How Big Pharma Is Killing Americans and Bankrupting the Country | Alternet

How Big Pharma Is Killing Americans and Bankrupting the Country | Alternet
"Lifesaving medications and commonly prescribed drugs in America today are absurdly expensive here – and only in this country – because Big Pharma is ripping off Americans."

Republicans Trying Hard To Make Obamacare A Train Wreck

Republicans Trying Hard To Make Obamacare A Train Wreck
"Despite what Max Baucus said, Obamacare is not a 'train wreck' rolling toward a head-on collision. But Republicans are trying and will continue to try to make it as hard as possible to implement. This is not unlike what they did with Medicare back in the 60s when it was implemented. In fact, I expect them to take some pages right out of that playbook despite Medicare's obvious success."

Sequester Closes Cancer Clinic Doors, Congress Does Nothing | Common Dreams

Sequester Closes Cancer Clinic Doors, Congress Does Nothing | Common Dreams
"Affluent business flyers inconvenienced by delays = national emergency that Congressimmediately fixes. Cancer clinics closing = Congress does squat, goes home. This is just one more story of our corrupt times."

Meet the Billionaire Bankrolling Austerity, As He Stands to Make Billions More From Privatization of Safety Net | Alternet

Meet the Billionaire Bankrolling Austerity, As He Stands to Make Billions More From Privatization of Safety Net | Alternet
"The motivation behind the world-wide economic con of austerity has been discovered. And, the source is none other than Pete Peterson – the debt-obsessed billionaire who stands to make billions off the privatization of our social safety net."

Sequestration 101: If a Budget Cut Doesn't Impact the Wealthy, Congress Won't Fix It | Common Dreams

Sequestration 101: If a Budget Cut Doesn't Impact the Wealthy, Congress Won't Fix It | Common Dreams
"And here is the last lesson sequestration has taught us: just how much more Congress cares about what’s bothering upper-middle-class citizens than what’s going on at the bottom of the income scale. There are tons of different programs expecting a big impact from sequestration. None of them saw multiple bills introduced in the Senate, one of which was passed with huge support on both sides of the aisle and signed within a matter of days. Had they continued, the furloughs would have been more than an inconvenience. They could have meant sharply reduced economic output. But the same could be said of many of the cuts to other programs. The lesson is not that the flight delays should have gone unaddressed. It’s that if a budget cut doesn’t impact a wealthy constituency, Congress can’t to be bothered to fix it."

How Austerity Is Literally Killing People

How Austerity Is Literally Killing People: Austerity in the United States and Europe isn’t just placing an unnecessary drag on economic growth that has harmed the global economic recovery from the Great Recession. The rapid deficit reduction efforts are also making people less healthy, causing higher rates of suicide, depression, and infectious disease, according to research from Oxford University economist David [...]/p

Cancer Clinics: Congress Should Have Restored Our Sequester Cuts Before Addressing Airport Delays

Cancer Clinics: Congress Should Have Restored Our Sequester Cuts Before Addressing Airport Delays: This past week, Congress approved a measure to restore funding to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) after sequester cuts to the national transportation agency disrupted airline travel across the country — but they haven’t taken similar steps to provide relief for other programs that are struggling as a result of sequestration. Now, employees at cancer [...]/p

12 Programs Congress Refuses To Save From Automatic Spending Cuts

12 Programs Congress Refuses To Save From Automatic Spending Cuts: After thousands of flight delays across the country this week, the United States Senate voted Thursday night to give the Federal Aviation Administration the flexibility to keep the nation’s airports running smoothly. The delays were caused by the furlough of air traffic controllers, who were rotating off the job because of sequestration’s automatic budget cuts [...]/p

6 New Ways Big Pharma Is Scheming to Make Billions at the Expense of Your Health | Alternet

6 New Ways Big Pharma Is Scheming to Make Billions at the Expense of Your Health | Alternet
"With many of Big Pharma's biggest hits going off patent, the industry is looking for new ways to deliver earnings to Wall Street."

Big Pharma Colludes With High Court

How Smartphones Are Revolutionizing Home Care For Alzheimer’s And Autism Patients

How Smartphones Are Revolutionizing Home Care For Alzheimer’s And Autism Patients: As technological innovation empowers consumers to take greater control over their lives, the health industry has taken particular advantage of emerging internet and mobile devices. The burgeoning mHealth industry — which involves using mobile devices to improve health care delivery and outcomes — has exploded in the last five years, allowing everyday Americans to access [...]/p

Bill Introduced to Begin Rollback of High Medicare Drug Prices

Bill Introduced to Begin Rollback of High Medicare Drug Prices
"The bill would save $141.2 billion, helping to responsibly reduce the deficit, and avoid reckless proposals to cut Medicare benefits."

Arkansas Legislature Sends Obamacare Medicaid Expansion Bill To Governor’s Desk For Final Approval

Arkansas Legislature Sends Obamacare Medicaid Expansion Bill To Governor’s Desk For Final Approval: Arkansas came one step closer to expanding Medicaid under Obamacare on Thursday after the state senate advanced a modified expansion bill by a 27-8 vote. The bill now heads to Gov. Mike Beebe (D), who is expected to sign it promptly. In March, Beebe and the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) struck [...]/p

How A Small Tweak To Medicare Could Net The U.S. Hundreds Of Millions In Savings Every Year

How A Small Tweak To Medicare Could Net The U.S. Hundreds Of Millions In Savings Every Year: A new government report from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finds that Medicare Part D — the prescription drug benefit that helps eligible seniors afford the medication they need — could have made over $111 million in 2009 alone with a simple change to the way it pays insurers. The findings illustrate that smart systemic tweaks to Medicare’s payment structure could significantly reduce the program’s costs without the need to slash benefits for elderly Americans.

Give The People What They Want! Taxes That Pay for Jobs, Education, Healthcare and Science | Alternet

Give The People What They Want! Taxes That Pay for Jobs, Education, Healthcare and Science | Alternet
"Despite near-constant news about how polarized our nation is, a careful look at opinion polls indicates that a strong majority of Americans actually have a coherent to-do list for Washington: we want more jobs, smaller deficits, more education funding, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, higher taxes on the wealthiest, plus -- the kicker -- Medicare and Social Security benefits preserved. You know, it’s the typical story of wanting to have our cake and gobble it down, too. Right?

Wrong. What’s virtually unacknowledged is that all these things could be done at once. Far from being an impossible set of demands, the collective opinion poll version of the wisdom of the American people is, in fact, a smart set of solutions -- or at least it would be, if we had a government capable of following our wishes."

Solidarity NOT Forever: How the Supreme Court Kicked Retirees Into the Gutter

Solidarity NOT Forever: How the Supreme Court Kicked Retirees Into the Gutter
"The Supreme Court's decision in Allied Chemical Workers v. Pittsburgh Plate Glass to give employers complete control of retiree benefits undercuts the purpose of the National Labor Relations Act and leaves vulnerable, retired employees powerless to protect themselves from costly changes in benefits."

The Median Cost Of Living In A Nursing Home Is Almost 2.5 Times The Average Private College Tuition

The Median Cost Of Living In A Nursing Home Is Almost 2.5 Times The Average Private College Tuition: According to CNNMoney, the median cost of living in private nursing homes and assisted living facilities has ballooned by 24 percent and 23 percent, respectively, over the last five years. The median annual cost of private nursing home care is now $83,950 — almost two and half times the mean tuition at private not-for-profit colleges [...]/p

2M 'No Cuts' Signatures Delivered To White House Today

2M 'No Cuts' Signatures Delivered To White House Today
"Sen. Bernie Sanders delivered over two million signatures today on a petition protesting the president's budget plans to cut Social Security."

Thousands Rally To Protest Sequestration Cuts To Medical Research Programs

Thousands Rally To Protest Sequestration Cuts To Medical Research Programs: Thousands of researchers, patients, doctors, scientists, and advocates gathered rallied outside of Carnegie Library in Washington DC to protest sequestration cuts towards medical research. Organizers estimated that the Rally for Medical Research, protesting budget cuts to the National Institutes of Health, had around 10,000 attendees. “When [Congress] sees a grassroots movement rising up from doctors, [...]/p

As Drug Prices Continue To Soar, Big Pharma Reaped $84 Billion In Profits Last Year

As Drug Prices Continue To Soar, Big Pharma Reaped $84 Billion In Profits Last Year: The price of brand-name drugs has skyrocketed over the past several years, leading increasing numbers of Americans to switch over to cheaper generic drugs. But even those generic drugs are also increasingly costing Americans more money, as chain pharmacies across the country hike their prices to charge up to 18 times the drugs’ original cost. [...]/p

#ChainedCPI? For Every Social Security Judas, a Primary Challenge | Common Dreams

#ChainedCPI? For Every Social Security Judas, a Primary Challenge | Common Dreams
"What if we all looked each other in the eye and made a pact: every Senator and Representative, Democrat or Republican, who supports cutting Social Security and veterans' benefits by imposing the "ChainedCPI" cut is going to face a primary challenge." Although President Obama might be looking to cut a "deal", let's remember that the party that is demanding this is the Republican Party. While we should hold Democrats accountable if a "deal" is reached. We must remind ourselves which party demands this in the first place.

Fox News Resurrects Death Panels: ‘This Is About People Dying As A Result Of Obamacare’

Fox News Resurrects Death Panels: ‘This Is About People Dying As A Result Of Obamacare’:Johnson’s conflation of the sequester’s ham-fisted spending cuts with Obamacare’s Medicare savings demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the sequester, Obamacare, and how federal budgeting works. Sequestration is causing cancer clinics to turn people away because they can’t afford to keep providing expensive chemotherapy drugs to patients in the face of a two percent cut to Medicare Part Bthat has to come entirely out of clinics’ overhead funding — making the sequester cut more akin to a double-digit pay cut.

The 'Chained CPI' and Why It's Bad for Social Security

Beyond Deficit Scare-Mongering

Beyond Deficit Scare-Mongering
"Conservatives’ real aim in their fiscal brinkmanship is to gut Social Security and Medicare."

The Sequester Is Forcing Cancer Clinics To Deny Chemotherapy To Thousands Of Elderly Americans

The Sequester Is Forcing Cancer Clinics To Deny Chemotherapy To Thousands Of Elderly Americans: In the aftermath of Congress’ failure to reach a deal averting the sequester, President Obama described the automatic spending cuts as foolhardy, warning, “The pain will be real. The longer these cuts are in place, the greater the damage.” Those words are now coming to fruition, as local cancer clinics all across America are being [...]/p

President Obama Announces Bipartisan Brain Initiative

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Why Republicans Are To Blame For Obamacare’s Delays

Why Republicans Are To Blame For Obamacare’s Delays: The Obama administration’s decision to delay the enactment of the Affordable Care Act’s small business exchanges –so-called SHOPs that are designed to offer employers and employees a range of private insurance options in a new health care marketplace — has provided renewed ammunition for critics of the law who see the announcement as a sign [...]/p

STUDY: An Increasing Number Of Patients At Isolated Rural Hospitals Are Dying

STUDY: An Increasing Number Of Patients At Isolated Rural Hospitals Are Dying: Critical access hospitals (CAHs) are medical providers located in America’s most isolated regions, serving rural communities that do not otherwise have easily-available access to care. Since the closest alternatives to these hospitals are usually over 35 miles away, they provide an essential resource for Americans living in secluded communities — and therefore receive enhanced funding [...]/p

PERRspectives: GOP Fights to Keep Texas Health Care Among Nation's Worst

PERRspectives: GOP Fights to Keep Texas Health Care Among Nation's Worst
"As it turns out, Texas is a role model only in the sense of being a horrible example to be avoided at all costs. As the numbers show, by almost every objective measure the Texas health care system ranks among the very worst in the nation."

Texas Republicans Stand United Against Providing Low-Income People With Health Care

Texas Republicans Stand United Against Providing Low-Income People With Health Care: Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and the state’s two Republican senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, joined forces at the state capitol on Monday afternoon to reiterate their opposition to expanding the Medicaid program under Obamacare. Despite the fact that Texas could add about 1.5 million low-income people to its Medicaid rolls if lawmakers opted [...]/p