“The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped.” – Hubert Humphrey
passionate pachyderms
Pharmacist Steve steve@steveariens.com 502.938.2414
IMO, Obamacare is now more firmly in place as the “foundation” of implementing a national health insurance and it appears that this current administration and Congress is on a “bum rush” to implement as much socialism as they can before the 2022 mid term elections. President Biden seems interested in having history look upon his administration on the same level as the two most socialist President of the last 100 years… Roosevelt (SS) and Johnson (Medicare/Medicaid). There is 50 million people on Medicare and 70 million on Medicaid – abt 38% of our population. Our bureaucrats are moving people on Medicare/Medicaid over to Medicare Advantage & Medicaid Managed Care – which is care provided by for profit insurance companies. Is this the template that will be used for a national health insurance ? Where the Feds will have a fixed cost per pt/month and the entities providing your care will be interested in paying out a lot less for care than they are being paid to provide care … so that they can produce a profit and keep their stock holders happy.
The Supreme Court dismissed a major challenge to the Affordable Care Act, upholding the national healthcare law for the third time.
The case, California v Texas, argued that after the elimination of individual penalties in 2017 for not maintaining health insurance, the entire law must be struck down. Many legal scholars viewed the argument as weak, and the justices decided that Obamacare can still exist without the penalty for lacking health coverage.
The court voted 7-2 to block the GOP-led suit saying the plaintiffs did not have the right to bring the case. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito were the lone dissenters.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, celebrated the ruling.
“The Affordable Care Act has won. The Supreme Court has just ruled: the ACA is here to stay and now we’re going to try to make it bigger and better,” according to CNN. “”For more than a decade, the assault on our health care law was relentless from Republicans in Congress, from the executive branch itself and from Republican attorneys general in the courts. Each time in each arena, the ACA has prevailed.”
The seven justices who voted to block the suit ruled that Texas and the other plaintiff states had no reason to sue because they are not required to pay anything under the law’s mandate and therefore had no standing, NPR reported.
“To have standing, a plaintiff must ‘allege personal injury fairly traceable to the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief,'” the court ruled. “No plaintiff has shown such an injury ‘fairly traceable’ to the ‘allegedly unlawful conduct’ challenged here.”
This is a developing story. Please return for updates.
Goal: Fully investigate alleged act of animal cruelty involving acid attack on service dog.
A beloved service dog allegedly became the victim of a sadistic acid attack. Gizmo, a Shih Tsu, was found outside his caretaker’s door in visible distress. To his service companion’s horror, burns seemingly covered him. A veterinarian later reported that Gizmo had been doused with a large quantity of a cleaning chemical called boric acid. Tragically, the poor pup’s injuries were so severe that he is now blind and will likely need both of his eyes surgically removed.
The injustice did not end here, however. Although Gizmo’s caretaker harbored strong suspicions about the perpetrators and although she reported this seeming act of cruelty to authorities, no action was immediately taken. The local police department reportedly initially dismissed her complaint, telling her they did not even investigate animal cruelty cases.
Justice must be done for this innocent dog. Sign the petition below to demand authorities reevaluate their priorities in regards to this serious crime.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Sheriff Gonzalez,
Recently, your department allegedly rebuffed a woman who claimed a vicious acid attack had been perpetrated against her service dog. If this woman’s assertions are true, you told her that the police were not in the business of investigating animal cruelty. 42.092 “Cruelty of Non-Livestock Animals” of the Texas Penal Code would say differently. Under Loco’s Law, the most heinous of crimes could be classified as a felony. A victim injured so severely that his eyes must be removed would seemingly meet the very definition of aggravated cruelty.
This living being deserved to be treated with a true understanding of the gravity of the crimes committed against him, not as a nuisance or an afterthought. You are aware that some of the most sadistic perpetrators of brutality against humans begin their “experimentation” with animals. You must take these crimes seriously. As one of the largest Sherriff’s Offices in the United States, you must set a standard for law enforcement not only locally but across the country.
Expedite an investigation into this troubling case at once.
In June of 2018, after months of intense pressure from the Ohio Pharmacists Association, Ohio state lawmakers, and Columbus Dispatch investigative journalists, the Ohio Department of Medicaid released a blockbuster report showing that PBMs working on behalf of Medicaid managed care plans charged the state $224 million in hidden spread pricing. Spread pricing is a controversial practice in which PBMs pay a pharmacy a low rate for dispensing a drug, bill a health plan a higher rate for the same transaction, and pocket the difference.
One of the overlooked controversies in the 2018 Medicaid audit in Ohio was a nugget that uncovered an additional $20 million in spread under Centene’s Ohio offering, Buckeye Health Plan. That brought the entire Ohio PBM spread-pricing haul to $244 million. The state found that while managed care plans’ PBMs captured spreads of almost $6 per prescription on average, the Buckeye plan’s total spread was almost $12 per prescription.
In one specific call-out, the Ohio lawsuit alleges that the Centene’s Buckeye Health Plan charged the state nearly $2 per prescription in dispensing fees, but instead of paying them to the pharmacies that actually dispensed the medications, Centene pocketed $1.45 per prescription for themselves.
The relentless pursuit of PBM reform continues on several fronts.
On June 14, Centene announced that it has settled litigation filed in Ohio by Yost (now the state’s attorney general) and by the state of Mississippi. Without admitting fault, Centene agreed to pay $88 million to Ohio and $55 million to Mississippi. It has set aside an additional $1.1 billion should it decide to settle similar lawsuits filed in Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, New Mexico and several others.
The mounting scrutiny of PBMs is a welcome sight for pharmacists, and it’s gratifying in many ways that my home state Ohio continues to lead the charge.
The important thing to remember is that this is about much more than Centene and its PBM subsidiaries. Remember, out of $244 million in 1 year of Ohio Medicaid spread, Centene’s slice wasn’t even 10%. CVS Caremark and OptumRx will have their turn soon enough, but it isn’t about them, either.
The takeaway is that the United States has allowed intentional complexity and opacity to eclipse what should otherwise be a very straightforward and simple transaction. PBMs were supposed to streamline that transaction and strike a balance to create a fair payment to the pharmacies dispensing medications to patients. Instead, PBMs added unnecessary complications, layers of secrecy, and massive amounts of waste.
If PBMs are willing to engage in these kinds of dirty tricks in our Medicaid programs—intended to provide care to society’s most disadvantaged—you can only imagine what they’re doing to our small employers and seniors in Medicare.
APhA is working hard to make sure that Ohio’s work isn’t happening in isolation. Our states are making tremendous strides, and with Arkansas’s big victory in Rutledge v PCMA, this is our moment to restore order within our profession.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks to hear about APhA’s latest investments that will push our foot harder on the gas. Until then, please support our efforts.
A retired flooring contractor was watching television one night last month when he saw a news report about federal agents raiding U.S. Private Vaults, a store in a Beverly Hills strip mall that let customers rent safe deposit boxes anonymously.
He knew the place well. It’s near his home and, for years, he has rented a long, narrow box there to keep about $60,000 in cash, gold and silver. It also contained the title certificate for his pickup truck.
The 69-year-old man, who declined to be named because of privacy and safety concerns, said he has kept the stockpile of currency and precious metals since getting spooked by the 2008 financial crash. “You never know what’s going to happen, the way the world’s going today,” he said.
That financial net vanished — at least for now — in the raid.
Federal agents descended on U.S. Private Vaults in a Beverly Hills strip mall last month and seized the contents of hundreds of safe deposit boxes inside the store, on Wednesday, April 7, 2021.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Armed with a warrant, agents with the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration pulled each of the store’s several hundred boxes out of the walls and seized all the contents. It took five days to inventory everything and take it to an undisclosed warehouse. Prosecutors said drugs, weapons and stacks of currency that drew the attention of drug-sniffing dogs were discovered.
To reclaim property, people must identify themselves to federal authorities and prove they are the rightful owners of the items — a bar that may prove challenging to clear when dealing with cash, gold, heirloom jewelry and other undocumented items.
The raid has set off legal challenges from five box holders who say the government violated the constitution’s ban on unreasonable search and seizure.
U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner on Tuesday declined one customer’s request for an emergency order that would have blocked prosecutors from using the boxes’ contents as evidence in the investigation. It also would have stopped the FBI from requiring box holders to identify themselves as a condition of getting their valuables back.
Klausner, however, left open the possibility that the sweeping nature of the seizures violated the box renters’ rights.
Klausner’s ruling came in the first of the five lawsuits filed by U.S. Private Vaults customers, who estimate there were 600 to 1,000 boxes in the store.
U.S. Private Vaults shut down its business in a Beverly Hills strip mall in late March after federal agents seized the contents of its safe deposit boxes during a five-day search.
(Joel Rubin / Los Angeles Times)
Prosecutors have argued in court filings that they are on solid legal footing, saying they can prove the company itself is a criminal enterprise and that most of the box holders were criminals hiding “ill-gotten wealth.” But they also acknowledged in court records that innocent people had been swept up in the case. No charges have been filed against any of the store’s customers.
Legal scholars say the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles is testing constitutional restraints on the government’s power to seize private property.
“This was at bottom executing a warrant at a business,” said Orin Kerr, a UC Berkeley law professor. “What makes it different is that hundreds of customers had their own 4th Amendment protected spaces in their safe deposit boxes. That’s what makes this unusual. It’s not just the business. It’s also users storing their things — some engaging in criminal activity, others not, I assume.”
A federal grand jury indicted U.S. Private Vaults last month on three counts of conspiracy — to distribute drugs, launder money and structure cash transactions to dodge currency reporting rules. The indictment lists four unnamed people affiliated with the business as co-conspirators but has not charged them. More charges could be filed later.
In a court statement defending the seizure, FBI agent Kathryn E. Bailey said agents searching the boxes found fentanyl, OxyContin, guns, gold bullion and stacks of $100 bills. Some of the largest-sized boxes each contained more than $1 million in cash, she said.
Customers who sued the government said prosecutors had no right to seize the contents of their boxes because they had no evidence that would give them reason to suspect the customers were stashing contraband or committing some other crime.
Jeffrey B. Isaacs, an attorney for one customer, accused prosecutors of trying to force people who want their property back to reveal their names to the FBI, subject themselves to criminal investigation and prove they lawfully acquired what they stored in the boxes.
“This is as illegal a search and seizure as I’ve ever seen,” Isaacs said. “It’s rather shocking.”
His client is identified in court papers by the pseudonym James Poe. The four others who have sued are also seeking to retain their anonymity: John Doe, Charles Coe, Michael Moe and Richard Roe.
The retired Pico-Robertson contractor has not sued, but tried to file a theft report with Beverly Hills police, who refused to take it.
Klausner’s ruling rejected Doe’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have unsealed the court-approved seizure warrant; stopped inspection of any box the government has no specific justification to search; barred agents from using anything they found in such boxes in criminal investigations; and stopped the FBI from requiring personal information from people trying to retrieve their valuables.
Doe rented three boxes to store jewelry, currency and bullion, but sought a court order that applied to the whole store.
“It is possible that the government’s seizure and search of those other boxes violated the 4th Amendment rights of their owners,” Klausner wrote. But the request was “far broader than necessary” to protect Doe from harm.
The court is still considering Doe’s request for a preliminary injunction. Benjamin Gluck, his attorney, said “the government’s scheme is manifestly unconstitutional.”
In court papers filed last week, Assistant U.S. Atty. Andrew Brown said agents “seized the nests of safety deposit boxes because there was overwhelming evidence” that U.S. Private Vaults “was a criminal business.” The company’s promise of anonymity attracted criminals looking to safeguard cash, he said. Brown acknowledged some customers were “honest citizens” who should get their things back.
Standards for what makes a search legal have shifted in recent years as digital communications pose new challenges. Courts have required warrants for searches of locations where people have a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Exceptions, however, have been made when law enforcement has sought personal data and other things that suspects have technically put in the possession of a third party like a phone company or storage facility.
In 2018, the Supreme Court narrowed those exceptions, ruling that police need a warrant to collect cellphone tracking records that can reveal everywhere a person goes. Even though the location data is kept by a private company, Chief Justice John G. Roberts wrote, “we decline to grant the state unrestricted access.”
Hadar Aviram, a UC Hastings law professor, said the warrant that remains under seal in the U.S. Private Vaults case is the key to whether prosecutors met the legal standard for breaking the box holders’ expectation of privacy. Prosecutors would need to show they had probable cause to believe evidence of criminal activity would be found in a substantial portion of the boxes — perhaps close to a third of them, she said. “There’s good cause for concern here,” she said.
Kerr, the UC Berkeley law professor, said he expected the seizure of all the boxes would ultimately hold up in court, but the legal question still did not appear “cut and dry.”
How does the 4th Amendment apply to the “U.S. Private Vaults” case, busting the Beverly Hills store where people could anonymously store guns and drugs (and anything else)?
Robert Frommer, senior attorney at the libertarian Institute for Justice in Virginia, called the seizure of the boxes “egregious.”
“Those property owners have their own independent rights to be secure in their persons and property,” he said. “The government can’t come in there and say, because the business allegedly did something wrong, those people are not entitled to the protections of the 4th Amendment.”
Attached is a link to an interesting unanimous panel decision from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in an opioids case. This is the very same court that would hear appeals from cases from decisions by Judge Dan Polster, Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Judge Polster, it will be recalled, has been selected by a federal judicial panel to preside over more than 200 consolidated prescription opioid-related lawsuits in multi-district litigation (MDL).
In the instant case, the plaintiff (a pharmacist working at Walmart WMT+0.6%) sued that company and others under the federal False Claims Act (FCA). The claim is that this pharmacist received large numbers of heavy opiate prescriptions written by the same doctor. Walmart allegedly filled these prescriptions, whose small copay indicated to the plaintiff that Walmart was obtaining Medicare and/or Medicaid reimbursement. The plaintiff believed these prescriptions to be fraudulent (both because of their number and because of the high dosage) and thus that the federal reimbursement to Walmart was fraudulent. He notified his employer of his decision to file his complaint, and claims he was fired as a result (adding a retaliation count to his suit).
Typically in such cases, the federal government intervenes to support the claim of alleged fraud and the claimant (here, the pharmacist) receives a reward for his initiative. Here, though, the government expressly declined to intervene, so the pharmacist persevered alone. But Walmart and the other defendants demurred (that is, claimed that the plaintiff’s suit did not state a cause of action) and won at trial. A unanimous Circuit Court panel here confirmed.
The reasoning is interesting and potentially applicable to Judge Polster’s MDL. The panel held that the tiny amount ($1 or $2) paid by patients for each prescription was no proof that the federal government had expended any money at all, or even that any demand for federal payment had ever been made. It also held that the mere fact that doses were high was no evidence at all that they were medically “too” high. It held that the mere fact the plaintiff was discharged in no way established any causation with his FCA claim. Finally, it held that the federal government’s decision not to intervene in the case demonstrated that it too found the allegations lacking. Essentially, the panel wondered how Walmart could believe the prescriptions to be fraudulent when the government itself clearly doesn’t think so.
It’s pretty clear that bare-bones lawsuits against a seemingly fat target (Walmart in an opioids suit) are not going to be met with favor in the Sixth Circuit. Plaintiffs had better be equipped, both in individual case and in the MDL, with detailed medical expert evidence about patients’ needs and about federal fraud.
A Toronto man says he went to the hospital with excruciating leg pain but was not believed and sent away after he disclosed a mental illness. To read more: http://cbc.ca/1.5871307 »»» Subscribe to CBC News to watch more videos: http://bit.ly/1RreYWS Connect with CBC News Online: For breaking news, video, audio and in-depth coverage: http://bit.ly/1Z0m6iX Find CBC News on Facebook: http://bit.ly/1WjG36m Follow CBC News on Twitter: http://bit.ly/1sA5P9H For breaking news on Twitter: http://bit.ly/1WjDyks Follow CBC News on Instagram: http://bit.ly/1Z0iE7O Subscribe to CBC News on Snapchat: https://bit.ly/3leaWsr Download the CBC News app for iOS: http://apple.co/25mpsUz Download the CBC News app for Android: http://bit.ly/1XxuozZ »»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» For more than 75 years, CBC News has been the source Canadians turn to, to keep them informed about their communities, their country and their world. Through regional and national programming on multiple platforms, including CBC Television, CBC News Network, CBC Radio, CBCNews.ca, mobile and on-demand, CBC News and its internationally recognized team of award-winning journalists deliver the breaking stories, the issues, the analyses and the personalities that matter to Canadians.
This is my friend Kimberly Derewenko-Freitas who lost her life today because the CDC guidelines on opioids destroyed her right to live and raise her young son! Constant pain threatens Chronic pain patients everyday! The government took our rights away to live! People want to get out of bed and play with their kids and grandkids but can’t because of an illness or injury! Opioid theropy is an absolute way of life for people who use opioids correctly! Torture and punishment is the way the government handles pain patients because most are broke and live on social security and have few or very little because of injuries or illnesses…. Kimberly just had brain surgery and lack of treatment causes death! She was an awesome person just trying to live man! How sad we have come to this! We can do something about it…. its called fighting back! Look it can be you next time a drunk flies throw a light or simple surgery turns into a disaster…like me! The government is picking on people that can’t defend their selves! It is so important to understand this could be your mother or your child! Chronic Pain Patients are suffering reach out and call your congressman or senator’s! Mention it to your doctors or medical professionals and ask what you can do to help! Her name was Kimberly and she meant something and did nothing wrong! Help us find a way out of this nightmare and give the doctors back their prescription pads to folks that can prove their pain…. contact American Pain and Disability Foundation to ask how you can help! Don’t be the next pain patient and have to live in our hell! Bob Sheerin VPO American Pain and Disability Foundation
When you see about a medical office practice, pharmacy and/or any other entity that has the legal right to handle, prescribe or dispense controlled substances …being raided and shut down… Who is conducting the raid… NOT THE FDA… NOT THE CDC…
Typically, the raiding of the office practice or others is done by the DOJ/DEA/FBI/local law enforcement.
Who has the statutory authority to permit a medication to be prescribed and dispensed in the USA — How about the FDA. ?
Who has the authority to establish and approve the appropriate medical use for a particular substance/medication, the appropriate dosage range, the potential lethal dose and all the other related items as to the safe use of a particular substance/medication.
Who was the entity who “jumped on” the CDC guidelines in 2016 and attempted to get the guidelines recognized as standard of care and best practices ? When >50% of the prescribers in a given area, state, region follow these guidelines… the becomes a de-facto law.
Does the FDA utilize these de-facto laws/rules and search the various states’ PDMP databases to find prescriber who is “exceeding” these opiate dosing guidelines and fabricate a “probable cause case” that a particular prescriber is routinely prescribing an excessive amounts of opiates and controlled substances and labeled as operating a “pill mill” ?
Has anyone noticed that when the states are unhappy with what the FEDS do… what do they do… THEY SUE… they don’t sign petitions, they don’t send letters, texts, faxes, emails to members of Congress.
Human Psychology strongly suggests that people will continue to do something that they consider illegal, immoral or unethical until they suffer some bad personal consequences. No matter if you are talking about the Insurance/PBM industry, large hospital systems, chain pharmacies…etc…etc… they can – and have – denied care, abused pts – intentionally throwing pts into cold turkey withdrawals – directly – indirectly causing chronic pain pts to commit suicide… and have any of these entities had to deal with any consequences — personally, financially ?
They have NO REASONS for changing what they have been doing… in fact… it would seem that many have increased the number of chronic pain pts that have been adversely impacted.
Just think “Lucy” as the various bureaucracy, the “football” as some proposed change in rules/regulations and “Charlie Brown” the chronic pain community…
How many times is “Lucy” going to put the “football” in place with the theoretical promise to hold it in place .. and then just as “Charlie Brown” gets ready to kick the football… Lucy pulls it way – once again.. How many times is the chronic pain community going to live thru this “Groundhog Day” scene ?
Pain patients beg FDA for more options, easier access to opioids
People with chronic conditions cope with prescription restrictions and limited alternative therapies amid the nation’s opioid crackdown.
SILVER SPRING, Md. — One pain patient lay on the floor. Another leaned against the wall, easing her back. A third paced to and fro.
At this week’s Food and Drug Administration hearing on chronic pain, accommodations were at the forefront.
And the agency says it wants to be accommodating in other ways as it tackles the opioid crisis. Thus, a meeting was called simply to listen to people’s stories about their pain and how they may, or may not, handle it.
It was a room full of some very unhappy people.
“Suicide is always an option for us,” said Mariann Farrell of Pittsburgh, who says she has multiple conditions, including fibromyalgia and the post-herpetic pain that can linger after shingles. Farrell was one of several dozen people who traveled to the FDA’s headquarters outside Washington to ask the agency to ease restrictions that they say has made it harder for them to get opioids.
Sandra Flores, a former emergency room nurse from Tucson, Arizona, roused rounds of applause as she told of her repeated efforts to get opioid prescriptions for her pain. Flores said she was diagnosed with adhesive arachnoiditis, an inflammation of the membranes protecting the brain, spine and nerve endings.
“I am seeing the true face of medicine,” Flores said. “Now they are throwing me in the trash.”
The FDA said it wants to consider the needs of patients with chronic, intractable pain as it considers the problem of opioids, and as it encourages drug companies to come up with safer alternatives.
“We don’t want to perpetuate practices that led to the misuse of these drugs, and the addiction crisis. At the same time, we don’t want to act in ways that are poorly targeted, and end up disadvantaging legitimate patients,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.
“In most circumstances, opioids should only be used for the treatment of acute pain and prescribed for short durations of time,” he added.
“However, the FDA is aware that there are certain circumstances — such as in the treatment of metastatic cancer pain and the episodic treatment of migraine pain — where the drugs are administered over longer periods. In select patients and for certain medical conditions, opioids may be the only drugs that provide relief from devastating pain.”
The FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other medical groups agree not only that there’s an opioid crisis, but that it has been driven in no small part by overprescribing.
The CDC reported last year that the number of prescriptions for the painkillers tripled between 1999 and 2015. “A generation of providers dispensed these medicines too liberally, and were slow to address the signs of misuse and addiction,” Gottlieb said.
The CDC says more than 42,000 people died from opioid-related overdoses in 2016, a 30 percent increase from the year before. Synthetic opioid overdoses killed 20,000 of them. Opioid overdose deaths are so numerous they have helped drive down U.S. life expectancy.
So the CDC has issued guidelines recommending that doctors cut back on opioid prescriptions, and advising patients to try anything else they can before asking for the powerful and addictive drugs.
They recommend first trying Tylenol or drugs such as ibuprofen or naproxen, which are in a class called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs. They also recommend trying low-tech options such as ice, physical therapy and massage. And, the CDC says, patients may have to change their expectations about living with pain.
But the CDC and FDA do not regulate physicians. States do.
At least 28 states have some limits on opioid prescriptions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Seventeen limit prescriptions to three to 14 days.
Others have prescription drug monitoring programs to keep watch for providers who might be writing prescriptions too freely.
The pain patients who traveled from across the country to testify to the FDA say they are feeling the effects.
Flores, who said she was diagnosed with her painful condition two years ago, said she can no longer find a doctor to prescribe her opioids.
“I have yet to have a doctor accept me as a patient,” Flores told NBC News.
“No doctors will fight. They just don’t want to get into trouble. They have forgotten the people these drugs were made for.”
Flores said she worried she was failing as a mother, her teenaged son unwilling to put her down as an emergency contact. “He knows I often don’t answer the phone because I am in bed,” she said.
“When can I have medicine so I can just be comfortable in my body?” she asked.
It’s clear who they blame for their reduced ability to get opioids.
“To the FDA — we are begging you. Correct the CDC’s egregious mistakes,” said Rose Bigham of Seattle, who spoke on behalf of the Alliance for the Treatment of Intractable Pain.
“The CDC recommendations have done irreparable harm to people in pain.”
Fears of being denied pain relief
More than 90 percent of the patients at the FDA meeting and watching online said they had used NSAIDs and more than 80 percent said they had used opioids to control their pain. And 77 percent said they had used gabapentin (Neurontin) or pregabalin (Lyrica), both anticonvulsant drugs also approved to treat pain.
As for non-prescription treatments, 68 percent said they had used dietary supplements or herbal remedies to treat pain, 47 percent said they had tried medical marijuana or other cannabis-based products, 68 percent had tried acupuncture, massage or other complementary therapy and 47 percent had tried counseling or other psychological treatment.
“None of them are covered by insurance,” Bigham noted, to applause and loud cheers.
Rose Bigham has chronic pain and wants the FDA to help find better treatments.
Bigham said she has ankylosing spondylitis, a form of arthritis affecting the spine.
She said she has tried NSAIDs, muscle relaxants, antidepressants, injectable drugs, cortisone and an electric current therapy called transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation. “I remain on opioids to this day,” she said.
“My new worst nightmare is being admitted to the hospital, being in agony, and being denied pain relief,” Bigham said to more applause.
Charlotte Diggs of Atlanta said it’s not easy to get alternatives to opioids, either. Her physician was not forthcoming about possibilities when he was treating her for complex regional pain syndrome. “He didn’t offer it,” she said. “I had to hear about it and then ask him,” Diggs told NBC News.
Flores said she wasn’t sure if talking to the FDA would help. “I don’t know if it is just a formality.”
But the FDA staffers said they genuinely wanted to consider patient perspectives, and listened quietly to lengthy, often tearful, tales of untreated pain, lost jobs and days spent in bed.
“We don’t have expectations for what we are asking,” said Dr. Sharon Hertz, director of FDA’s Division of Anesthesia, Analgesia and Addiction Products.
RIP HERO . We’re so sorry you thought this was the only way to peace. 🙏. Shared , Colt Schermer took his life 2 Days ago. He was with 2/4 as a Cpl. He was a MARSOC Master Sergeant well decorated and 2 weeks out from being married. His Officers said he was the best of the best
6/7/21, former DEA Agent (2006 to 2015), Joe Rannazziai said, “ The DEA does not work directly in that Closed System, but instead provides guidance and investigates when needed.”
This “Closed System” is: physicians prescribe and pharmacies fill these prescriptions both of which are DEA LICENSED.
Rannazzisi said, “I believe that the facts should be presented in this case, because the public needs to be aware of what went on and this is my opportunity to do that.”
What went on, was the DEA had been intimidating Physicians to lower treatment under the DEA’s OWN AUTHORITY,
“2004 DEA Opioid Prescribing Guideline”, which was determined to be illegal and withdrawn in 2005,
and closing legitimate Pain Clinics to lower the volume of opioids being prescribed.
The DEA were in fact, that I am a witness, actively screwing with this “Closed System”, since 2004 to lower the NUMERIC amount of treatment for ALL functionally disabled patient’s clinically determined need.
It is a boldfaced LIE for him to testify: prescribing was a “Closed System” in which they, the DEA, did not work directly” to upset balance of professionally determined need. Even in 2005, patients were forced to street drug replacement near the DEA Hquarters in DC, which is now common across the country.
The DEA alone made the assumption Physicians lowering treatment would stop the diversion and abuse, which is what has caused the overdose crisis today.
I was treated in a Clinic closed by the DEA in 2005 in a Washington DC suburb, Dulles, VA. The DEA were in fact disrupting this “Closed System”!
Once a Physician lowers treatment from DEA intimidation, the DEA claims they were OVER-TREATING, before a treatment reduction, made by that doctor.
IMO, Obamacare is now more firmly in place as the “foundation” of implementing a national health insurance and it appears that this current administration and Congress is on a “bum rush” to implement as much socialism as they can before the 2022 mid term elections. President Biden seems interested in having history look upon his administration on the same level as the two most socialist President of the last 100 years… Roosevelt (SS) and Johnson (Medicare/Medicaid). There is 50 million people on Medicare and 70 million on Medicaid – abt 38% of our population. Our bureaucrats are moving people on Medicare/Medicaid over to Medicare Advantage & Medicaid Managed Care – which is care provided by for profit insurance companies. Is this the template that will be used for a national health insurance ? Where the Feds will have a fixed cost per pt/month and the entities providing your care will be interested in paying out a lot less for care than they are being paid to provide care … so that they can produce a profit and keep their stock holders happy.
