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THOM! When you gonna talk about --
McCain bill -- dismantling access to nutritional supplements
As you know, many health problems are alleviated by over-the-counter vitamins, minerals and nutrients. McCain's bill (as well as the CODEX restrictions his bill favors) makes these beneficial substances available only by prescription, or allowing their natural forms to be 'patented' or marketed by Big Pharma only in synthetic form at prohibitive prices is NOT good for peoples' health!!!
PLEASE read about it--
http://rense.com/general89/mcc.htm
[excerpt]
Senator McCain's bill is called The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA). It would repeal key sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). DSHEA protects supplements if 1) they are food products that have been in the food supply and not chemically altered or 2) if they were sold as supplements prior to 1994, the year that DSHEA was passed. If a supplement fits one of these two descriptions, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cannot arbitrarily ban it or reclassify it as a drug.
These protections are far from perfect. They discourage companies from developing new forms of supplements. New supplements may be arbitrarily banned by the FDA or adopted by drug companies in a way that precludes their further sale as supplements.
McCain's bill would wipe out even the minimal protections contained in DSHEA. It would give the FDA full discretion and power to compile a discreet list of supplements allowed to remain on the market while banning all others.
Everyone knows that the FDA is friendly to drug companies (which pay its bills and provide good revolving door jobs) and hostile to supplement companies. Under this bill, this same Agency could quite arbitrarily ban any supplement it wished or turn it over to drug companies to be developed as a drug and sold for multiples of its price as a supplement.
The FDA will like this because it believes that it can more easily control a few industry giants. But isn't it more likely that the industry giants will eventually gain control over the FDA?
The FDA is already misusing the adverse event reporting process that exists. Drugs rack up thousands of adverse event reports without any action. Just recently, the FDA yanked from the market a supplement product based on just a couple of alleged adverse event reports without even allowing the company (an old and respected firm) to provide any counter-evidence or counter-argument.
The bill also allows the FDA to yank a product (at the company's expense) if there is a "reasonable probability" that it is "adulterated" or "misbranded". Let's remember that "adulterated" could mean there is a minor record keeping error on the producer's part and "misbranded" can mean that the producer simply tells the truth about the product. An "adulterated" and "misbranded" supplement in Orwellian FDA speak may actually be both completely safe and effective.
[end excerpt]
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Additional coverage:
http://www.anh-usa.org/new_site/?p=2307
I thought this was a good parody of a daytime TV talk show called Wake Up World with the topic concerning cheap ways to get health care like looking at your span email for cheap drugs as an example.
Freegonomics - X-Mas Spectacular 12.08.09
Hope & Davis talk to River Foster and T. Reilly Hoegarten about their new book.
Tags: Lizz Winstead, Baron Vaughan, Sean Crespo, Tom Gilroy, Healthcare, Economics
When talking to Steve Moore please remind him the the "REDISTRIBUTION of WEALTH" has already occured!
The DNC logo may have been on the check cut to Ben Nelson BUT it was the DLCers that gave the money to Nelson and he is their man in the Senate.
Define a progressive democrat. Democrats with an education in the Environmental Sciences.
@Gerald I hear Dragon Naturally Speaking has gotten quite good. I had insufficient memory on my old computer though and have yet to try it on my new computer. Can you believe I have a Tetrabyte of strorage and a quad core AMD processor! It rocks. Life is no longer the frustration it was. Not even tea baggers bother me any more. :)
BTW- Good on Teresa for adding to safe ways to protest, goofy theatre, when protesting is fun...more people do it!
I believe when people say they want smaller govt.; what they mean is they want to pay less for it. They do not want fewer firemen,teachers, etc. The privatization of public function has lead to massive deficits at all levels of govt. Take the profit out of these public services and then you can lower the tax burden on the working class. Big Business loves Big Government, what other customer can print money!
When listening to the topic of marrying for insurance, I am again frustrated by the situation is my own life. I have good insurance coverage (relatively speaking), but am still dealing with medical debt because my partner is uninsured and has Crohn's disease. So while I don't have to marry for insurance for myself, I would give anything to be able to marry her so she could be put on my policy. Meanwhile we just sit here at the intersection where health reform and marriage equality rights slam into each and wait to see if anyone will ever actually do anything to fix either of these messes.
@ Gerald Socha
"I misspell words because I pick and peck and sometimes my pick and peck typing does not keep pace with my thoughts."
Lucky you!. I have the opposite problem.
OK Zero G. I have read a good portion of Parry's article that you linked to.
I don't see how my point is counter to his though. I pointed out that these tricks do eventually come back to bite the progressives in the a$$. I wasn't in disagreement to what you were pointing out at all. I just went on to point out (as did Parry) that eventually the people begin to tune out media sources or buy into the conservative rhetoric. Sure not as eloquently, but I was just shooting from the hip.
I had a friend forward me some youtube links that feature a guy, I think his name is Bob Brasso, who dresses up as Thomas Paine and speaks on various political subjects ranging from Sean Hannity to the stimulus package. Before this my experience with Thomas Paine had been cursory. I can say the videos I watched moved me immensely. I recommend everyone take a look at some of these amazing common sense ideas. Just go to youtube and type in Thomas Paine, tons of videos are available.
@Charles, I did not notice any misspelled words.
I misspell words because I pick and peck and sometimes my pick and peck typing does not keep pace with my thoughts.
"Drinking Liberally" is great --- good job mentioning it Thom!
Also there are plenty of "Sustainable" groups, e.g. Sustainable Ballard etc. A moveement centered around actually getting small things done can be very satisfying and therefore persist longer than one-shot electoral efforts.
The corporate shill media has yet to pick up on the fact that the death of Congressman Jack Murtha was the result of medical malpractice. His surgeon perforated his bowel during a gall bladder operation the 77 year old Congressman died of the resulting infection. So should the surviving family of a United States Congressman be limited to $250,000 in damages when the cost of this mistake to the family, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the nation is immeasurable.
Listening to the woman who would marry for health insurance offers the listener an honest comment. I can respect her for her honesty and I wish her good luck.
Marrying someone with four children is questionable.
Her only hope is a caring America that will pass health reform but I do not see it happening.
Thom, please encourage the woman who will marry for health insurance to write a book on the men and women who have emailed her with their health problems.
@KMH: Well, the desert and the "dead land" was caused mainly by the Goodnights and Slaughters and other cattle barons via the cattle drives; plus raising cotton, which depletes the soil in a few years without massive application of chemicals. The "big smelly livestock" is just the local high school football team practice. I was born and bred in Austin, but these days I spend most of my time a hundred miles east; in the woods halfway between Dallas and Houston. East of Austin, Texas is completely different than Hollywood depictions. No deserts; mostly beautiful forest.
Normally, I wouldn/t encourage more people to move here, but we really need more progressives. Bring your own bliss!
Single payer may be closer than we think.....Over half of ALL medical costs are paid by medicare and medicade the government....as the baby boomers, (me), hit 65....pvt insurance fades and we get Medicare!!!! Cost control, culture change must be the focus....Once "We The People" really understand that we already have a single payer system that is costing WAY more than it should, change happens.
Gerald, thanks for correcting my spelling.
Re: National Healthcare and Marriage for Insurance
It is absolutely true that people marry, and stay married, for health insurance. I know many people in this situation.
Shhh, do not tell the Religious Right because they will have a new talking point against health insurance reform:
"Health insurance reform cannot pass or the divorce rate will increase. National Healthcare is bad for families!"
Thom, Obama cannot continue to turn his cheek and get mugged by the scum of the earth, aka the GOP.
Marrying for insurance has been happening along the US-Canada border for years.
@Richard, I think I could make an argument that willful ignorance (and I do believe that tea baggers are willfully ignorant) is evil... hmmm I don't like the word evil, lets say destructive. Their ignorance will cause others to suffer, one way or another. Their ignorance is perpetuated by their unwillingness to delve into the substance of any subject that may demonstrate what they hold true is false. They are dishonest with themselves. Sure it may be acceptable to say "well they don't know better." I can only say, "Well, why don't they know better, why do they refuse to consider the consequences of their actions." I can only conclude that they don't want to find out that they've been duped, so they rather just continue in their thinking that they are right, because they couldn't possibly be wrong.
As I said, I don't like the word evil, because it too powerful and mystic, its outside the realm of nature. I would also substitute the word constructive to good for the same reason. So in my argument, destructive equates to evil, and these people are DESTRUCTIVE.
Your comment just sparked a thought in me and I wanted to build on it (or be a bit constructive so to speak ;-) )
@Harry Ashburn, I did have a sigmoid flex before I was sixty years old.
@Charles, some comments may leave some people speechless.
Jobs lost are forever lost!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Jobs-Continue-to-Vanish-Wh-by-shamus-co...
GOP wants reconciliation off the table because they do not to go through with the threat to propose amendments to stall the process.
What do we call the false conservatives? There is a short and similar word that represents most of their essential characteristics as in:
criminal behavior
contrary
condescending
conniving
deceptive
opposing
deluding
overly critical
false
That word is Con.