If you have a Medicare Part D prgm… you need to check what your plan is going to charge you using this link http://www.medicare.gov/plan-compare/#/?lang=en&year=2022

In checking our Part D plan… the total annual cost ( premiums, deductibles, med costs) ranged from the lowest cost/yr to about TEN TIMES that cost.  For the same meds & quantities.

I guess this is what is possible when you are dealing with FOR PROFIT INSURANCE COMPANIES – the same thing may apply to those companies providing Medicare Advantage prgm or what they are starting to call Medicare-C

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CVS to close 900 drugstores in three years to beef up health services

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/cvs-health-close-stores-record-impairment-charge-2021-11-18/

Nov 18 (Reuters) – CVS Health Corp (CVS.N) will shut about 900 stores over the next three years, it said on Thursday as the company tries to adapt to changing consumer preferences by pivoting to new store formats that offer more health services.

Best known for its chain of drugstores in more than 9,900 locations, the company has been working to expand its services since it acquired health insurer Aetna in 2018.

CVS said that as part of its strategic review it would create an enhanced version of its health hubs that offer treatment for common ailments as well as chronic care to add more customers.

The reduction in stores will result in CVS taking an impairment charge of between $1 billion and $1.2 billion in the fourth quarter.

As part of the new strategy, the company also created a new position of chief pharmacy officer and appointed executive vice president of specialty pharmacy and product innovation Prem Shah to the role.

“We see this as consistent with our expected LT (long-term) strategy for CVS, moving to grow managed care and care delivery, while shrinking legacy bricks-and-mortar retail business,” said Bernstein analyst Lance Wilkes in a note.

Rival Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA.O) also recently shifted focus beyond its drugstores, investing $5.2 billion in VillageMD and $330 million in post-acute and home care provider CareCentrix. read more

CVS cut its annual 2021 profit per share forecast to between $5.46 and $5.67 from $6.13 to $6.23, but stuck to its adjusted profit view saying there will be no impact from the store closures this year and the next.

It also said Neela Montgomery, president of CVS Pharmacy, would leave company at the end of 2021.

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https://doctorsofcourage.org/richard-morgan-do/

Richard Morgan, DO, was a physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM & R) physician in New York City.  He was also an addict, which led him to commit the crime of selling prescriptions for drugs. Literally, he is the first doctor in the 5 years that I have been researching, to actually be guilty of violating the Controlled Substance Act. And yet, unlike all of us who are innocent victims unable to work again, he is a clinical instructor at a medical school with a future of having his license reinstated.  How could this be, and how does it make you feel? I can honestly say my feelings sway like a pendulum.

Richard Morgan’s history as a physician

Richard Morgan, DO graduated in 1998 from the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine alongside osteopath near croydon. He completed his residency in PM & R in 2002. But from 1997 through 2007, he was addicted to opioids and benzodiazepines. To this day, he blames being treated with opioids following dental surgery as a medical student as the cause of his addiction.  Hopefully this article will get through to him and others who blame opioids for addiction.

History of his addiction

In 1997 while a medical student, he had his wisdom teeth pulled, developed an abscess and received a prescription for Vicodin. Taking it as prescribed, he began to notice a change in how the medication affected him. “It was no longer about the pain,” he said. “I really started enjoying how it made me feel.” Suffering from stress in school and with his wife, “it just gave me this feeling of empowerment that I could take on the world.” He would get prescriptions for fake patients from the hospital pharmacy to use himself.

After graduation from residency in 2002, he wasn’t happy in the job he began. With his resentment and frustration, Morgan’s addiction worsened. “I realized I was starting to take pills to boost my confidence,” Morgan says. Some young kids approached him at the urgent care center and offered him money to prescribe them pills. At first he said no. Then one of them threw down thousands of dollars in cash and he changed his mind. He also wrote himself prescriptions using about 15 different fake names, with false addresses and dates of birth. He went to dozens of pharmacies to spread out his prescriptions and refills, and he paid cash.

In early 2006, Morgan’s family staged an intervention. After two failed rehab attempts he finally participated in New York State’s PHP (physician health program) and was able to stay clean afterward. But the people who bought prescriptions from him tracked him down, threatened him, and he continued to write prescriptions for them.

Dr. Morgan’s Conviction and Imprisonment

In May 2007, at age 35, Dr. Morgan was arrested for conspiracy to distribute oxycodone. According to the indictment, Dr. Morgan sold more than1,500 prescriptions for OxyContin and other drugs, for individuals who were not patients, including one recipient who paid him roughly $6,000 per month for more than a year.

Although early in the attacks on doctors, DEA Special Agent-in-Charge John Gilbride already had the propaganda line taught by the DEA and said, “Trafficking OxyContin is no different than trafficking cocaine, but in this case, the source of supply wore a white doctor’s coat.”

Following his defense attorney’s recommendations, Dr. Morgan pleaded guilty. Over the next 2 years, while awaiting sentencing, he continued to practice medicine, but without the ability to write prescriptions. Despite the frequent drug testing and therapy sessions, he still had a “pill fixation,” he says. “I felt comfort in pills.” He bought Sudafed and took whole sheets of the pills to get a little bit of a high. “It would almost feel like I drank 10 cups of coffee at the same time,” he says. So in spite of his saying he was “clean”, he was still abusing. During one month, Morgan bought more Sudafed than was allowed by state law. He was arrested again in March 2009.

Dr. Morgan was sentenced to 14 years in prison. But lucky for him, after serving 8 years, he was rewarded with an early release in April 2017.

Post-incarceration

It’s amazing to me how thousands of innocent physicians have had their lives ruined, tried to get their stories to the public, and can’t because the media have an agenda against us.  But Dr. Morgan, an addict and a law breaker, gets an appearance on The Dr. Oz Show to tell his story.

Then he gets an invitation to speak at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine to students at the school about his experience with addiction. That was followed by becoming a full time clinical instructor at New York Institute of Technology of Osteopathic Medicine. With the help of New York State’s physician health program, he is working to regain his medical license.

Chances of relapse?

In the 4 years since his release from prison, Dr. Morgan says he has never come close to experiencing a relapse. But he knows it could happen. He hopes that constantly remembering what happened to him because of addiction will protect him from relapsing.

“So many positive things are happening,” Morgan says, “and they wouldn’t be happening if I ever picked up a pill.”

But addiction isn’t a case of mind over matter. Until he learns the REAL cause of addiction and does the 7 steps to healing, he is always at risk.

My thoughts on the good news/bad news of this case:

1. Morgan broke the law. But it was caused by his addiction, just like all of the inmates in prison cells for drugs. So he does deserve a second chance. The fact that he is getting it when the rest of us aren’t might not be fair. But when is life fair?
2. I hope Dr. Morgan will use his connections to bring justice to the rest of us. So my message to him is:

Dr. Morgan,
Learn the REAL cause of drug abuse. Use that when you teach to the residents, not that opioids or drugs cause addiction.  Become a member of Doctorsofcourage and help get our message out to the country through your connections.  Heal yourself with the Seven Steps to Healing and help promote the knowledge that you learn from us. It is in line with the philosophy of osteopathic medicine.

I wish you all the best, in healing and in your profession.

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DEAR ADVOCATE ARMY

Those with chronic painful conditions have a real reason to celebrate this holiday season! Last week two courts discredited widely accepted propaganda regarding opioid medications. One California and another Oklahoma Supreme Court judge illustrated how misleading this widely accepted and heavily promoted propaganda really is.

Both of these court decisions recognize that under-treatment of pain is a serious public health issue and that medicinal use of prescription opioids rarely led to addiction.

Oh but wait? Didn’t Andrew Kolodny and Anna Lembke (along with thousands of other advocates, politicians, and leading stakeholders), use this propaganda in order to promote their own agendas both nationally and internationally?

For years, special interest groups spent millions (if not billions) of dollars advancing propaganda. They would claim; organizations working to educate the public that opioid addiction was not a common outcome for patients who take it as prescribed were just “Pharma front groups” that needed to be “taken out” at all costs.

These special interest groups spent years marketing the idea that citizens should not receive opioid medications, as a mere exposure would lead to addiction and substance use disorder. They created slideshow presentations that they would use to discredit existing research; using statements not founded in the truth. These statements, in-fact, went directly against the evidence-base.

They successfully lobbied for hundreds of regulatory and legal changes restricting medical access to pain medications. They provided false testimony. Most recently, Ms. Lembke testified that over 25% of patients who use opioids medicinally become addicted; however, the judge corrected her and stated, “it was more like less than 5%.”

So why was her testimony not discredited entirely? Why was she not charged with perjury? These cases are worth billions of dollars and Ms. Lembke provided known false facts in an attempt to sway the outcome of the case. We cannot overlook these serious acts of corruption.

In fact, Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, noted in a 2016 review that, “addiction occurs in only a small percentage of persons who are exposed to opioids – even among those with preexisting vulnerabilities”.

So, the stakeholders have known since at least 2016 that patients who use opioid medications were not abusing their supply. Yet, the CDC proceeded with the issuance of their “Opioid Prescribing Guidelines” that same year; resulting in the mass-forced tapering of millions of private citizens. Many of whom have committed suicide since.

Now that this dangerous propaganda is verified to be just that (dangerous propaganda), what will happen next? Will our lawmakers do the right thing? Will they change course in their public-health strategy to address illicit drug use and addiction in America?

It is time our nation came to terms with the facts. We have pursued a failed public-health initiative for well over a decade. This is largely due to our nations’ leaders relying on inaccurate false data and propaganda. Propaganda that was created, marketed, and promoted by the very organizations that partnered with our lawmakers to assist in solving these very issues.

Moving forward, we as a nation must come together and create solutions that work for all patients. The continual use of propaganda is unacceptable and not working. This court ruling brings hope for the future that the truth is now coming forth. It is in the truth that we, as a nation, will find solutions that benefit all.

Remember, Together We Are #CIAAGStrong!!!

Thank you,

Lauren L. Deluca, CPCU, API, AINS

Founding President & Executive Director

Chronic Illness Advocacy & Awareness Group dba CIAAG

This e-mail has been sent to @, click here to unsubscribe.

PO Box 371, Rutland MA 01543 – USA

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I don’t normally go out on the “political limb”, but  long story short – we had video security cameras installed on the house and the “software installer” was here Wed to finish up that part of the installation… right after he left… my hold internet network CRASHED…  Only way to get it back up was to reset my router… so I have spent most of post turkey meal resetting all the 13 odd internet devices in my house.. – including 3 TV’s. In trying one of the TV’s.. I made sure that I could stream and just pulled up FOX NATION and pulled up a three part Patriot Purge series…

This proved a very interesting series…  very little “talk” by the normal Fox “talking heads”… A fair amount of videos of others within our government and citizens in our country … interacting with our legal system… How it would appear that our military/legal system has no current wars to fight… they are using some of the tactics developed after 911 on many of our citizens that has been labeled as TERRORISTS

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Yoho MD, Robert. Butchered by “Healthcare”: What to Do About Doctors, Big Pharma, and Corrupt Government Ruining Your Health and Medical Care (pp. 55-57). Inverness Press. Kindle Edition. The FDA permits data scams. Researchers from the Yale University School of Medicine looked at trials between 2005 and 2012. They found that the FDA based many drug approvals on studies that used various forms of data cheating. Donald Light and Ben Goldacre separately confirmed this story. They wrote: ✪ Thirty-seven percent of the drugs had only a single study. ✪ Forty-five percent of the trials for drug approval used study endpoints such as blood sugar or cholesterol (surrogate markers) rather than hard endpoints such as death or another clinical finding. ✪ Nearly a third 0f all the studies made a comparison with an older drug. When two drugs are found to be about the same, the companies usually claim some obscure advantage for the recent one. This games the approval process and allows the industry to market expensive “me-too” medications that offer no benefit over the older ones. ✪ To make a drug look good, the companies often exclude people who are more likely to have adverse outcomes. Other times, they use people who are more likely to have problems, which can make an older drug look bad. ✪ When companies do nonrandomized trials on unrepresentative populations, they can create almost any result. ✪ Experiments are sometimes run that lack a comparator or control arm. This is called a single-arm trial and has little validity. ✪ Some experimenters do approval studies that are not randomized, controlled, and double blinded, which is the current standard of proof. Some allow studies that are easily unblinded. ✪ To show benefit, sometimes doses of a test drug are used that are too high for routine clinical use. These studies last long enough to show benefits but are kept short enough to conceal adverse reactions. ✪ The other way this is played is to use high doses of the comparison drug. This creates side effects that make the new drug look great by comparison. ✪ Another often-used ploy is inaccurate measurement and improper reporting of the number needed to treat and number needed to harm. ✪ Huge trials are sometimes stopped early because results appear beneficial or harmful at that point. This prevents full evaluation and complete reporting. Physicians should be trained to detect these commonplace forms of deceit when reading medical journals. I spotted them as I learned more. In a 2012 BMJ editorial analysis, Donald Light and Joel Lexchin wrote that, of all the new products developed in the past 50 years, 85-90 percent produced many harms but few benefits. Most of them are me-too drugs used for established markets. They are not improvements. These medications are 80 percent of the US increase in drug spending.

Yoho MD, Robert. Butchered by “Healthcare”: What to Do About Doctors, Big Pharma, and Corrupt Government Ruining Your Health and Medical Care (pp. 55-57). Inverness Press. Kindle Edition.

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National Pain

Council

NPC SPECIAL ALERT:

The AMA is looking for Patient Stories:

We know from our own data, that an estimated 70% of the 10 million people, with rare and painful diseases, have had reductions in their pain regimens, without their consent. This is at a rate of approximately 3000 patients per day. The forced reductions are also running at 3000 people per day, without consent. Half of these have been taken off completely, and their lives have been ruined. No one knows the real extent of the problem. In spite of the fact that the Communicable Disease Center (CDC) was required to provide follow-up on the outcomes of the guidelines. It didn’t happen, as it would expose their cruelty and lack of compassion, for the millions with serious and persistent painful diseases. These same people were harmed by declaring that opiate pain medications are dangerous and ineffective, without any justification. The CDC’s proverbial feet will be held to the fire.

The first step in showing the extent of the problem, is the AMA’s offer, to document the number of pain patients harmed by the guidelines. This will allow the patients to briefly tell their pain journey. We are also collecting full stories at the National Pain Council (NPC).

What the AMA wants in the report is just a few simple things:

Name:

(This does not have to be your own name, you can use a surrogate, a nickname and you can also file for others. It is the information they are after, but they might need to reach you or your representative later, if they have questions).

2. City, state and zip code:

(They are not asking for a street address! Your information will be safe. List your real city, state, and zip code. They are going to list the cases by location, and this will be good information for congressional delegates. Remember the golden rule of politics, you must be a constituent).

3. Your diagnosis: (Please list just one or two, your main problems). NPC will provide a means to report more detailed case summaries in the future.

4. Simple summary of difficultly:

Please list any problems you have had getting proper doses of opiate pain medicine, including forced tapers, discontinuations, refusals by pharmacy’s, insurance, emergency rooms, doctors in the hospital, after surgery or whatever the case.

Only list two to three sentences. Remember, if only 10% are reported to the AMA, we would have 300,000 cases. Wait until that hits the press!

5. List the medications you had trouble getting:

If you were just flat-out denied any medication, say “refused all pain medications”, if you were tapered, then list the specific medications: “I was tapered off opiates, benzodiazepines, or my muscle relaxants, whatever.

6. List the Insurance carrier:
If involved in any way with insurance denials, prior authorizations that failed, basically any action by that particular insurance company that disrupted your care.

That’s it! It is simple, and won’t take you long. If you have any questions, email us at: nationalpaincouncil@gmail.com and please share and circulate this as widely as possible.

Email your report and any other reports you have assisted with to: opioidtaskforce@ama-assn.org
Please send a cc to us at: nationalpaincouncil@gmail.com

If you need help sending it to the AMA, please send a copy of your report to NPC by text, postal service, or carrier pigeon!

National Pain Council LLC
7474 Creedmore Road
Suite 317
Raleigh, NC 27613

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Pharmacy chains CVS, Walgreens, Walmart helped fuel opioid epidemic, U.S. jury finds

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/pharmacy-cvs-walgreens-walmart-opioid-epidemic-us-jury

CVS, Walgreens and Walmart said they would appeal the verdict, arguing it ran contrary to the facts

A federal jury on Tuesday found that pharmacy chain operators CVS Health Corp, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc and Walmart Inc helped fuel an opioid epidemic in two Ohio counties, in the first trial the companies have faced over the U.S. drug crisis.

Jurors in Cleveland federal court after six days of deliberations concluded that actions by the pharmacy chains helped create a public nuisance that resulted in an oversupply of addictive pain pills and the diversion of those opioids to the black market.

The verdict has the potential to give state and local governments new leverage in their efforts to negotiate settlements that would resolve thousands of other cases against the pharmacy operators.

“The judgment today against Walmart, Walgreens and CVS represents the overdue reckoning for their complicity in creating a public nuisance,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers said in a joint statement.

Jurors only assessed liability. It is up to U.S. District Judge Dan Polster to decide how much the companies owe to abate, or address, the public nuisance in Ohio‘s Lake and Trumbull counties.

CALIFORNIA JUDGE RULES FOR DRUGMAKERS IN OPIOID LAWSUIT

The counties’ lawyers have said the costs are potentially $1 billion for each county. A trial on the issue is expected next year.

Stock prices for the companies briefly fell after the verdict but quickly rebounded and were all up less than 1%.

CVS, Walgreens and Walmart said they would appeal the verdict, arguing it ran contrary to the facts and that it misapplied public nuisance law to hold them liable under a novel legal theory that courts in California and Oklahoma have recently rejected in similar cases against drugmakers.

“We will appeal this flawed verdict, which is a reflection of a trial that was engineered to favor the plaintiffs’ attorneys and was riddled with remarkable legal and factual mistakes,” Walmart said.

U.S. officials have said that by 2019 the health crisis led to nearly 500,000 opioid overdose deaths over two decades.

Over 100,000 people died from drug overdoses during the 12-month period ending April 2021, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report last week, a record driven in large part by deaths from opioids like fentanyl.

CVS, WALGREENS, WALMART ASK FOR MISTRIAL IN OPIOID CASE, CLAIMING JUROR MISCONDUCT

THOUSANDS OF LAWSUITS

More than 3,300 opioid lawsuits have been filed nationally against drug manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies, culminating with many of the companies – though not the pharmacies – agreeing to proposed global settlements.

The three largest U.S. distributors that supply pharmacies and hospitals – McKesson Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and AmerisourceBergen Corp – and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson in July proposed paying up to $26 billion to settle most of the lawsuits against them.

  (Patrick Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

A bankruptcy judge in September approved a settlement by OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and its wealthy Sackler family owners that the company values at more than $10 billion.

The pharmacies, however, went to trial despite the urging of the judge to settle.

  (AP Photo/Seth Wenig / AP Newsroom)

At trial, lawyers for Lake and Trumbull counties argued that the pharmacies failed to ensure opioid prescriptions were valid and allowed excessive quantities of addictive pain pills to flood their communities.

The pharmacy operators denied the allegations. They said they took steps to guard against diversion of pills and blamed others, including doctors, regulators and drug traffickers, for the epidemic.

The verdict followed recent setbacks for plaintiffs pursuing some of the other opioid cases nationally.

Oklahoma’s top court on Nov. 9 overturned a $465 million judgment against J&J, and a California judge this month ruled in favor of four drugmakers in a case brought by several large counties.

Other trials are underway in New York involving drugmakers Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and AbbVie Inc, and in Washington state with the three distributors. 

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I recently read an article that mentioned you being an advocate for pain patient rights within the pharmacy and I have a question. I will give you the scenario before asking the question. 

Little wonder this Pharmacist is a “floater” with his customer service demeanor – hanging up on a pt–  maybe he considers his PharmD degree was more of a anointment  as a PharmDeity .  First of all he apparently can’t read that the Rx was for a 28 day supply – NOT THE USUAL 30 DAY SUPPLY –  MATH must not be one of his stronger aptitudes.  He also apparently doesn’t know or understand the pharmacy practice act in the state he is licensed to practice in… so he apparently make up his own rules/policies.  I guess the poor pt should have asked all of his relatives to reschedule their work time so that he could have his medicine so that they could all make a trip/vacation at the same time.

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