SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–In response to a recent 60 Minutes story about McKesson’s January 2017 settlement agreement with the federal government, McKesson issued the following statement:

We were disheartened to see today’s 60 Minutes story on McKesson and the opioid crisis contain sweeping and unsubstantiated accusations against our company. We provided extensive information to the news outlet by way of interviews with and statements from McKesson and its representatives – including a categorical denial of any criminal behavior or intent. Shockingly, it all ended up on the editing room floor, but nonetheless they made it seem like we refused to cooperate. Sensational journalism focused on finger-pointing and the blame-game does an enormous disservice to those who have suffered losses in this crisis and to those who are focused on finding solutions to this horrible epidemic. The public deserves the facts.

The story has too many inaccuracies and mischaracterizations to address here — one can find the real facts at www.McKesson.com/FightingOpioidAbuse.

McKesson has worked diligently to enhance our monitoring of controlled substances and to develop a more constructive dialogue with the Drug Enforcement Administration. We have invested millions of dollars in our controlled substance monitoring program, and are constantly evolving it to stay one step ahead of those who would divert prescription medications for illegitimate use. We’re developing innovative practical solutions – like a new “red flag” system for pharmacists as they’re filling prescriptions for patients who are at risk for abuse or diversion. And we are working closely with federal and state policymakers and regulators to advance common-sense proposals that can help stem diversion, while simultaneously protecting the availability of appropriate pain therapies for patients with serious illnesses and injuries.

McKesson has been a leader in the healthcare industry for over 180 years: each day helping deliver thousands of safe and effective medicines to the millions of patients who need them. We look forward to setting the record straight and taking care of what matters most: the families and patients who need our support.

Contacts

McKesson
Kristin Hunter Chasen, 415-983-8974
Kristin.Chasen@McKesson.com

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171217005108/en/McKesson-Responds-60-Minutes-Story

Filed under: General Problems | 1 Comment »

Filed under: General Problems | 3 Comments »

https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2018-06-07/trump-administration-launches-scare-tv-ads-to-fight-opioid-abuse

Filed under: General Problems | 27 Comments »

Back  in 2012 the New England Compounding Center distributed some compounded sterile Methylprednisolone used mostly for ESI that was contaminated with a fungus… 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/compounding-pharmacies-have-been-linked-to-deaths-illnesses-for-years/2013/02/07/5ba90132-6b19-11e2-ada3-d86a4806d5ee_story.html

This article from 2013 claimed : “The series of safety failures happened long before national attention focused on the New England Compounding Center, whose contaminated steroid shots were linked to 45 deaths and 651 illnesses”

Wikipedia last updated Nov 2018  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_Compounding_Center_meningitis_outbreak

Claimed that: sickened over 800 individuals and resulted in the deaths of 76.

Notice that the deaths related to this situation are stated as EXACT NUMBER, but the number of “sickened” has went from an exact number to a “rounded off number”

There was a statement on the TV today that this year 52 police officers have been killed this year… again an EXACT NUMBER..

Bus crashes… Airplane crashes… EXACT NUMBERS are quoted of the number of people on board and/or killed – OR BOTH…

It would seem that when FACTS ARE KNOWN… EXACT NUMBERS are stated…  so when “round numbers are stated”… does that mean that they are reporting ESTIMATES ?

Do they use LARGE NUMBERS to make things sounds REALLY BAD… but they claim 22 veterans a day commit suicide … not quite as bad as 8,030/yr commit suicide ?

220 million opiate Rxs filled each year… normally followed by the claim – TOO MANY

72 million DRUG OVERDOSES… again a figure composed of many parts to come to a figure LARGE ENOUGH to SOUND BAD.. and again ROUND NUMBERS… suggesting a ESTIMATE

Filed under: General Problems | 4 Comments »

www.doctorsofcourage.org/ronald-p-kufner-md/

Ronald P. Kufner, MD

Ronald Kufner, MD, 68, is an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist working with multiple hospitals and other doctors and specialists around Detroit, Michigan, without joining any group. And yet he is included with the 5 doctors at The Pain Center in Warren, Michigan who are all facing charges for conspiracy and fraud.  What would the reason for doing this be? Well, Dr. Kufner is old enough to have money or possessions which the government would like to get its hands on. Or the government might what to offer him a deal if he commits perjury against the other physicians—a common ploy by the DOJ.

Dr. Kufner is charged with one count of health care fraud conspiracy, one count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, six counts of aiding and abetting health care fraud for

six claims between May, 2014, and Nov, 2016 which you can see below, and two counts of aiding and abetting the unlawful distribution of controlled substances for giving two patients 120 doses of hydrocodone-acetaminophen.

Dr. Kufner graduated from medical school with honors and has been practicing for 25 years. Folks, this is the future of medicine in America.  Practice as you’ve been taught, and spend your life in prison.

The Gestapo is alive and well in the US DOJ. The goal of the government is to forfeit any property owned by the doctors as a means of offsetting our national debt of $34 billion and rising through fraud charges against compassionate, self-sacrificing doctors taking care of government-insured for not even what it costs to see them. The actual law being adulterated to create these false charges is 18 U.S.C. § 1347 Health care fraud, which states:

(a)  Whoever knowingly and willfully executes, or attempts to execute, a scheme or artifice–

(1)  to defraud any health care benefit program;  or

(2)  to obtain, by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, any of the money or property owned by, or under the custody or control of, any health care benefit program, in connection with the delivery of or payment for health care benefits, items, or services, …

(b)  With respect to violations of this section, a person need not have actual knowledge of this section or specific intent to commit a violation of this section.

S

o the government is turning this vague law against any physician or clinic independent from the REAL fraudulent hospital-owned groups, to fund the government coffers and give the DOJ job security. And statute (b) is really scary when it says there is no such thing as mens rea anymore in our justice system. In other words, you can be charged criminally for something you don’t even know is criminal or have the intent of doing something criminal. 

The government is charging Dr. Kufner with doing spinal injections that, in the government reviewer’s mind, were not medically unnecessary.  This is the type of charge that is becoming routine now against any doctor who takes government insurance. But how they do it is interesting. Non-medical reviewers who get bonuses based on the numbers of claims they deny are now the decision-makers as to what is “necessary” for patient care. Let’s see. If you are being paid for finding claims that aren’t necessary, what would you do? Doctors are basically sitting ducks. Easy low hanging fruit who don’t even try to defend themselves against ridiculous charges like this.

So doctors taking care of government insured or BXBS, take note: You are treating these patients for free and you will lose your business through bankruptcy when the government charges and fines you to get their money back. You’ll also become part of our slave-labor force in prison, and give more government personnel a salary to watch you.

Now what can be done about this gross government misconduct targeting innocent physicians with crimes for doing their job? First, we need to remove immunity from government officials who use illegal means to achieve convictions. One of those illegal means is jury tampering. That is done by U. S. Attorneys like Matthew Schneider making statements in their press releases that will prejudice the jury. Then those government officials guilty of violating our constitutional rights need to spend 20 years in prison.

Next time your pain clinic wants you to get ANOTHER ESI… might want to share this article with him/her… Doctor raided and being charged with  conspiracy and fraud. For providing ESI that are NOT MEDICALLY NECESSARY. After all both the FDA and Pfizer do not recommend that the med Depro-Medrol not be used/administered as a ESI.

Too bad that the DOJ is not equally interested in enforcing all of the ADA and Civil Rights Act violation/discrimination of chronic pain pts and other having to deal with subjective diseases. Equal protection under the law

Filed under: General Problems | 4 Comments »

Send letters to: letter@suntimes.com

https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/opioid-deaths-overdose-ama-drug-abuse/

A patient with metastatic prostate cancer tried to kill himself after he could not get the medication he was prescribed for bone pain because a suspicious pharmacist called his insurer, which denied coverage.

Barbara McAneny, the president of the American Medical Association, commented, “I share the nation’s concern that more than 100 people a day die of an overdose,” she said. “But my patient nearly died of an underdose.”

OPINION

McAneny was talking about the suffering caused by government pressure to reduce opioid prescriptions, which has led to denials of treatment and arbitrary dose reductions across the country. A Medicare rule that takes effect on Jan. 1 will compound that problem, even as it becomes increasingly clear that the “opioid crisis” is driven by consumption of illicitly produced drugs rather than prescribed medication.

Last April, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services noted that a proposed rule requiring insurer approval for prescriptions totaling 90 morphine milligram equivalents or more per day “was strongly opposed by nearly all stakeholder groups.” Physicians “opposed the forcible/non-consensual dose reductions due to the risks for patients of abrupt discontinuation and rapid taper of high dose opioid use,” the CMS said, while patients with chronic pain who have been functioning well on opioids for years “are afraid of being forced to abruptly reduce or discontinue their medication regimens with sometimes extremely adverse outcomes, including depression, loss of function, quality of life, and suicide.”

In response to the backlash, CMS changed the rule to require consultation between pharmacists and prescribers instead of approval by insurers. But in practice, the new requirement will further discourage prescriptions at or above 90 MME, even when they are medically justified.

The 90 MME limit, which comes from the opioid prescribing guidelines published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2016, ignores numerous factors that affect how a patient responds to a given dose of a particular opioid. Those include obvious considerations such as the patient’s weight, treatment history and pain intensity, as well as subtler ones such as interactions with other drugs and genetically determined differences in enzyme production and opioid receptors.

The newly required discussion between the pharmacist and the physician may be hard to arrange, especially if a patient is trying to fill a prescription after office hours or when the doctor is busy. “If it takes a day or two to get that prescription approved,” says clinical pharmacist Jeffrey Fudin, “that patient may go through withdrawal.”

Lynn Webster, a former president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, says the rule is bound to affect prescribing practices. “This is such a hassle for both the prescriber and for the pharmacist,” he says, that some doctors will “just keep the patients below 90.”

The new requirement “places the physician and the pharmacist in a confrontational position,” Webster says, “and the patient is going to be the real loser.” He worries that doctors will “basically abandon the patient’s needs.”

Last month, the American Medical Association approved a resolution condemning the “misapplication” of the CDC guidelines “by pharmacists, health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, legislatures, and governmental and private regulatory bodies in ways that prevent or limit access to opioid analgesia.”

This month, a commentary in the journal Pain Medicine, signed by more than 100 pain and opioid experts, likewise warned that “nonconsensual tapering policies” can result in “severe opioid withdrawal accompanied by worsening pain and profound loss of function,” which may drive patients into the black market or make them “acutely suicidal.”

Opioid prescriptions, measured by total MME sold, have fallen by a third since 2010, while opioid-related deaths have more than doubled. Instead of reducing deaths involving opioids, the crackdown on pain pills has pushed nonmedical users toward black-market substitutes, which are much more dangerous because their potency is highly variable and unpredictable.

The Trump administration wants to cut opioid prescriptions by another third in the next three years. What could go wrong? We already know.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at the libertarian magazine Reason.

Creators Syndicate

Filed under: General Problems | 2 Comments »

Panama City doctor arrested on sexual battery charges

PANAMA CITY, Fla. – A Panama City doctor has been arrested on charges of sexual battery.

Dr. Bryce Jackson, an OB/GYN, was arrested by Panama City Police early Thursday morning.

According to a news release from Panama City Police, “During the early morning hours of November 3, 2016 the Panama City Police Department responded to a report of a sexual battery. During the investigation, the adult female victim disclosed to Detectives that she had approached Dr. Bryce Jackson in an effort to seek help, after seeing him in the parking lot of his office.

“The victim further explained that during the ensuing encounter with Dr. Jackson, she was sexually battered within his office at 1937 Harrison Avenue, in Panama City. Based on the information provided, Detectives obtained and executed a search warrant on the property, known as the North Florida Medical Plaza, in an effort to obtain physical evidence of the reported crime.”

Jackson had his first appearance Thursday before a Bay County judge. His bond was set at $30,000. When reached by phone, Jackson’s attorney, Waylon Graham, told WJHG/WECP “Dr. Jackson is pleading not guilty to these heinous, atrocious accusations. He and I both look forward to our day in court.”

Jackson was arrested by Panama City Police on drug charges November 29, 2015. Police pulled Jackson over for driving the wrong way on a one-way street in downtown Panama City. Police searched Jackson’s car and found what they thought was crack cocaine on the car’s floorboard. A Bay County Sheriff’s Office K9 alerted on an odor and the substance field tested positive for cocaine. Jackson was arrested and charged with cocaine possession.

However, a report from Florida Department of Law Enforcement cleared Jackson of possession of a controlled substance in February of 2016 and the state dropped the case. Graham told WJHG/WECP back in February he thought it was a case of police being over anxious in searching for drugs.

“Often times they see something that may look suspicious and instead of looking at the big picture and giving everybody a fair shake they tend to jump to conclusions, make up their mind before having all of the evidence and that can lead to a result like this,” said Graham. (LINK) — 11/03/2016

In other news…

FDLE report clears Panama City OB/GYN of drug charges

PANAMA CITY, Fla (WJHG/WECP) – A Panama City doctor who has maintained his innocence since being arrested in November on possession of cocaine charges, has been exonerated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Dr. Bryce Jackson, a Panama City OBGYN, has been cleared on charges of possession of cocaine. An FDLE report says whatever it was that police found in Jackson’s car when he was arrested wasn’t cocaine or anything illegal.

The state dropped its case against Dr. Bryce Jackson on Wednesday. In paperwork obtained by WJHG/WECP, the state indicated a lab report from FDLE found nothing illegal about what police identified as crack cocaine.

“The lab report indicated no controlled substances per FL statutes. Therefore, the State will be unable to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, the State Attorney’s Office announced a Nolle Prosequi in this case,” said the paperwork which was filed by prosecutors Wednesday morning.

A Nolle Prosequi means the charges have been dropped.

“Dr. Jackson was adamant that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and he did not have drugs in his car,” said Jackson’s attorney Waylon Graham, “And when he retained me he had the same attitude. So I sent him to the lab and we did some lab work on his urine, and his blood and his hair and we found absolutely no drugs in his system.”

This started back on the night of November 29, 2015. Police pulled Jackson over for driving the wrong way on a one-way street in downtown Panama City. Police searched Jackson’s car and found what they thought was crack cocaine on the car’s floorboard. A Bay County Sheriff’s Office K9 alerted on an odor and the substance field tested positive for cocaine. Jackson was arrested and charged with cocaine possession.

Graham said he thinks the police were being aggressive in their search for drugs.

“Often times they see something that may look suspicious and instead of looking at the big picture and giving everybody a fair shake they tend to jump to conclusions, make up their mind before having all of the evidence and that can lead to a result like this,” said Graham.

We reached out to Panama City Police for a comment. Lt. Mark Laramore declined to do an on-camera interview but did say the police department believes it made the correct choice and charges at the time and invite anyone with questions on the matter to reach out to them.

Jackson is an OB/GYN at North Florida Obstetrics and Gynecological Center in the North Florida Medical Plaza on Harrison Avenue in Panama City.

Graham said the false accusation has destroyed Jackson’s business over the last three months.

“This is a good example for me and other lawyers and prosecutors. It’s a reminder that not everybody arrested is truly guilty,” said Graham.

We’re told that Jackson has retained a civil attorney and is mulling over his options about whether to file a civil suit against Panama City Police. (LINK) — 2/10/2016

Filed under: General Problems | 3 Comments »

Efforts to fight the epidemic must focus on more than just the availability of certain drugs, the researchers say.

The current opioid overdose crisis is actually part of a 40-year trend that is still headed upward, and current efforts to fight it may not be anywhere near enough, researchers said Thursday.

A new analysis of drug overdose deaths shows that while the drug of choice may change, and the kinds of people affected may change, the trend is clear: The number of Americans dying of drug overdoses has gone up exponentially for decades.

It started before the availability of synthetic opioids, and may have only a little to do with the prescribing habits of doctors or the pushy habits of drugmakers, the team at the University of Pittsburgh found.

“The opioid crisis may be part of a larger, longer-term process,” the team wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.

“The epidemic of drug overdoses in the United States has been inexorably tracking along an exponential growth curve since at least 1979, well before the surge in opioid prescribing in the mid-1990s.”

The Health and Human Services Department released $1 billion this week to various agencies to use in fighting the epidemic, with funds earmarked for medications to help people stop using opioids and behavioral programs to help prevent relapses.

HHS said the number of opioid prescriptions has already dropped by 21 percent since January 2017.

But if the conclusions of the Pitt team are right, the epidemic will continue to worsen.

“If we try to address the opioid epidemic, we can probably make a difference for a while,” Dr. Donald Burke, dean of Pitt’s school of public health, told NBC News.

But there are several underlying factors in the ongoing epidemic, many of which have nothing to do with the drugs that are available, said Burke, who led the study team.

Burke predicts that new drugs and new routes of taking them will hit the streets, keeping the epidemic going. These include societal and cultural factors.

“This is a reason that U.S. society needs to pay attention to the loss of the sense of purpose, the widening economic disparities, the loss of community,” said Burke.

Nearly 48,000 people died from opioid overdoses in 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said Thursday that he wants to raise awareness of opioid addiction as a brain disease.

The CDC has blamed doctors, in part, for prescribing opioids too freely for inappropriate reasons, and has urged Americans to treat their pain in less dangerous ways, including the use of analgesics such as ibuprofen, as well as with ice and stretching.

CDC data also shows that the introduction of unapproved synthetic drugs made to resemble fentanyl doubled death rates from overdoses from 2015 to 2016.

Death rates among younger adults have risen so much that they have reduced the overall life expectancy for the U.S. population as a whole.

But no one drug is to blame, Burke and his colleagues found.

They traced back nearly 600,000 deaths starting in 1979 from each individual drug or drug class, including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and prescription painkillers.

Put on a graph, they all went up over time, but not in any coherent way.

Deaths were also seen in different communities.

“At first, the highest death rates were in the coastal big cities,” Burke said.

“Then that pattern changed to where the higher rates of death are no longer in the big cities. They are in the smaller towns and Appalachia,” he added. “The drugs and the locations and the demographics have changed.”

The team added all the deaths together and graphed them again.

“You take all these year-to-year death rates and plop them on a logarithmic scale, it is a perfect straight line,” Burke said. Death rates doubled about every nine years, the graph showed.

“This remarkably smooth, long-term epidemic growth pattern really caught our attention,” Burke added. “If we can figure it out, we should be able to bend that curve downward.”

The findings jibe with what suicide experts have been saying — that many Americans are feeling increasingly disconnected and hopeless, which in turn is helping drive an increase in suicides.

Burke said it’s important to look at all the causes of drug overdoses. “I am not trying to shift blame anywhere,” he said.

“We need to do both: pay attention to the drugs that are causing the problem today, but at the same time, address the longer-term concerns.”

Filed under: General Problems | 3 Comments »

This video is a little “heavy” on the medical jargon, but it seems to point out that especially in certain medical specialties… some pts may end up a collateral damage as the healthcare provider is responding to some part of the system (hospital, insurance, etc ) to meet or exceed some ‘”metric” of how many procedures they do and/or how much revenue that they generate per week/month.  The pt is no more – no less – than a conduit or commodity to achieve that production quota.

This may help to explain why our healthcare system – that is suppose to be the best in the world – is reported to cause 250,000 – 400,000 deaths from medical errors each year.  That is 0.1% of our total population that dies every year from medical errors.  Up to TEN TIMES the number of (legal/illegal) opiate OD’s each year – and that is considered a CRISIS !

Filed under: General Problems | 2 Comments »

FDA warns some antibiotics can cause fatal heart damage

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-warns-some-antibiotics-can-cause-serious-heart-damage-n950606

Certain antibiotics can cause painful and sometimes fatal damage to the body’s main artery, the Food and Drug Administration said Thursday.

Fluoroquinolone antibiotics might raise the risk of an aortic dissection, and people who are already at risk should be cautious about taking those antibiotics, the FDA said.

“A U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review found that fluoroquinolone antibiotics can increase the occurrence of rare but serious events of ruptures or tears in the main artery of the body, called the aorta. These tears, called aortic dissections, or ruptures of an aortic aneurysm can lead to dangerous bleeding or even death,” the FDA said in a statement.

“Fluoroquinolones should not be used in patients at increased risk unless there are no other treatment options available. People at increased risk include those with a history of blockages or aneurysms (abnormal bulges) of the aorta or other blood vessels, high blood pressure, certain genetic disorders that involve blood vessel changes, and the elderly.”

The FDA said the new risk guidance will be added to the labels and prescribing information of fluoroquinolone drugs. The agency has already warned that the powerful drugs should only be used when absolutely necessary because they can cause other side effects involving tendons,

Filed under: General Problems | Leave a Comment »