For those of you who are not following what is going on after the “activity” at the capital bldg. Face Book, Twitter, Instagram have cancelled/deleted President Trump’s accounts. Section 230 was passed by Congress to exempt – what has become the big tech companies – an exemption from lawsuit because they were suppose to provide a uncensored medium … unlike newspapers, magazines and the like who can be held liable for what is published in their product.
One “talking head” on TV this AM stated that he now has 60,000 fewer followers over the last few days. Face Book shut down the website https://www.walkawaycampaign.com/ and closed out the accounts of people associated with the FB page.
The #WalkAway Campaign is a true grassroots movement, founded by former liberal, Brandon Straka on May 26th, 2018. The #WalkAway Campaign encourages and supports those on the Left to walk
away from the divisive tenets endorsed and mandated by the Democratic Party of today.
Yesterday Parler https://www.parler.com/ who started up a few months ago as a competitor to Twitter and once again was suppose to be a uncensored platform and yesterday Apple and Android took their app out of their app store and they were notified today that GOOGLE – which is the server farm (CLOUD) where Parler leased space in which they operated from… that Parler was being taken off of GOOGLE’S servers… basically terminating a business that has an estimated value of ONE BILLION DOLLARS.
I have seen very little out of the media about this and using the word COLLUSION… because COLLUSION is ILLEGAL in this country.
There has been many that have called for section 230 to be repealed and/or change that all those big tech companies in silicon valley are no longer covered by this section. Some are calling for the breakup of these large companies, it has happen before…. they broke up MA BELL’s monopoly in 1984.
How does this apply to those dealing with chronic health issues and being denied/limited the medications/therapies that they need? Congress gave the insurance industry in 1945 an exemption to The Sherman Antitrust Act by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran%E2%80%93Ferguson_Act. At the time, it was seemingly a worth while exemption for the insurance industry. But the need for that exemption is no longer necessary, but the insurance/PBM industry have pushed this exemption way outside of the envelope of the law’s original intent. There has been numerous entities trying to get the McCarran Ferguson Act repealed since the late 80’s. I know of at least one Congressional session that it was included in HR1 – which always include the most important things that the House wants to take up for the opening Congressional session. Unfortunately, the insurance/PBM industry has one of the largest buckets of money for lobbying Congress to get bills passed or defeated.
Some in Congress may see the relationship between how the “boys” in silicon valley are acting with their monopoly and how the insurance/PBM industry is acting with their exemption from Sherman. If the community had a non profit with a “war chest” to lobby Congress, maybe members of Congress could be shown how to “connect the dots” between how these two different industries are using their monopolist position to screw with a large portion of the USA citizens.
Just remember if you keep trying to communicating and educating your members of Congress – via emails. faxes,phone calls – that there is a 40% chance that your member of Congress has a LAW DEGREE .. who is primarily interested in enforcing the laws and the DEA and the media keeps telling them that the opiate crisis is CAUSED by the prescribing of legal opiates. The CDC regurgitates stats that Tens of Thousands of people OD on “drugs” and implying that all their deaths were from Rx opiates. They don’t distinguish that abt 15,000 deaths are from bleed outs from the use/abuse of NSAID’s and the typical OD’s toxicology has 4-7 different substances, one typically being ALCOHOL and if there is a pharma grade opiate in toxicology ..there is only a very small percent that were legally obtained.
I expect with the new administration, that the cut to the opiate production quotas will be equal to or greater than any previous annual reductions. I read yesterday, that Veterinarians are having problems in getting adequate supplies of medication to treat animals for pain and/or surgery. We might even reach the point where we have to euthanize our fur babies because their time is up… we may have to return to the days when you just shot them in the back of the head… because enough meds will not be readily available for a humane euthanasia.
When ACA (Obamacare) was first passed, Part D prescriptions were suppose to be a 20%/80% split…the pt paid 20% and the part D paid 80% on prescriptions by 2020. What really happened… our Part D did not have a deductible in 2019 but instituted a $435 deductible in 2020… the deductible was more than the annual cost of premiums. In 2021, they have started no longer covering two of my medications and at least one of Barb’s and several more are now in higher tiers – higher copays. In 2020, I met my deductible in October. I had to pay premiums for 12 months and basically got some coverage for TWO MONTHS. If you think about it, meds that are now NOT COVERED, just results in a higher annual out of pocket costs for the pts.
Filed under: General Problems
The Gov has bankrupted our country with all these Horrific bills they pass in Congress giving American tax payer money to other countries . Making all of us pay for All their theft. We have retired military ins and now we have to Pay for our healthcare. Our copays for everything have been increased. They’re running the country into the ground.
It seems year after year, more and more get deleted from the formulary. Mine have been removed about 5 years ago, so each year a PA is required which automatically throws it into a tier 5. Now I’m at the mercy of a percentage of the pharmaceutical company’s negotiated price with PBM (Caremark). Of course, with the increase in prices from pharmaceutical companies, I’m sure the amount is way more this year. This should not be like this for someone who was an independent contractor. I feel like I’m on welfare, except I’m paying for it.