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I am on a very expensive medication for my mast cell disorder. It was paid for almost fully by our health insurance. I just had a small co-pay for every order. Well, I was forced onto Medicare when I turned 65 and the prescription plan is killing us. The medication is almost full cost, but, I am assured, the bright side is that once I have spent $5,000 in prescription costs, everything is then *free*. The doctors have told me that like I'm supposed to be excited about spending 5K on drugs per year just to supposedly get free stuff...

Miami (AFP) - US President Barack Obama warned Thursday that climate change was making natural disasters worse, as he toured the National Hurricane Center ahead of the annual storm season. "The best climate scientists in the world are telling us that extreme weather events like hurricanes are likely to become more powerful," Obama said on a visit to the facility in Florida, restating his case for action to tackle manmade changes to the environment. "When you combine stronger storms with rising seas, that's a recipe for more devastating floods." "Climate change didn’t cause Hurricane Sandy, but it might have made...

The Food and Drug Administration would have greater oversight over large volume compounding pharmacies like the Massachusetts company that triggered a deadly meningitis outbreak, under federal legislation winning bipartisan support. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, the Democratic chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, said Wednesday that the bill calls for an “unprecedented tracing system that will track prescription drugs from manufacturing to distribution.” The FDA would be able to monitor the pharmacies much the way they regulate drug-makers, including through inspections. The system would replace what critics say is the existing patchwork of federal regulations over the...

Pharmacy Profession Gravely Concerned by Anti-Patient Compounding Bill WASHINGTON A coalition of nine pharmacy organizations representing more than 60,000 pharmacists today expressed grave concerns over proposed legislation that would restrict patients’ access to vital compounded prescription medications and create onerous, new requirements for both prescribers and pharmacists. The American Pharmacists Association, the National Community Pharmacists Association, the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists, the American College of Apothecaries, the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, the National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations, the Massachusetts Pharmacists Association, the North Carolina Association of Pharmacists, and the Kansas Pharmacists Association expressed their concerns in a...

PROTECT YOUR RIGHT TO CHOOSE COMPOUNDED BIO-IDENTICAL HORMONE MEDICATIONS THE FACTS: Recently, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, maker of Premarin & Prempro, (drugs derived from Pregnant Mares Urine – yes, horses pee) filed a Citizen’s Petition with the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) asking the FDA to impose harmful restrictions on the compounding and dispensing of Bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT). (Bio-identical hormones are manufactured to have the same molecular structure as the hormones made by your own body.) This petition would eliminate the availability of compounded bio-identical hormones, which are prescribed by healthcare providers and prepared by pharmacists, to meet the unique...

The 20th Century’s energizing dynamic was totalitarian socialism. Leading that parade were proponents like Stalin and Communist Russia, Hitler and his National Socialist Party, China’s Chairman Mao and a host of lesser lights like Saddam Hussein in Iraq. All preached the equality of outcomes for their people despite their own personal power-hungry obsessions. All seduced the world with their “humanity” that no one should paid more for their work than any other. They all preached a socialism that elevated the group at the expense of the individual. Fortunately for America, their citizens continued their abiding devotion to individualism during the...