With 10 Health Care Executives on it Board, US Chamber of Commerce Defends Big Tobacco Abroad
DiscussionUS health care is increasingly dominated by large organizations. Most of these organizations like to portray themselves as warm and fuzzy supporters of individual and population health. For example, Pfizer has a statement of responsibility which beginsAs a member of today’s rapidly changing global community, we are striving to adapt to the evolving needs of society and contribute to the overall health and wellness of our world.Anthem's statement includesAnthem is dedicated to delivering better care to our members, providing greater value to our customers and helping improve the health of our communi...
Source: Health Care Renewal - August 17, 2015 Category: Health Management Tags: Abbott Celgene mission-hostile management Pfizer Sanofi-Aventis Steward Health Care tobacco US Chamber of Commerce WellPoint Source Type: blogs
Maui: A Good Start Toward Finishing the TPP
Trade ministers from the twelve nations negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) met last week in Maui. Some observers had expressed hopes that the Maui ministerial meeting would produce a final TPP agreement. The “collapse” in Hawaii has caused some commentators to voice fears that it may not be possible to conclude TPP anytime soon. Those fears are overblown. My view is that the Maui meeting qualifies as quite a good start toward actually finishing the TPP.
Bear in mind that the TPP negotiations have been going on for several years. The United States became an active participant during President Ob...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 5, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Daniel R. Pearson Source Type: blogs
The TPP: It's worse than you thought
Amy Kapczynski, in the new NEJM (Don't know if you'll be allowed to read the whole thing) manages to exponentially increase my bafflement over president Obama's push to get the Trans-Pacific Partnership signed. Even Paul Krugman has pretty much shrugged at it, saying it's not really a trade agreement, it's an intellectual property agreement, and who cares about that?As Kapczynski says, the draft is a secret, and even members of congress can only see it if they agree to a gag order and not to carry even a pen into the room. But some chapters have been leaked and, Whoa!For a bit of background, the only reason it is now possi...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 16, 2015 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Trade Promotion Authority and the TiSA’s Immigration “Smoking Gun”
In conclusion, it’s impossible to change the minds of TPA skeptics who are convinced that President Obama and the GOP-controlled Congress are secretly working together, against the will of the American people and contrary to decades of precedent, to change US immigration or other laws through TPA and the trade agreements it’s intended to cover. However, the above facts, history and law hopefully will help everyone else feel more confident that the leaked TiSA Annex, empowered by TPA, is not a “smoking gun” that proves the US government’s intention to substantially change and liberalize domestic immigration law....
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 15, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Scott Lincicome Source Type: blogs
All the President's Trade Negotiators - Revolving Doors, Regulatory Capture, and Health Care Corporate Friendly Trade Agreements
This week's spectacle in Washington, DC was a nearly unanimous Democratic minority in the Senate blocking a proposal for expedited consideration of multinational trade agreements favored by the Republican majority, but also by the Democratic President and his trade negotiators (look here). Democrats mainly based their actions on perceptions that the trade agreements favored multinational corporations over people.While trade agreements may seem to be another, albeit international species of wonkery, these agreements could have major effects on patients' and the public's health. Since these concerns have ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - May 14, 2015 Category: Health Management Tags: AbbeVie Abbott anechoic effect corporatism Eli Lilly global health health care prices Pfizer PhRMA regulatory capture revolving doors US Trade Representative Source Type: blogs
Unprecedented Changes in Marijuana Policy
The marijuana policy landscape changed dramatically in 2014. Legal sales for nonmedical purposes began in Colorado and in Washington state. Voters in Washington, D.C., Alaska, and Oregon passed initiatives to liberalize their marijuana laws. Uruguay also started implementing its marijuana legalization law passed in 2013. (Source: The RAND Blog)
Source: The RAND Blog - April 30, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: RAND Corporation Source Type: blogs
India Tosses out the WTO's Agricultural Subsidy Disciplines
Daniel R. Pearson
The World Trade Organization (WTO) seems on the verge of approving an agreement with India to allow the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) to move forward. The TFA is to be applauded. It will make a useful contribution toward helping goods move across borders more efficiently, which will tend to increase trade and promote economic growth.
The problem is not with the TFA, but rather with the high price that the global community seems ready to pay for it. India has asked that it be allowed to exceed the level of domestic agricultural subsidies to which it agreed twenty years ago in the Ur...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 25, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Daniel R. Pearson Source Type: blogs
Graphic Warning Labels on Cigarettes Are Scary, but Do They Work?
DEBORAH SHARF and WILLIAM SHADEL Looking at cigarette packaging in some countries, you might think Big Tobacco and AMC have entered into a bizarre cross-promotion for The Walking Dead. You’ll see blood-drenched corpses, facial scars and head wounds, people dying in hospital beds, screaming children, crying women—the list goes on. These “graphic warning labels” pair gruesome images […] (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 27, 2014 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: THCB AMC Defensiveness Graphic Uruguay Walking Dead Warning Labels Source Type: blogs
Football
As usual he avoids all videos of violence in his country (his country?) published in youtube.com. He starts listening to songs. In T.V. he starts watching an Arabic Lebanese series named لو (=If), which is about romantic relationships. He chooses to write a new article on an Arabic website about some old paintings about hypnosis. He opens the newspaper less often and prefers to see anything but the first three pages. The other day he liked this picture in the first page of his newspaper. But as he flips the first three pages to that page of culture he found this caricature.As he sees that caricature he remembers tha...
Source: psychiatry for all - July 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
End the Drug War: The American People are Not the Enemy
Doug Bandow
Drug use is bad. Arresting people for using drugs is worse. With the states of Colorado and Washington leading the way, the federal government should drop criminal penalties against those who produce, sell, and consume drugs.
The so-called Drug War has been a violent, often deadly, assault on the American people. There’s no obvious moral reason to demonize the use of mind-altering substances which are widely used around the globe. Obviously, drugs can be abused, but so can almost anything else.
Some people still may abhor drug use as a matter of personal moral principle, but the criminal law should foc...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 5, 2014 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Doug Bandow Source Type: blogs
Crime Pays
This happens all the time, though not necessarily on this scale: a for-profit hospital chain is sued by whistleblowers for conspiring to admit patients who did not need to be hospitalized, in order to bill Medicare and Medicaid. (The law allows whistleblowers to sue in cases of Medicare fraud. The Justice Department has joined several of these lawsuits against Health Management Associates.)This is nothing new. As big, for profit corporations take over more and more of health care we're likely to see ever more of this. But here's the point of this here blog post. First:[W]hen H.M.A. announced the Justice Department’s inv...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 24, 2014 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Vigilantes in Mexico: Another Reason to Repudiate Drug Prohibition
Ted Galen Carpenter
A relatively new development in Mexico’s ongoing drug wars is the increasingly active role of vigilante groups. That is especially true in Michoacán and other states in the western portion of the country. I discuss that development in a new article over at the National Interest Online.
The initial temptation might be to cheer on the vigilantes. After all, the rise of “self defense militias” indicates that a growing number of Mexicans are now willing to resist the power of the brutal cartels and fight back, if necessary. But for two reasons one ought to resist the temptati...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 17, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ted Galen Carpenter Source Type: blogs
More Knitted Hats and Some Fingerless Mitts
I have a lot of nieces (11)/ nephews (11)and a growing number of great-nieces (up to 8) with two new ones this year) and great-nephew (3 now). I've been on a roll this year with knitting gifts for some of them. These first two were made using left over yarn from the slippers. Both were made using the pattern Regular Guy Beanie by Chuck Wright. Both went to great-nephews for Christmas. I downsized the regular guy beanie pattern, casting on only 72 stitches rather than 84. Second regular guy beanie made in child size: I used the regular guy beanie pattern for this one for a ...
Source: Suture for a Living - December 13, 2013 Category: Plastic Surgeons Tags: family fingerless mittens hat knitting Source Type: blogs
The Aftermath of Chile’s Election
Juan Carlos Hidalgo
Chile went to the polls yesterday in what was perhaps the most important presidential election since the return of democracy in 1990. Many foreign observers focused on the curiosity that the two leading candidates were both daughters of Air Force generals who chose opposing sides during the military coup that toppled socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973. But what is at stake in this election wasn’t Chile’s past, but its future.
Let’s first recapitulate where Chile stands today: Thanks to the free market reforms implemented since 1975 by the military government of Augusto Pinochet – that...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 18, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Juan Carlos Hidalgo Source Type: blogs
Baxter completes patient enrollment in phase III trial of BAX 855, extended half-life rFVIII to treat haemophilia A
Baxter International Inc. has completed enrollment in its phase III clinical trial of BAX 855, an investigational extended half-life, recombinant factor VIII (rFVIII) treatment for haemophilia A. The ongoing trial is aimed at assessing the efficacy of the compound in reducing annualized bleed rates (ABR) in both prophylaxis and on-demand treatment schedules, and will also evaluate its safety and pharmacokinetic profile.BAX 855 was designed based on the full-length ADVATE [Antihemophilic Factor (Recombinant) Plasma/Albumin-Free Method] molecule, a product with 10 years of real-world experience. The BAX 855 molecule was modi...
Source: Medical Hemostat - November 15, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: hemostatguy at gmail.com (hemostat guy) Source Type: blogs
