Health news bits: Drug industry fights drug price negotiation; Drug industry fights low-cost drugs

A WaPo opinion discusses intense industry opposition to negotiating drug prices for Medicare:

In recent months, drug manufacturers and their allies have filed 10 lawsuits attacking one of the Inflation Reduction Act’s core health policy achievements: its plan for Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Applying to a select number of especially profitable drugs that have been on the market for at least nine or 13 years, negotiation is intended to arrive at a fair price — at least 25 percent less than the manufacturer’s price — based on the drug’s proven clinical benefits. Manufacturers set prices without meaningful constraint, and the Inflation Reduction Act’s negotiation, the first round of which will begin next year, is predicted to save Medicare $100 billion by 2031. Now, the pharmaceutical industry is attempting to achieve through the courts what it could not through the legislative process — maintaining unreasonably high brand-name drug prices at the expense of the American public.

At their core, the complaints argue that giving Medicare the power to negotiate infringes the rights of pharmaceutical manufacturers to sell prescription drugs at any price they set. Their arguments rely on the untenable premise that for-profit companies have a constitutionally protected right to receive taxpayer dollars. Even more alarmingly, they assert that the unmatched profitability of the pharmaceutical industry is itself a public good that should be judicially guarded at the expense of patients and taxpayers. Courts and the public must reject these claims.  

First, the manufacturers argue that the plan violates the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the government from taking private property without just compensation. Manufacturers may have a right to own and sell their drugs. However, they do not have a right to any particular level of Medicare reimbursement. Courts have agreed that private health-care entities can’t set their own payment rates, or expect to participate in voluntary programs such as Medicare without conditions.  

Second, manufacturers claim a violation of the Fifth Amendment due process clause, which prohibits the deprivation of liberty or property without due process of law. Courts have recognized due process rights in the context of certain public benefits, such as social security for those with disabilities. But Medicare is not a benefit program for drug manufacturers. Rather, Medicare’s intended beneficiaries are the American people, many of whom cannot afford the cost of drugs at the rates manufacturers have set.

Once again, the thinking and morals of American plutocrats is quite clear. They don't care about us or social well-being. They care about themselves and profit. The audacity of arguing that the unmatched profitability of the pharmaceutical industry is itself a public good is a lie on the scale of the authoritarian radical right's colossal stolen 2020 election lie. 

One can see the plutocratic, government-hating USSC siding with the drug industry on this one.

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Scimex, a science news source for Australia and New Zealand writes:

Why low-cost ketamine is still inaccessible to many with severe depression

Patients with treatment-resistant depression are missing out on potentially life-changing treatment with ketamine because systemic barriers in the public health system have made it unaffordable.

The researchers drew attention to the fact that it is now more than 20 years since the first indications that generic ketamine was effective, but public funding to support research and patient access has been slow, uncoordinated and underfunded. They also say there have been insufficient commercial incentives to conduct the research and development of generic ketamine, nor any schemes promoting public-private partnerships.

There is now a stark disparity in the accessibility and cost of ketamine-based depression treatments. The patented, intranasal s-enantiomeric ketamine formulation, Spravato, is priced at around $500 to $900 per dose, whereas generic ketamine stands at about $5 to 20 per dose. This high cost has led to Spravato being rejected for public reimbursement three times and thus it remains largely inaccessible for Australian patients.

This narrative is not unique to ketamine, as the article foresees a similar fate for upcoming psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy treatments, which are on the verge of entering the mental health treatment arena. The article suggests that without systemic interventions, the cycle of underutilizing low-cost effective solutions is set to continue, leaving patients unable to access treatments while threatening to blow out health care costs.

US prices for ketamine range from ~$200 to ~$12,000 depending on what the drug is being used for, e.g., pain, depression, anesthesia, etc. 

In the UK, where there are drug price controls based on cost-benefit analysis, England's influential cost watchdogs rejected J&J's ketamine depression drug Spravato (nasal ketamine spray). The US does not rely on cost-benefit analyses like the European Union and the UK do for drug pricing. The reason for that is obvious - the drug industry has corrupted the US government.

Once again, the thinking and morals of plutocrats is clear. They care only about themselves and profit.

In a world filled with angst, is there really any hope for mankind?

 I just want to leave this thought out there:

I am not referencing any source or news outlet, I am only referencing my own internal thoughts.

Even up here in Canada, we are feeling the tension, but nothing like the tension that is exploding south of the border. When talking politics with friends and family back in the US, it seems to be ALL gloom and doom.

AND many believe we are at a inflection point. WWIII could erupt over the Israeli conflict. It could erupt over the Ukraine conflict. It could erupt if China invades Taiwan. 

There is also a growing trend towards Nationalism. We all know about it in the US. There is a rising tide of that in Germany while Italy elected a far-right government. Ditto with places like Finland and Greece.

Then there is the growing and very real climate crisis. Almost forgotten in the political upheaval. Global emissions actually rose in 2022. I doubt they will have shrunk by the end of this  year. 

So, despair and angst now rule our collective psyche. Well, to be honest, not MY psyche, but we can't all be Snowflakes. But yes, it is happening. Around the dinner table, online discussions, everyday gatherings. Even here in Canada. 

AND TO ME, THERE IS THE RUB! People, as they become more anxious, tend to want to protect their own. And become MORE bitter about who is responsible for our pending doom. It's all the Israeli's fault - or all Hama's fault, or all Iran's fault, or all Trump's fault, or all Russia's fault, or all the fault of those damn Christian extremists or damn Muslim extremists, or ............. it's ALL the fault of the media, particularly social media.

It is NEVER our own fault. 

So, back to the original question: Is there ANY hope for mankind? I am asking not only in context of what is actually happening in the political arena, BUT in context of how we are responding to what is happening out there. Have we (not each one of us individually, but the universal "we") given up on mankind?

Israel war update

This is taken from comments PD made here yesterday:

Reporting from today indicates that the changes described in my last comment are only picking up momentum and getting more extreme. Authors and journalists in Israel are describing Israel now as a country that is becoming fascist, and the war as a genocide. Below are 2 stories from the Middle East Eye. Israelis with guns (some supplied by members of the National Religious Party) are injuring and sometimes shooting Arabs. Palestinian citizens of Israel are lying low and avoiding use of their language in public using Hebrew or English. 

Some disturbing video footage, and apparently many of those behaving and talking like bigots are former liberals who have now freaked out after the Hamas attack on 10/7. Even some liberal academics have caught the bug. I already saw this beginning to happen days ago. A newspaper editor in an interview with Ian Bremmer couldn't stop repeating the need to get rid of Hamas "once and for all" even if innocents are killed in the process. Asked by Ian Bremmer, "But what then? What's the end? What would you do with Gaza? Who would administer the territory? Are you prepared to deal with insurgents that may be more radical than even Hamas?" etc. etc. He just kept repeating, "These are not important questions right now. The thing is to destroy Hamas NOW! Everything else must wait until later." That's a prevalent frame of mind now. The distinction between Hamas and Palestinian has become blurrier by the day. In the act of killing, the perpetrator fast becomes desensitized. Humanity is lost.

The US isn't quite as bad, but the trends after this attack are here as well. Arabs and Palestinians here are also beginning to live in fear, and ethnic racism appears to be gaining ground. People here mostly support what is clearly a genocide. Israelis and Biden announced some deal with "humanitarian assistance" that was supposed to arrive today. It's not clear it will. 

But unreported here is the fact that the deal conspicuously leaves out fuel/energy. Without that, all hospitals will run out of juice killing many more than that bomb that got so much attention. At least 1200 of the 4000 killed in Gaza now were children. Without fuel, the drinking water (which relies heavily on desalination equipment) will dry up.

Some Palestinians in Gaza are already drinking saltwater and/or dirty water in desperation. Middle East eye and 972 are both good online magazines to keep up with events most media outlets don't report . A common (probably accurate) perception of those writing there is that they are facing a second Nakba, which is their traumatic "catastrophe" in the 40s, something that shapes collective memory and world view for most Palestinians.

Two articles are relevant. One is about America's unwavering support of this ethnic destruction and the other on what appears to be an emergent fascism or something close taking shape in Israel since 10/7. I don't use the word fascism lightly, but now we ARE seeing eliminationism in rhetoric and policy. The rate of ethnic elimination or genocide, in my view, is already much more rapid than anything Nazis did in the early and mid 30s. They have trapped 2.3 million people into a ghetto concentration camp setting of their devising (with no escape open, all gates closed). They subject them to slow death by starvation and cut the energy needed for everything including functional hospitals. They tell them to move south, then they bomb them in transit and in the places they told them to evacuate to, such as Khan Younis and other places in the south. 

PBS comments: 

In the nearly two weeks since a devastating Hamas rampage in southern Israel, the Israeli military has relentlessly attacked Gaza in response. Even after Israel told Palestinians to evacuate the north and head to what it called “safe zones” in the south, strikes continued across the territory overnight and Palestinian militants continued firing rockets into Israel.

A residential building in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had sought shelter, was among the places hit. Medical personnel at Nasser Hospital said they received at least 12 dead and 40 wounded.

The bombardments came after Israel agreed Wednesday to allow Egypt to deliver limited humanitarian aid to Gaza, the first crack in a punishing 11-day siege. Many of Gaza’s residents were down to one meal a day and drinking dirty water.

Another article focuses on Israel's urge for revenge being aimed at all Palestinians:

When you walk the streets of Jerusalem, you don’t see people anymore. You see police and private security forces.

Increasing numbers of civilians have been carrying guns in the streets, and even in shopping malls, where some Israelis were armed with M16s. This comes after National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir decided to hand out thousands of guns and to ease the conditions for purchasing weapons.

In one case, a group of armed Israelis stopped a Palestinian man, ripped a baby seat from his car and dropped it in the street, and then searched his vehicle. The Israeli state has given them implicit permission for this type of harassment.

The Moral Rot Files: On the perversion of philanthropy

Axios comments on how some modern billionaires see philanthropy -- it's not pretty:

1 big thing: Silicon Valley's perversion of philanthropy

Under the new conception of philanthropy, the act of making the fortune itself is the philanthropic act. There's no need to give any money away — feel free to go ahead and drop more than $220 million on Malibu property if you're so inclined. Just by dint of getting rich, your philanthropic work is largely done.

This vein of thinking is now solidly in the Silicon Valley mainstream.

Google founder Larry Page said in a 2014 interview that the most philanthropic thing he could do with his fortune would be to give it to Elon Musk. As New York magazine's Kevin Roose explained, Page was "saying that companies like SpaceX and Tesla are themselves philanthropic organizations, and that supporting those companies financially is preferable to supporting charitable causes in the traditional way."

PayPal and Palantir founder Peter Thiel said in 2016 that seeking revenge on Gawker by bankrolling legal cases against the company was "one of my greater philanthropic things that I've done."

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was asked in 2018 how he could "do good with" his fortune. His answer was that "the only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel" — something he described as his "most important work."

OpenAI founder Sam Altman decided this year that his organization's philanthropic mission would be best served by converting it from a nonprofit to a for-profit. 

Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen's techno-optimist manifesto, published this week, generalizes such thinking. "Technological innovation in a market system is inherently philanthropic, by a 50:1 ratio," he writes. In other words: Every dollar an innovator like Andreessen makes for himself equates to a $50 philanthropic donation to society at large. Why even bother giving away the dollar, if that's the case.

Well, there we have it. Delusional (or mendacious) billionaires drink their own Kool-Aid. That's how they get delusional. And jaw-droppingly arrogant. Every dollar a billionaire makes gives $50 to charity. I can feel the love now!

News bits: Lawsuit against church school; Disinformation war update; CN moral rot update

The AP reports about a critically important lawsuit the state of Oklahoma has filed against a Catholic Christian nationalist group that intends to use taxpayer money to fund a religious school. This case will wind up in the USSC in the next year or two. If the USSC says it is OK to force taxpayers to pay for religious education, it will open the way for diversion of tens of billions of tax dollars to prop up religion. 

That would be a serious, maybe lethal, blow to American secular democracy. Civil liberties that God hates will also be severely weakened as church schools will be free to discriminate against anyone for any reason that God finds objectionable, e.g., children in pro-abortion families, women generally, racial minorities, Muslims, and same-sex couples and their children. The AP writes:

Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond on Friday sued to stop a state board from establishing and funding what would be the nation’s first religious public charter school after the board ignored Drummond’s warning that it would violate both the state and U.S. constitutions.

Drummond filed the lawsuit with the Oklahoma Supreme Court against the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board after three of the board’s members this week signed a contract for the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.

“Make no mistake, if the Catholic Church were permitted to have a public virtual charter school, a reckoning will follow in which this state will be faced with the unprecedented quandary of processing requests to directly fund all petitioning sectarian groups,” the lawsuit states.

The approval of a publicly funded religious school is the latest in a series of actions taken by conservative-led states that include efforts to teach the Bible in public schools, and to ban books and lessons about race, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Oklahoma’s Constitution specifically prohibits the use of public money or property from being used, directly or indirectly, for the use or benefit of any church or system of religion. Nearly 60% of Oklahoma voters rejected a proposal in 2016 to remove that language from the Constitution.

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A key tool in America's authoritarian radical right (ARR) war to kill democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties is to foster as much divisive disinformation, lies, slanders and crackpot reasoning as possible. In my opinion, disinformation constitutes one of the top two weapons that the American ARR movement has in its democracy kill agenda. The other main weapon is lots of money to corrupt society and government. 

The key deceit that maintains the power of disinformation is the ARR's constant cynical and flawed implicit argument that disinformation is harmless "conservative" free speech. ARR radicals have to ignore and even deny the harm in ARR disinformation because without it the ARR cause would be lost. The anti-democracy radicals know they cannot win on the merits, so they have no choice but to rely heavily on disinformation just like tyrants such as Stalin, Hitler, Trump, Mao, Xi Jinping and nearly all other tyrants. 

In a surprise decision, three of the six ARR judges on the USSC sided with the three non-ARR judges (Democrats), holding that the US government can interact with social media outlets to try to coax them to tone down the tsunami of anti-democracy disinformation that has poisoned all major social media platforms. Scripps News writes:

Justices said the Biden Administration could continue to pressure social media firms over misleading content while a lawsuit progresses

The Supreme Court on Friday said it would indefinitely block a lower court order curbing Biden administration efforts to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security.

The justices said they would hear arguments in a lawsuit filed by Louisiana, Missouri and other parties accusing administration officials of unconstitutionally squelching conservative points of view. The new case adds to a term already heavy with social media issues.

Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas would have rejected the emergency appeal from the Biden administration.

“At this time in the history of our country, what the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news. That is most unfortunate,” Alito wrote in dissent.

Alito's dissent is a clear example of cynical, lying ARR elites ignoring the vast damage that anti-democracy disinformation has inflicted on American democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. They always couch attempts to tamp down anti-democracy, pro-tyranny disinformation as implicitly harmless speech, news and information.

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American Christian nationalism (CN) is an ARR anti-democracy, pro-theocracy religious and social movement. In the modern GOP, CN fundamentalist dogma and brass knuckles capitalist dogma dominate the beliefs and propaganda coming from ARR elites and their propagandists and major donors. 

The CN movement relies heavily on disinformation to impose its theocratic agenda on America, prominently Christian Sharia law and wealthy White male Christian Taliban enforcement of it. With the CN movement, lies of omission (hiding inconvenient truth) are about as common as affirmative lies and falsehoods. In my opinion, heavy reliance on disinformation is a hallmark of cynicism and moral rot. An opinion piece in the NYT touches on one aspect of CN moral rot:

In fact I’d argue that the moral collapse at Liberty University in Virginia may well be the most consequential education scandal in the United States, not simply because the details themselves are shocking and appalling, but because Liberty’s misconduct both symbolizes and contributes to the crisis engulfing Christian America. It embodies a cultural and political approach that turns Christian theology on its head.

Last week, Fox News reported that Liberty is facing the possibility of an “unprecedented” $37.5 million fine from the U.S. Department of Education. The education department has been investigating violations of the Clery Act, a federal statute that requires federally funded colleges and universities to publicly report data about campus crime. To put that number into perspective, consider that Michigan State University paid $4.5 million for its own “systemic failure” to respond to the infamous Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal, in which Nassar was convicted of sexually abusing dozens of women in his care. While Liberty’s fine is not yet set, the contents of a leaked education department report — first reported by Susan Svrluga in The Washington Post — leave little doubt as to why it may be this large.

The report, as Svrluga writes, “paints a picture of a university that discouraged people from reporting crimes, underreported the claims it received and, meanwhile, marketed its Virginia campus as one of the safest in the country.” The details are grim. According to the report, “Liberty failed to warn the campus community about gas leaks, bomb threats and people credibly accused of repeated acts of sexual violence — including a senior administrator and an athlete.”

A campus safety consultant told Svrluga, “This is the single most blistering Clery report I have ever read. Ever.”

If this was the only scandal at Liberty, it would and should be a national story. But it’s not the only scandal. Far from it. I’ve been following (and covering) Liberty’s moral collapse for years, and the list of scandals and lawsuits plaguing the school is extraordinarily long. The best known of these is the saga of Jerry Falwell Jr. Falwell, the former president and son of the school’s founder, resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct involving himself, his wife and a pool boy turned business associate named Giancarlo Granda.  

In 2021, ProPublica published a comprehensive, gut-wrenching report describing how Liberty mishandled claims of sex abuse and sex harassment on campus and used its strict code of conduct, the Liberty Way, against victims of sex abuse. If, for example, a victim had been drinking or engaged in any other conduct prohibited by Liberty policies, those details in their sex abuse complaint could be used against them in school disciplinary proceedings.

Liberty has faced a series of lawsuits related to those claims, and last year it settled one of those cases. Throughout these controversies, Liberty has responded by denying many of the worst allegations against it.  

But there’s another group that will be angry as well — at yet another attack on an evangelical institution in a powerful secular newspaper. That anger, though, is a key part of the problem with the American church, and it’s a problem that no less a Christian figure than the apostle Paul identified almost 2,000 years ago.

In his first letter to the Corinthian church (or, as Trump might say, One Corinthians), he issued a ferocious denunciation of sexual immorality inside the church. In chapter five, he says that he’s heard of misconduct “of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate.” He’s condemning an act of incest within the church, but if you read the accounts of incidents at Liberty, you’ll read stories of gross misconduct that Christians and non-Christians alike should and do find utterly abhorrent.

No wonder that many people have lost faith in government. It doesn't work mostly for the public interest any more, assuming it ever did. It works for powerful special interests, the morally rotted CN movement in this case.

Q: Why are US taxpayers funding a morally rotted, ARR anti-democracy CN university that breaks laws by hiding inconvenient truth, i.e., are we disinformed via lies of omission, is government corrupt, is the MSM incompetent or quietly complicit, is the ARR CN movement powerful, or some of all of that?

(A: probably some of all of that)

News bits: Americans oppose Israel war; What open-minded Trump supporters think; Etc.

Data in poll released by Data for Progress, a liberal think tank, indicates that about 66% of likely voters think the US should call for a ceasefire and violence de-escalation in Gaza. This indicates that although the US government is arguably at least implicitly escalating the war and violence, the voting public disagrees. As usual, the government will likely do what it wants, not what most voters want.  

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What America's political right is seeing, thinking and believing is a personal interest. It gets at why politics is the way it is. A NYT focus groups asked questions of 11 Trump supporters who are open to voting for a different Republican (the full article - not behind a paywall). The bottom line is that as a whole, the group is significantly incoherent and not particularly self-aware. Themes that are somewhat common are unease over political uncertainty, fear of crime and immigration. Reasons to support Trump are largely incoherent. Other candidates that had some appeal were Haley, DeSantis and Kennedy. Some of the Q&A:

Why support Trump?:

1. Makes me feel safe.

2. He unbalanced a corrupt system.

3. Business background.

To me, 1 makes some sense, but 2 and 3 are incoherent. 2 does not see the blatant corruption inherent in Trump. 3 appears to be oblivious to the fact, or doesn't much care, that Trump is a serial business failure and a chronic fraud and liar.

A NYT comment on the group indicates to me that there is a significant streak of authoritarianism in some of these open-minded supporters, and I suspect that trait is more prominent among Trump's closed-minded supporters:

But the group was most revealing about how, even as they were somewhat ambivalent about aspects of Mr. Trump’s conduct and record, there was a deep bond with him and with his style of leadership. These Republicans are drawn to the idea of disruptive leaders who shake up the system (a couple of them quite liked Robert F. Kennedy Jr.), and several of them favored following gut instinct and upsetting people from time to time as leadership traits. .... The group made some suggestions for how to appeal to them and called out dimensions of Mr. Trump that they don’t like. Most of all, it came down to appealing to voters’ heads over their hearts: making a powerful, memorable, sustained case for why it was time to move on from Mr. Trump, a man they still have great affection for.

The observation that this group claims to be responsive to appeals to their heads over their hearts is completely incoherent to me. Those people sincerely believe that they are being realistic and rational about a person who is nothing at all like what they think he is. To me, this is more evidence of how terribly deceived, manipulated and betrayed most rank and file Trump supporters are. With irrational beliefs like those, there is no apparent way to speak rationally to them. Changing their minds is essentially impossible.

I don't know if the NYT asked about concerns for attacks on democracy or the dominance of radical right authoritarianism in the GOP. The article was silent about that. Given how little the MSM reports on it, the issue does not seem to be important to most people.

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A WaPo opinion discusses that some (most?) Palestinians view Hamas negatively:

If you doubt there are Palestinians who oppose the terrorist regime that Hamas has created, visit a project called “Whispered in Gaza” online. You’ll hear 25 powerful narratives that were recorded over the past 18 months. The Gazans’ names are changed and their faces drawn by animators, but their message has the unmistakable power of truth.

Here are some of those Gaza whispers: A pharmacist called “Basma” explains how she had to close her shop because of harassment by Hamas officials. A journalist called “Maha” says she was “muzzled” and threatened by Hamas and gave up her work. “Layla” describes how Hamas operatives forced her to close a counseling center because they were afraid it might encourage unhappy Gazans to protest the regime. “Othman” says bluntly: “The so-called ‘resistance’ has become a business.”  

Listen to “Zainab,” her voice barely audible, expressing what sounds like a plea to the world: “There is a false stereotype that Palestinians in Gaza love rockets and wars. Gazans don’t love wars. The wars that happen are waged by the Hamas government for political aims that serve them alone. … We don’t want war. We want a decent life.”

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The NYT comments about a possible impact of Kenneth Chesebro pleading guilty on two of DJT's lawsuits:

Having already put in writing that some of Mr. Trump’s postelection legal maneuvers were feints of a sort undertaken for political ends, Mr. Chesebro might also be able to undermine one of the defenses that the former president could use in both of the election prosecutions.

If Mr. Chesebro were to testify that Mr. Trump’s lawsuits challenging his loss were not designed to win, but merely as ploys to sow doubt about the election, it could cut against Mr. Trump’s possible plan to use a so-called advice of counsel defense. That strategy involves blaming one’s lawyers for giving bad advice. 

Time will tell if this makes any difference when it comes to prosecuting and punishing DJT. I remain pessimistic until the last appeal has been heard and DJT is forced to go to jail. Anything short of that is a major loss. The road ahead is still very long and the final outcome completely uncertain.