tagged w/ Fleecing
-
"This Supreme Court case is the Waterloo for political polarization, because it underscores something we should have known all along: Great changes in national public policy should never be erected on slender partisan majorities.
If they are, they will always be suspect.
It's a proposition advanced by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who understood there's little upside to partisan policymaking. After all, he was a member of the 1983 commission that reformed -- and saved -- Social Security for a generation. The program faced collapse; a bipartisan group of heavy-hitters fixed it, together.
No one liked all that the rescue plan contained. But the work had to be done and they did it.
That kind of work is not something we see a lot of these days: health care reform, arguably the most far-reaching social legislation since Medicare, was passed strictly along party lines. Sure, the White House says -- with some justification -- that Republicans weren't interested in their plan. But would the GOP have bitten on a more scaled-back version? Would some in the GOP have broken ranks over, say, requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions so long as it wouldn't bankrupt them? Sure.
But that wasn't to be. The Democrats had a two-house majority, so the stars were aligned. And with recalcitrant Republicans vocal in their opposition, the Democrats, too, became more strident.
So reform was an all-Democratic bill, a sure way to be challenged before the high court. And no one looks good: the president, who Monday seemed to be warning the court about "judicial activism" in advance of any decision; the court, which about half of the public now believes is political anyway; and Congress, which has an approval rating so low it's hard to even find.
That's what happens when Washington's default setting is always along party lines.""This Supreme Court case is the Waterloo for political polarization, because it... more
-
-
"A $125 million settlement has been announced in a major class action lawsuit involving members of the Prescription Access Litigation (PAL) coalition. The case, In re Pharmaceutical Industry Average Wholesale Price Litigation, was originally filed in 2002, and claimed that the defendant drug companies intentionally inflated reports of the Average Wholesale Prices (AWPs) on certain prescription drugs administered in doctors’ offices and paid for by Medicare Part B."
"The settlement includes branded and generic drugs used primarily in the treatment of cancer, HIV and other serious illnesses. Under the terms of the settlement 82.5 percent of the settlement fund is designated for third-party payors’ claims and the remaining 17.5 percent is designated for consumer claims."
So Big Pharma apparently thinks that cancer and HIV treatments aren't profitable enough. I thought that tricking people into thinking that they had imaginary illnesses by showing deceptive advertisements had put enough extra notches in their belt. I guess I was wrong."A $125 million settlement has been announced in a major class action lawsuit... more
-
