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Tag Archives: Healthcare

9/16-17 News Roundup & Open Thread at Benny’s Bar

The Progressive Wing Posted on September 16, 2021 by BennySeptember 17, 2021

Hello Birdies!

We’ll start with a Common Dreams piece about Sanders and others reaction to three center-right House Dems voting against Medicare having negotiating authority for prescription prices.

After three House Democrats voted against a key plank of their party’s plan to lower prescription drug prices, Sen. Bernie Sanders said Wednesday that Congress must ensure the provision is included in the final budget reconciliation package despite objections from conservative lawmakers.

“The good news is that the full Congress must and will do far better,” Sanders added. “At a time when the drug companies are charging us by far the highest prices in the world, Congress must demand that Medicare negotiate prices with this extremely greedy and powerful industry.”

The Vermont senator’s statement came after a popular proposal to let Medicare directly negotiate prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies failed to pass the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a 29-29 vote. Reps. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.), and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) joined their GOP colleagues in voting against the provision, which is backed by the White House and the Democratic leadership.

Medicare, the largest buyer of prescription medicines in the U.S., is currently barred by federal law from negotiating prices with drug manufacturers thanks to a “non-interference clause” that progressives have long sought to repeal. Democrats’ current proposal would amend the clause to allow the secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate drug prices on behalf of Medicare—a plan that could dramatically cut costs for patients and produce hundreds of billions of dollars in federal savings over the next decade.

A version of the plan was included in legislation (H.R. 3) that the House passed in late 2019 with the support of Peters, Rice, and Schrader. But the conservative Democrats are balking now that the proposal—once a mere messaging and campaign tool—actually has a chance of becoming law.

The pharmaceutical industry is fervently opposed to allowing the federal government to negotiate drug costs, which would threaten companies’ ability to set sky-high prices. The Government Accountability Office estimated earlier this year that in 2017, Medicare Part D paid twice as much for the same prescription medicines as the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is allowed to directly negotiate prices.

According to a study published last week by Gallup and West Health, more than 15 million U.S. adults under the age of 65 and 2.3 million seniors were unable to afford at least one doctor-prescribed medication this year.

“The pharmaceutical industry has spent over $4.5 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past 20 years and has hired some 1,200 lobbyists to get Congress to do its bidding. They are the most powerful industry on Capitol Hill,” Sanders said Wednesday. “Nonetheless, the American people are demanding that Congress stand up to them and finally lower the outrageous price of prescription drugs by requiring Medicare to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry.”

“Now is the time for Congress to show courage and stand up to the greed of the pharmaceutical industry,” the Vermont senator added. “The American people will not accept surrender.”

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the industry’s top lobbying organization, applauded Peters, Rice, and Schrader for stopping the Medicare negotiation plan from passing out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Peters and Schrader are both major recipients of pharma donations.

“This should be a strong signal to the House leadership that there is broad support for lowering costs for patients without sacrificing access to new cures and treatments,” the group said, deploying its favorite—and highly misleading—talking point against the proposal.

Aija Nemer-Aanerud, the Healthcare for All organizer at People’s Action, said Wednesday that the three Democrats’ votes were “a bald-faced display of corporate allegiance.”

“We’re living through a once-in-a-generation opportunity to win big for poor and working people,” said Nemer-Aanerud. “Today’s actions prove they want nothing to do with this vision.”

Despite the provision’s failure in the Energy and Commerce Committee, Sanders and other top lawmakers in the Democratic caucus voiced confidence that Medicare price negotiation will ultimately be included in the final reconciliation package. Nemer-Aanerud noted that the House Rules Committee has the ability to insert the Medicare negotiation language ahead of floor debate on the reconciliation bill.

Soon after the plan was rejected by Energy and Commerce, the House Ways and Means Committee—which also has jurisdiction over health policy—approved it, with Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) voting no. House Democrats can only afford three no votes on the final reconciliation package, which lawmakers hope to complete by the end of the month.

David Mitchell, a cancer patient and founder of Patients For Affordable Drugs Now, applauded the Ways and Means panel’s vote and said Democrats must “fulfill their promise to pass strong Medicare negotiation to lower drug prices on behalf of Americans.”

“The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee stood strong with patients today by voting to advance H.R. 3 in the reconciliation package,” said Mitchell. “The inclusion of this strong Medicare negotiation legislation fuels momentum towards comprehensive, meaningful reform to provide relief to millions of Americans facing high drug prices in this country.”

More news, tweets, and perspectives along with your comments below. This also serves an open thread. Benny’s Bar will be open for beverages and maybe a video jukebox!

West Lafayette Bar.jpg

West Lafayette Bar.jpg

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Bernie Sanders, ConservaDems, Healthcare, Medicare, Open Thread, Reconciliation Bill

7/29 News Roundup & OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on July 29, 2020 by BennyJuly 29, 2020

Will vaccine trials reflect America’s diversity?

In a summer dominated by COVID-19 and protests against racial injustice, there are growing demands that drugmakers and investigators ensure that vaccine trials reflect the entire community.

“If Black people have been the victims of COVID-19, we’re going to be the key to unlocking the mystery of COVID-19,” said the Rev. Anthony Evans, president of the National Black Church Initiative, a coalition of 150,000 African American churches.

Evans and his team met in mid-July with officials from Moderna, the Massachusetts biotech firm that launched the first COVID vaccine trial in the U.S., to discuss a collaboration in which NBCI would supply African American participants. But that was less than two weeks before the start of a phase 3 trial expected to enroll 30,000 people, and Evans said the meeting was his idea.

“It’s not that the industry came to me,” he said. “I went to the industry.”

Blacks make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but on average 5 percent of clinical trial participants, research shows. For Hispanics, trial participation is about 1 percent on average, though they account for about 18 percent of the population.

When it comes to trials for drug treatments and vaccines, diversity matters. For reasons not always fully understood, people of different races and ethnicities can respond differently to drugs or therapies, research shows. Immune response wanes with age, so there’s a high-dose flu shot for people 65 and older.

Still, the pressure to produce an effective vaccine quickly during a pandemic could sideline efforts to ensure diversity, said Dr. Kathryn Stephenson, director of the clinical trials unit in the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

“One of the questions that has come up is, What do you do if you’re a site investigator and you have 250 people banging on your door — and they’re all white?” she said.

Do you enroll those people, reasoning that the faster the trial progresses, the faster a vaccine will be available for everyone? Or do you turn away people and slow down the study?

“You’re accelerating development of a vaccine, and if you hit a milestone, what is the meaning of that milestone if you don’t know if it’s very safe or effective in [a given] population? Is that really hitting the milestone for everyone?” she said.

Including people who are elderly or have underlying medical conditions is vital to the science of vaccines and other treatments, even if it’s more difficult to recruit patients otherwise healthy enough to participate, advocates said.

“We have to admit that older adults are the ones who are likely to develop side effects” to treatments and vaccines, said Dr. Sharon Inouye, director of the Aging Brain Center and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “On the other hand, that is the population that will be using it.”

People with kidney disease, which affects 1 in 7 U.S. adults, have been left out of clinical research for decades, said Richard Knight, a transplant recipient and president of the American Association of Kidney Patients. Nearly 70 percent of more than 400 kidney disease patients the organization surveyed in July said they’d never been asked to join a clinical trial.

Excluding from the vaccine trial such a large population vulnerable to COVID doesn’t make sense, Knight contended. “If you’re trying to manage this from a public health standpoint, you want to make sure you’re inoculating your highest-risk populations,” he said.

New guidance from the federal Food and Drug Administration, which regulates vaccines, “strongly encourages” the inclusion of diverse populations in clinical vaccine development. That includes racial and ethnic minorities, elderly people and those with underlying medical problems, as well as pregnant women.

But the FDA does not require drugmakers and researchers to meet those goals, and will not refuse trial data that doesn’t comply. And while the federal government is rushing billions of dollars to fast-track more than a half-dozen leading candidates for COVID vaccines, the pharmaceutical firms producing them are not required to publicly disclose their demographic goals.

“This is business as usual,” said Marjorie Speers, executive director of Clinical Research Pathways, a nonprofit group in Atlanta that works to increase diversity in research. “It’s very likely these [COVID] trials will not include minorities because there’s not a strong statement to do that.”

The vaccine trials are being coordinated through the COVID-19 Prevention Network, or CoVPN, based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. It draws on four long-standing federally funded clinical trial networks, including three that target HIV and AIDS.

Those trial networks were chosen in large part because they have rich relationships in Black, Latino and other minority communities, said Stephaun Wallace, director of external relations for CoVPN. The hope is to leverage existing connections based on trust and collaboration.

“Our clinical trial sites are prepped and ready to engage diverse people,” Wallace said.

Wallace acknowledged, however, that attracting a diverse population requires investigators to be flexible and innovative. There can be practical problems. Clinic hours may be limited or transportation may be an issue. Older people may have problems with sight or hearing and require extra help to follow protocols.

Distrust of the medical establishment also can be a barrier. African Americans, for instance, have a well-founded wariness of medical experiments after the infamous Tuskegee Study and the exploitation of Henrietta Lacks. That extends to suspicion about recommended vaccines, said Wallace.

“Part of the consideration for many groups is not wanting to feel like a guinea pig or feel like they’re being experimented on,” he said.

Moderna, which launched its phase 3 trial Monday, said the company is working to ensure participants “are representative of the communities at highest risk for COVID-19 and of our diverse society.”

However, results of the company’s phase 1 trial, released in mid-July, showed that of 45 people included in that safety test, six were Hispanic, two were Black, one was Asian and one was Native American. Forty were white.

Phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials aim to test the best dose and safety of vaccines in small groups of people. Phase 3 trials assess the efficacy of the drug in tens of thousands of people.

Investigators at nearly 90 sites across the U.S. are preparing now to recruit participants for Moderna’s phase 3 trial. Dr. Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean at the Emory University School of Medicine, will seek 750 volunteers at three Atlanta-area sites. Half will receive the vaccine; half, placebo injections.

Del Rio has had marked success recruiting minorities for HIV trials and expects similar results with the vaccine trial. “We’re trying to do our best to get out to the communities that are most at risk,” he said.

Meanwhile, vaccine volunteers like Cisneros just want the advanced trials to start. He signed up for the CoVPN trials. But earlier, he also signed up for 1 Day Sooner, an effort to launch human challenge trials, which aim to speed up vaccine development by deliberately infecting participants with the virus. Such trials can be completed in weeks rather than months but risk exposing volunteers to severe illness or death, and federal officials remain leery.

Cisneros is willing to take that risk to help halt COVID-19, which has killed 143,000 Americans. He said it’s a way to take action at a time when the U.S. government has failed to protect minorities, the elderly and other vulnerable people.

“Government is supposed to help those who can’t protect themselves,” he said. “It appears to me the only thing they want to protect is people with money, people with guns — and not brown people like me.”

Indian Country Today notes that Moderna’s phase 1 vaccine trial, which started early this month, included only one Native American.

Join us for more news, tweets, videos in the comments section.

Posted in Activism, grassroots, Uncategorized | Tagged COVID19, Diversity, Healthcare, Native Americans, News Roundup, vaccines

4/3 TGIF: Bernie Appears on MSNBC, CNN, Maher; Evening OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on April 3, 2020 by BennyApril 3, 2020

Bernie had three appearances scheduled today to discuss his coronavirus plan.

"We have got to respond to this unprecedented crisis in an unprecedented way, and I think the European approach is exactly the right approach… even if they're not working, we will cover a full paycheck for the next 6 months."@BernieSanders on @AliVelshi pic.twitter.com/9vbHqJThKR

— Ben Hallman (@nowandben) April 3, 2020

When the interview with Anderson Cooper appears, that will be posted here.

For people who have HBO, this should be a good show. https://t.co/O1Yol2zb9Q

— Levi Sanders (@Celentra) April 4, 2020

Trump’s handling of #coronavirus worthy of impeachment. “I find one of the most galling parts of this is that the president is favoring certain states over the others.” @BillMaher: “To me this is an even more impeachable offense than what he did in Ukraine or Russia.” #RealTime pic.twitter.com/sYp5gwdKMi

— Brent Baker (@BrentHBaker) April 4, 2020

TGIF! Bar is open! Tweets, videos, and jibber-jabber in the comments to go with the beverages!

This is the official drink of Wisconsin. We’ll add some music from Clyde Stubblefield who was the drummer for James Brown. And he was a native of Wisconsin.

https://youtu.be/_55a_Sje0lY

Posted in 2020 Elections | Tagged Bernie Sanders, COVID-19, Healthcare, Income Inequality

1/31 TGIF “Berniestock”, Hot Toddies & Mocktail Hour/OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on January 31, 2020 by BennyJanuary 31, 2020

“If I had Medicare for All in 2012, I’d still be working. I wouldn’t be sitting here dying in my own home. And I don’t want that to happen to anybody else." –Jim Williams pic.twitter.com/FbvjpkMmle

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 31, 2020

Good news Jim! The Progressive Wing agrees with you that Bernie is willing to fight for healthcare as an American right, but that all countries should offer it if they can. We know our country can afford it.

Quite the turnout for Berniestock featuring Bon Iver, though it’s still TBD whether Sanders himself will make it tonight from the Senate trial. pic.twitter.com/5KB6y1s1Rw

— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) February 1, 2020

DNC Up to New Bullshite today…

DNC chair Tom Perez on his reasoning for not holding a climate debate because it violated agreed-to rules about the (left) vs. the DNC changing agreed-to debate rules to accommodate a billionaire (right) 🤔 pic.twitter.com/U4Xunxz9Zu

— Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) January 31, 2020

The whole idea behind the current formula was to winnow the number, not add.

So now that Bernie Sanders is the frontrunner, the DNC is changing its debate rules mid-primary, eliminating the small donor threshold to let Bloomberg buy his way onto the stage.

Bloomberg’s surrogates are openly admitting he’s running as a Sanders spoiler.

Here we go again. https://t.co/WqGTuQijKo

— Emma Vigeland (@EmmaVigeland) January 31, 2020

Meantime, some current and former Justice Dems are helping on the ground in Iowa for Bernie’s campaign:

On the trail for @BernieSanders. #3Days #IowaCaucus @Ilhan pic.twitter.com/QEKYU58IEd

— Brent Welder (@BrentWelder) January 31, 2020

Bar will be open soon. Stay tuned! Meantime, more tweets, videos, articles in the comments section. Come join us!

Posted in 2020 Elections, grassroots | Tagged Bernie Sanders, Brent Welder, DNC, Healthcare, Ilhan Omar, Justice Democrats, MFA

1/27 Bernie Releases New Iowa Ad: “Generations” & Afternoon OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on January 27, 2020 by BennyJanuary 27, 2020

I like the way this is parsed.

Speaking of generations.

BREAKING: 30 @CCIAction and @IAStudentAction members are refusing to leave @JoeBiden’s statewide headquarters in Des Moines over his lies about #MedicareForAll and his ties to the insurance company CEOs who are funding his campaign. pic.twitter.com/95qJWFv3x6

— Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement Action (@CCIAction) January 27, 2020

Meantime, Sanders is releasing some ads in NV, one of them brand new. Here’s “Nuestro Futuro”, en Espanol.

More tweets, videos, article summaries in the comments. Please join us!

Posted in 2020 Elections, grassroots | Tagged Bernie Sanders, Healthcare, MFA

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