. Tens of millions have no insurance, and GoFundMe has become the indispensable website for the insured and uninsured alike. Then there is the genre of allegedly heartwarming news stories of people overcoming dystopian reality, like the girl selling lemonade to pay for brain surgery or the high school robotics team constructing a special wheelchair for a little boy when insurance wouldn’t pay for it. As if to put a fine point on the absurdity, just recently a story made the rounds of someone who sat in a local emergency room for hours and left without any treatment, then received a bill for $700.

    Adding to this ongoing scam, pharmaceutical companies do their share to bilk patients for their medications. From pharma bros and Sen. Joe Manchin’s daughter jacking up prices on their company’s respective drugs, to something as common as insulin being much more costly in the U.S. than elsewhere, Big Pharma plays a significant role in why our health care system is as expensive and dysfunctional as it is. Its attempts to reap as much profit as possible from the COVID vaccine program, even at the expense of leaving much of the world unvaccinated, do not recommend it, either.

    In the face of all this, the government has hung the sick, and ultimately all of us, out to dry. Consider the absurdity of Trump and President Joe Biden, both opponents of single-payer health care, in last year’s campaign endorsing free treatment and vaccines for COVID, while ignoring the financial plight of people suffering from every other disease, ailment and injury, and denouncing efforts to guarantee those people coverage as unworkable and socialistic. As the rest of the developed world has figured out how to provide health care to all their citizens, we still maintain a system in which an estimated 45,000 people die every year from lack of health care, and in which, one study found, 500,000 people cite medical bills as either a primary or contributing cause of bankruptcy annually.

    Why? Because hospital, health insurance and pharma corporations each have corrupt, symbiotic relationships with our legislators and regulators which run counter to the general welfare. This has become especially clear as the reconciliation “Build Back Better” bill has been sliced and diced by Senators Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and a select number of House Democrats, all of whom think it’s a bridge too far to make sure seniors can afford their prescriptions, eyeglasses and the teeth in their heads. Follow the money and one finds that this is not primarily an issue of dearly held ideological differences but rather rank corruption and influence-peddling. Sinema has received oodles of cash from the health care and pharma industries, Manchin was a beneficiary of his daughter’s company’s largesse, and Democratic representatives who voted against drug pricing reform have been funded by Big Pharma.

    All of this is true, and it’s a sad, infuriating mess, but it does not mean doctors and hospitals are inventing COVID cases. It doesn’t mean vaccines are a scam, and it doesn’t mean the pandemic is either fake or engineered.

    The bad faith arguments which the right concocts on these subjects have no need of being coherent. When Trump accuses the doctors and hospitals of inventing COVID cases for money, he doesn’t suggest nationalizing health care like Britain’s National Health Service. When Owens asks why medications are so expensive, she doesn’t endorse Medicare for All. When the anti-vaxxers complain about Big Pharma’s ill-gotten gains, they aren’t out there supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders’s plan to let Medicare negotiate for lower drug prices for seniors. Each of these three potential policy solutions is instead met by these factions with the same standard chorus of “Socialism! Tyranny!”

    However false the claims are, however fake the concern, the right has no doubt been effective in how they use the faults of the health care system to attack doctors and civil servants who are charged with protecting the health of the public.

    Right-wing ideologues and politicos, though they are some of the main defenders of for-profit health care and beneficiaries of its lucre, are still astute enough to recognize that the system they hail is highly dysfunctional and hurts a lot of people — physically, emotionally and financially. They recognize that the profit motive of the hospital, insurance and pharmaceutical industries creates perverse incentives to maximize private gain at the expense of the public good. They recognize that this situation persists precisely because these industries have incredible control over government health care policy.

    They recognize all these problems, but they won’t identify any of them as such to the public, nor do anything to solve them. They merely expose edges of this reality to their followers as it suits their purposes — in this case, to make political hay out of saying the government and Big Pharma are trying to oppress and/or kill you. In so doing, they encourage selfish and self-destructive behavior during a pandemic and let loose a deluge of anger and violence against local, state and federal health officials, doctors, teachers, school boards, store clerks, food service workers and flight attendants.

    There are many factors involved in creating this dynamic, but one is no doubt the rapacious nature of our economy as a whole, and of the health care system in particular, which brutalizes the public. This status quo of societal and political indifference to sickness and bankruptcy reinforces the kind of Thomas Hobbesian mentality that the right is trying to instill — “the war of all against all” — as they seek to shred not only the patchwork social safety net, but also just basic norms of civil society, such as taking minimal precautions to protect others. As long as we make health care a commodity rather than a right, the cynical, dishonest arguments that are currently trying to discredit public health officials and measures will only endure: “They didn’t care about you then, what makes you think they care about you now?”

    Whereas the right is attempting to scapegoat public health officials for the problems caused by a for-profit system, they are not the ones with the power to make insulin or chemo free at the point of service, like vaccines. It is the politicians who are the ones who need to either be convinced, replaced or circumvented. How do we do this? In some respects, it seems like this issue, as with so many others, is perpetually in the doldrums. Our political system, especially at the federal level, is frozen by legalized bribery and prevented from addressing actual problems in a substantive way. Therefore, the fact that polling shows a majority favor a single-payer system is inconsequential to most of our representatives in an allegedly representative democracy.

    Moreover, simply the structure of government in the United States is a unique impediment. Because a party has to control both houses of Congress as well as the presidency at the same time in order to get most things done, most things don’t get done. Even when Democrats do hold this trifecta, there seems to always be a catch. This time it’s Manchin and Sinema, last time it was then-Senators Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson.

    To demonstrate the degree to which our system bogs down progress, whereas President Harry Truman started pushing for single-payer at roughly the same time as the United Kingdom, they have had the National Health Service since the late 1940s, but here we are. President Lyndon Johnson was only able to get Medicare and Medicaid through because an inordinate number of liberals were elected to Congress in his 1964 landslide.

    Since the advent of Reaganism and the capitulation of the Democratic Party to neoliberalism and privatization, some strides have been made, although they have tended to be more market-based. To wit, both President Barack Obama and Biden ran on the public option, and neither produced it.

    This invariably gets into the status of the Democratic Party: Is it the only way to get to the goal, or is it hopelessly compromised by vested interests? That discussion is at least as old as former Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan, and there are valid points all around, but one thing that is certainly necessary is a greater focus on primaries and removing the Democrats who are the most captured by corporate power. If enough who oppose single-payer are removed, others will begin to accept it.

    The numbers are there. A significant majority of Democrats favor a Medicare for All system, the exit polling from the 2020 Democratic primaries demonstrates this. But because Biden beat Sanders, the corporate media and establishment party functionaries spun that as the voters agreeing more with Biden’s policy views rather than their impression of his “electability.”

    Often it seems that the party is more intent on strangling any social democratic policies than it is on opposing the rise of fascism, but in carrying out the former, they lay the groundwork for the latter. The dynamic described in this article is only one example of such: The precarity to which we expose so many people and the suffering they endure is hastening the rise of authoritarianism. Time was when Democrats understood this, as with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt implementing the New Deal in part as a bulwark against it.

    If change at the federal level is a remote possibility, a state-by-state approach is another route. Canada did not adopt universal health care all at once, it started in Saskatchewan after decades of activism on the part of agrarian and labor groups. Creating local and state organizations around single-payer and associated issues is a critical piece of building power and momentum. Doing so around preexisting union, faith and other networks could be especially impactful. As much as voting in the right people is necessary, ultimately there also need to be groups and spaces outside the partisan framework which are issue-oriented and not subservient to a party’s immediate electoral fortunes.

    Ballot measures are an especially potent example of this. On issues from raising the minimum wage, to legalizing marijuana, to expanding Medicaid, voters in a wide range of states, including deep red states, have voted for significant progressive change through ballot measures. Organizers in the states that have yet to expand Medicaid are working on this for the 2022 and 2024 elections. This isn’t single-payer, but defending and extending existing public health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid is critical in and of itself and to realizing that eventual goal. Find out what activism is going on in your neighborhood, state or region, and plug in or create the spark yourself.

    Much of the work of convincing people on the policy substance has already been done; it is largely a question of translating belief into action. Let’s use progressive arguments for progressive ends.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Hypocritical Oath

    The end of medical school is a moment that, for many medical school graduates, is several years — sometimes several generations — in the making. After four grueling years the graduate is ready to officially get that “MD” behind their name. But what else has the four years of medical school done for the soon-to-be physician? As previously discussed, medical school is not an apolitical environment in which “medical knowledge” is simply passed on to each student. Mechanisms are put in place to condition students to be less likely to question systems of power. Overall, the medical school structure serves as an indoctrination system. By the time they graduate, medical students are forced to take on massive amounts of student loans — the average medical school graduate has around $250,000 in student loan debt — which serves as a form of economic control and coercion.

    The post The Hypocritical Oath appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Alarm grows as COVID cases spike in Europe and US deaths in 2021 top 2020’s toll

    Common Dreams Logo

    This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Nov. 21, 2021. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.

    Europe is in the grip of a potentially devastating fourth coronavirus wave and the United States has now recorded more Covid-19 deaths in 2021 than it did in 2020, heightening alarm among public health experts who fear another brutal winter surge.

    Dr. Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe, warned Saturday that the coronavirus could kill 500,000 more people in Europe by March if political leaders don’t take immediate action to forestall the current spread and increase vaccine uptake, which has been lagging in parts of the continent due, in some cases, to anti-vaccine sentiment.

    “Countries need to stop hoarding tests, drugs, and vaccines and big pharmaceutical companies need to stop hoarding technology.”

    “Covid-19 has become once again the number one cause of mortality in our region,” Kluge told the BBC.

    In an effort to quell a major spike in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, the Austrian government announced Friday that it would institute a nationwide lockdown and soon mandate coronavirus vaccinations for its entire adult population. Thus far, around 65% of Austria’s population has been fully vaccinated—one of the lowest rates in Western Europe.

    “The virus is back with new rigor in Europe again and new catastrophic waves are imminent in Africa and Asia,” said Shailly Gupta, communications adviser with Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign, pointing to regions that have been denied adequate supplies of vaccines and therapeutics. “Wealthy nations need to understand that unless everyone everywhere is vaccinated, the situation is not going to change.”

    “Countries need to stop hoarding tests, drugs, and vaccines and big pharmaceutical companies need to stop hoarding technology if they really want to control this pandemic,” she added.

    Austria’s mandate, set to take effect in February, prompted immediate backlash. On Saturday, tens of thousands of people—including many aligned with the country’s far-right Freedom Party—took to the streets of Vienna to denounce the public health measure, which Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said is necessary to break the nation’s vaccination plateau and prevent further deaths.

    “We have too many political forces in this country who vehemently and massively fight against this,” he said in a speech Friday. “This is irresponsible. It is an attack on our health system. Goaded by these anti-vaxxers and from fake news, too many people among us have not been vaccinated. The consequence is overfilled intensive care stations and enormous human suffering. No one can want that.”

    The Associated Press reported that “demonstrations against virus restrictions also took place in Switzerland, Croatia, Italy, Northern Ireland, and the Netherlands on Saturday, a day after Dutch police opened fire on protesters and seven people were injured in rioting that erupted in Rotterdam.”

    Last week, the Biden administration suspended enforcement activities related to its vaccination and testing mandates for private businesses after a federal appeals court temporarily halted the requirements.

    “Protesters rallied against coronavirus restrictions and mandatory Covid-19 passes needed in many European countries to enter restaurants, Christmas markets, or sports events, as well as mandatory vaccinations,” AP noted. “The Austrian lockdown will start Monday and comes as average daily deaths have tripled in recent weeks and hospitals in heavily hit states have warned that intensive care units are reaching capacity.”

    As The Week‘s Ryan Cooper noted in a recent column, “There is a clear inverse relationship between shots and spread” in Europe.

    “The countries suffering truly galloping outbreaks—mostly places to the south and east like Greece, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Slovakia—are typically below 70% full vaccination, often quite far below. By contrast, there appears to be a rough breakpoint near 75-80% vaccination where the rate of case growth is much slower. It’s surely not a coincidence Portugal and Spain are the most-vaccinated countries on the continent, and both have thus far mostly avoided a big resurgence.”

    In the US, meanwhile, data from the federal government and Johns Hopkins University show that the official Covid-19 death toll in 2021 surpassed 385,457 on Saturday, topping 2020 fatalities. The nation’s total death count currently stands at 770,800—the highest in the world.

    “The spread of the highly contagious Delta variant and low vaccination rates in some communities were important factors [this year],” the Wall Street Journal reported. “The milestone comes as Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations move higher again in places such as New England and the upper Midwest, with the seven-day average for new cases recently closer to 90,000 a day after it neared 70,000 last month.”

    The surge comes as few public health restrictions remain in place across the US. Last week, the Biden administration suspended enforcement activities related to its vaccination and testing mandates for private businesses after a federal appeals court temporarily halted the requirements.

    All US adults are now eligible for booster shots, but public health experts have cautioned that the broad availability of third doses may not do much to stem the current spike in cases given that it’s largely being fueled by the unvaccinated. Less than 60% of the US population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the latest figures from Our World in Data.

    A recent analysis by the Financial Times found that more booster shots have been administered in rich countries over a three-month period than total doses have been given in poor countries in all of 2021. The head of the WHO called for a moratorium on booster shots in August in an effort to bolster vaccination drives in poor countries, but the US and other rich countries dismissed his demand.

    Just 5% of people in low-income countries have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose.

    “The evidence isn’t there that a large rollout of boosters is really going to have that much impact on the epidemic,” argued Ira Longini Jr., a vaccine expert and professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida.

    Tom Philpott of Mother Jones wrote Saturday that “in the popular imagination, 2020 gets all the bad press, but this year has been no sunny day at the beach, either.”

    “Sure, several effective Covid-19 vaccines emerged, but so did the highly contagious Delta variant, as well as new, more virulent strains of anti-vax sentiment, tightly yoked to conservative political ideology,” Philpott noted. “Worst of all, intellectual property hoarding has meant that the vaccines have so far largely bypassed low-income nations of the Global South, wreaking untold human misery and giving the virus ample opportunity to generate more contagious and/or more virulent strains.”

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • 35,000 Us Healthcare Workers Avert Strike

    Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest healthcare providers and hospital networks in the US, reached a tentative agreement with an alliance of unions just two days before a historic strike. The four-year agreement includes pay raises and measures to address understaffing, while withdrawing a two-tier pay system that would pay new hires up to a third less than current workers. In the next few weeks, workers will vote to ratify it and continue to work as scheduled.

    The post 35,000 Us Healthcare Workers Avert Strike appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Nurses’ Strike Signals Kaiser’s End As Union Haven

    Across corporate America, relations between companies and their labor unions range from chilly to ice-cold. Not at Kaiser Permanente – the California-based healthcare giant. Kaiser has long been seen as having the nation’s best labor-management partnership. Now the partnership finds itself in crisis as 34,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers prepare to strike on Monday, in what would be the largest walkout in this fall’s strike wave.

    The post Nurses’ Strike Signals Kaiser’s End As Union Haven appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • A Real Day For Veterans

    Eliminating war and militarism would allow us to focus on reducing or preventing the harm caused by the existential threats. We would reap additional benefits as well. Reduced fear and suspicion of “other,” reduced stress, anxiety, and worry, a cleaner environment, an improved democracy, greater liberty, and less human suffering would accompany a fiscal shift from militarism to actual life-affirming needs.

    The post A Real Day For Veterans appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.