“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
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.
The FDA’s blessing of a controversial treatment on spotty evidence threatens to harm the agency’s reputation, America’s health budget and the quality of drug research.
“Follow the science” has been a consistent refrain during the pandemic, and it’s usually a core mandate of the Food and Drug Administration in evaluating medicines. But when it came to one of the agency’s most consequential decisions —
the approval Monday of Biogen Inc.’s controversial Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab — science took a back seat.
Alzheimer’s is a devastating illness with no treatments that do anything but ease symptoms. Biogen’s drug is the first said to slow decline. If there was good evidence that it did so, it’d be a breakthrough, but the data is inconclusive at best. And while the FDA is and should be flexible when patients have no options, this decision does more than bend standards — it shatters them.
For Biogen investors, the approval is a huge victory, setting the stage for a blockbuster drug worth billions in sales and added market value for the company; already, after an initial halt the stock surged 50% on Monday’s news. For everyone else, it’s a mistake; the FDA’s blessing threatens to harm the agency’s reputation, America’s health budget and the quality of drug research, including for Alzheimer’s.
Buy the News
The approval of Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab in spite of limited evidence sent its shares soaring
Here’s the issue: Biogen started two identical studies in 2015 to test whether the drug slowed early Alzheimer’s. However, the company halted them in March 2019 after an early analysis suggested a low chance of success. It was the presumptive end for the medicine until Biogen popped up a few months later with the shocking announcement that one of the two trials showed a benefit — once it added new data — and that it planned to file for approval.
The early halt was problematic. Biogen collected a fraction of the patient data it wanted, introducing statistical uncertainty. But the biggest issue is that the second study failed, and it wasn’t close. The FDA’s desired standard for approval in Alzheimer’s is evidence from two positive studies. There are good reasons to want a high bar and duplication. It’s much harder to objectively measure mental decline than the size of a tumor, making definitive evidence especially critical.
The FDA ducked this standard by giving the drug a so-called accelerated approval, using a regulatory pathway that lets the agency accept different types of evidence in areas where patients lack options. That doesn’t make the decision more defensible. In this case, the approval centers on aducanumab’s ability to remove amyloid brain plaques believed to play a role in Alzheimer’s. Biogen’s drug (which it will market under the brand name Aduhelm at a hefty price of about $56,000 a year) cuts plaque, but the resulting patient benefit in even the positive trial is so modest that it may not be significant.
Many other medicines have targeted amyloid. Unfortunately, all failed to help patients, leading scientists to question whether removing the plaque does anything. Biogen’s opposing results only add to the uncertainty about the role of amyloid; they don’t make it acceptable as the basis for a multibillion-dollar approval. What is certain is that removing the plaque causes sometimes serious side effects, including brain swelling.
Biogen has explanations for the failed trial, blaming insufficient dosing and a few rapidly declining patients. But, unfortunately, this is what’s known as post-hoc analysis, or less politely cherry-picking, and it is fundamentally and irrevocably biased. Good scientists use such methods to generate ideas for future tests, not as tentpoles for generationally significant drug approvals.
You’d expect the FDA to push back. But, in this case, a part of the agency not only shifted its standards but collaborated with Biogen through an approval process in which it was so cozy with Biogen that consumer advocacy group Public Citizen has asked the government to investigate. That’s even as an independent panel of experts convened by the FDA to evaluate the drug universally advised against approval in November. Moreover, the regulator’s own statistical expert was highly critical of the evidence presented in a briefing packet presented as part of the November review. And on June 2, the American Geriatrics Society, a group of health professionals dedicated to older adults, wrote directly to the FDA’s interim commissioner advising against approval.
The FDA seems to have yielded to the pressure to give hope to patients, even if it may be false, despite the consequences. And there are many. If the agency approves drugs with middling evidence, that’s what it will get. Companies will be more likely to seek approval or advance programs based on weak results, wasting time and research dollars and the health of patients who participate in clinical trials. As for Alzheimer’s, future drugs may be badly delayed. With an approved treatment available, it will likely become harder to recruit people to participate in trials. And now that the FDA has validated amyloid as a target, companies may focus on it at the expense of other potentially more fruitful avenues.
The price of the drug is just the beginning of the financial damage. Getting it will require doctor’s visits and scans to establish eligibility and monitor side effects, creating significant additional costs for Medicare, patients and their caregivers. Multiply those costs by even a fraction of the millions of Americans with Alzheimer’s, and you have a budget crisis.
John Martin of ABC News says “Gerald Posner is one of the most resourceful investigators I have encountered in thirty years of journalism.” Garry Wills calls Posner “a superb investigative reporter,” while the Los Angeles Times dubs him “a classic-style investigative journalist.” “His work is painstakingly honest journalism” concluded The Washington Post. The New York Times lauded his “exhaustive research techniques” and The Boston Globe determined Posner is “an investigative journalist whose work is marked by his thorough and meticulous research.” “A resourceful investigator and skillful writer,” says The Dallas Morning News.
Posner was one of the youngest attorneys (23) ever hired by the Wall Street law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. A Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of California at Berkeley (1975), he was an Honors Graduate of Hastings Law School (1978), where he served as the Associate Executive Editor for the Law Review. Of counsel to the law firm he founded, Posner and Ferrara, he is now a full time journalist and author.
In the past, he was a freelance writer on investigative issues for several news magazines, and a regular contributor to NBC, the History Channel, CNN, FOX News, CBS, and MSNBC. A former member of the National Advisory Board of the National Writers Union, Posner is also a member of the Authors Guild, PEN, The Committee to Protect Journalists, and Phi Beta Kappa. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife, author, Trisha Posner, who works on all his projects (www.trishaposner.com).
This is abt a 38 minute interview. Posner’s position is to target Purdue Pharma and the Sackler Family and all the profits that they made off of the marketing/selling of Oxycontin and of course … to sell his new book.
He talks about a lot of issues surrounding the fabricated opiate crisis.. he describes the health issue of Hyperalgesia without ever mentioning the name of Hyperalgesia.
He at times injects the fact that “some” people actually needs opiates for long term pain – abt 30 days ?
He mentions a couple of Mothers who lost children to overdoses and how they took action after their kids OD.
He blames everyone for failing to control the distribution of opiates – FDA, Pharmas, Drug Wholesalers, prescribers, Pharmacy/Pharmacists… I do not remember the first word about the failure of the DEA ?
He didn’t mention the DECADE OF PAIN LAW https://www.congress.gov/bill/106th-congress/house-bill/2260 where prescribers were encouraged to adequately treat pt’s pain and the Joint Commission made proper pain management – the 5th vital sign – and a MAJOR STANDARD.
There was no mention that addiction was a MENTAL HEALTH ISSUE
Tucker even mentioned having some dental procedure and receiving TWO PRESCRIPTIONS – did not indicate what they where – put stated that he did not take them and FLUSHED THEM. He also made the statement that he had previously had some surgical procedure and was given Morphine IV and “..didn’t like how it made him feel..” It would seem obvious that Tucker is opiophobic.
Anyone can get a 7 or 30 day FREE TRIAL of www.foxnation.com… if anyone really wants to watch this lopsided piece of literature.
The state of VT has decided to place a “sin tax” on buprenorphine. IMO, this was just a matter of time before this was done. This follows the bureaucracy’s mindset after putting sin taxes on the drugs Alcohol and Nicotine. The state has turned the corner of people using/abusing some substance and costing them money paying for putting people in jail and is trying to turn it into a revenue stream. They are still going to put people in jail who they have determined are SELLING BUPRENORPHINE by possessing > 224 mg. Which substance that has an abuse potential will be next be classified by a state that is worthy of generating more revenue via a SIN TAX ?
Vermont decriminalizes buprenorphine, used to treat opioid use disorder: What to know.
Vermont has decriminalized possession of a medication typically prescribed to treat opioid use disorder.
Gov. Phil Scott signed into lawH.225,a bill that replaces criminal penalties with civil penalties for possession in quantities of 224 milligrams or less of buprenorphine.
Scott in a letter to the General Assembly expressed some doubt, including concerns about the lack of data related to decriminalizing the medication and its efficacy in minimizing overdoses.
“Although I remain skeptical, I signed this bill because it is well-intentioned and offers another potential approach to reduce the impacts of substance use disorder,” he said in the letter.
The law took effect immediately with Scott’s signature. The governor noted the Legislature set an endpoint for the law in July 2023 “providing experts the opportunity to assess the effectiveness of this initiative.” The governor signed an executive order assigning the chief prevention officer to create a task force, which will track data to assess the impact of decriminalizing the drug.
Several representatives sponsored the bill, including the following lawmakers from Burlington:
Nursing home residents and their families say there’s a document they received during the admissions process they wish they hadn’t signed—an arbitration agreement.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — On any given day, there are more than 20,000 people living in nursing homes and rehab centers in Kentucky, according to a spokesperson at the Kentucky Department for Public Health. Many of them are nearing the end of their lives. They are among our most vulnerable.
“Well, I think you just don’t want anybody to go through pain,” said Kelli Stein, a nursing home resident advocate.
But during the final years, the pain was overwhelming for the woman Kelli Stein cherished most— her mother.
Her mother is no longer around to tell her story. She passed away from complications after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease in 2016. So Stein is giving her a voice. She said it’s her responsibility to reveal a deceptive practice among nursing homes.
“She had the broken shoulder, that was not repaired, wasn’t even x-rayed for a whole week,” said Stein.
She said it happened as a result of neglect, while her mother was living at a nursing home in Louisville from 2012 to 2014. Stein’s mother, June Lee, once the president of Kentucky’s teachers’ union, was always an advocate for others.
She appeared on WHAS back in 1976, while leading a teacher’s strike. She fought for smaller class sizes and more pay for thousands of educators. Her daughter saw her mother lose her fighting spirit.
Medical documentation shows at least nine falls led to “permanent, severe, and disabling injuries.” She suffered multiple urinary tract infections. Stein said her mother, undernourished, lost about 20 pounds.
“Oh, it makes me really angry. It really does,” said Stein.
“Why are you sharing your story with me?” asked FOCUS investigative reporter Paula Vasan.
“So people will know their rights are being taken away from them,” said Stein.
Stein said she wishes someone had told that to her, before she signed on a dotted line after admitting her mother into the nursing home. An administrator handed her a document.
“She’s like oh we just forgot to get you to sign a piece of paper when we signed you in this morning. And I was just like okay and just signed it because it was just such a rush because there was no explanation of what it was,” said Stein.
“Did you know what you were signing?” asked Vasan.
“No, I didn’t know what I was signing,” she said.
That document is known as a pre-dispute binding arbitration agreement. Legal experts tell us the majority of nursing homes in Kentucky and around the country include it in their admissions process.
“You don’t have to sign these forced arbitration to get into a nursing home,” she said.
By signing it, Stein – who was her mother’s power of attorney – gave up her right to a jury trial under Kentucky’s Constitution. Unknowingly, on day one of admitting her mother into that nursing home, Stein relinquished her ability to ever bring a civil suit against the facility.
“I wish I would have known that I didn’t have to sign that clause,” said Stein.
It’s a clause that took her allegations into a private setting instead of a public one. It led to her being unable to tell us the name of the nursing home that caused her mother so much pain. But we found it, digging through documents. Limited court records reveal the nursing home was Oaklawn Health and Rehabilitation Center in Louisville. They never admitted to wrongdoing. We tried contacting the nursing home directly, but it doesn’t exist anymore. A few years ago, it was sold. Stein’s attorney Lindsay Cordes has seen it happen many times before. When nursing homes face bad ratings and legal trouble, she said they often change their names and ownership. Others, she said, threaten to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying out settlements.
“It allows facilities to escape from being held accountable,” said Cordes.
And between frequent name changes and arbitration agreements in their admissions paperwork, Cordes said many nursing homes hide the truth.
“We do believe they are intentionally doing it. And we think the reasoning is simple. They do not want the general public and people in our court system to know what is going on in these nursing homes,” said Cordes.
Attorney Emily Newman disagrees. She represents nursing homes across the state.
“It’s an agreement by the parties to just go to a different forum,” said Newman.
It’s a forum she believes is more efficient.
“Arbitration will expedite a case. It will go faster, you could get things done more quickly, you don’t have to wait on the court’s docket,” said Newman.
But Stein and her lawyer argue the public is often kept in the dark when lives are at stake.
“If you go to a restaurant you could see a letter grade on the restaurant and you could say oh if there’s a C on the front of that restaurant I may change my mind and go somewhere else. Well you don’t have that opportunity to have a grade on a nursing home when you walk in that door,” said Stein.
But there is similar information if you know where to look, within The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. We dug through public government data on hundreds of nursing homes in Kentucky. The numbers show in general, facilities rated the worst have something in common: shorter amounts of time staff spent with residents.
“You may have these facilities that could have easily prevented this if they were adequately staffed, if they had adequate infection control in place,” said Cordes.
But without enough staffing, she said nurses are often stretched too thin. Many argue lack of state staffing requirements perpetuates the problem. Kentucky is one of only a few states without a minimum daily requirement of hands-on nursing care for residents, according to Charlene Harrington, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco who studies the nursing home industry.
Cordes said residents often pay the price. Attorneys we’ve interviewed said this is something they see far too often. In nearly all of their cases, they said, nursing home residents or their families have unknowingly signed arbitration agreements, often just a few pages in a stack of admissions paperwork. One arbitration agreement we obtained says in part: “The parties understand… they are selecting a method of resolving disputes without resorting to lawsuits or the courts…” In short, you won’t find their stories in a Google search or a courthouse.
“So you don’t hear about some of these egregious things that are happening at nursing homes,” said Cordes.
“They’re horrific, they’re tragic. They’re cold-blooded,” said Kentucky Congressman John Yarmuth about nursing home arbitration agreements.
Yarmuth has been fighting for federal legislation that would require more transparency. It’s called The FAIR Act.
“You have to make sure that people who are signing these agreements have a full understanding of what it means for them. That they may basically never have a way to hold a nursing home or other business accountable for neglect and abuse,” said Yarmuth.
His proposed legislation, currently stalled in Congress, faces opposition from a wide array of corporations, including nursing home lobbyist groups. They argue arbitration agreements result in speedier, less costly decisions. But Stein said these contracts favor big corporations, putting a muzzle on those who just want a voice.
“Because I know there’s families out there. I know there’s people in those nursing homes who don’t have anybody visiting them ever and don’t have anyone fighting for them. And everybody needs an advocate,” said Stein.
We reached out to more than a dozen nursing homes in our area. In multiple follow-up emails and calls, we asked them whether their staff explains to residents and their families that signing an arbitration agreement would mean their Constitutional right to a jury trial would be taken away from them, should they want to sue the facility. Not one of them answered that question by our deadline.What you need to know— you don’t have to sign it to be admitted. Kelli Stein said not signing could be key to transparency and accountability.
Have you felt pressured by your health insurance company or pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) to utilize a pharmacy of their choosing rather than your own choosing? Maybe you have received calls from a PBM such as Caremark, Express Scripts or Optum after filling a prescription telling you that you could save money if you utilized a specific big box chain pharmacy or get your drugs via mail order. Or perhaps you have been told your pharmacy of choice is no longer in your pharmacy network. What you have experienced is called steering, and Fight4Rx wants to hear about your experiences and assist you.
Fight4Rx has created resources that you can use to fight back against this practice by informing your insurance company, regulatory agencies and elected officials to alert them of these practices and ask for action to remedy them.
Your voice is powerful and sharing your personal stories illustrate the need for action by policymakers and employers and insurance companies to ensure decisions regarding health care remain in the hands of patients, not insurance companies or PBM middlemen.
Please share your story today, and please help alert others to the resources available by sharing this information with your friends and contacts through email and social media.
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
