Pharmaceuticals

In the largest survey to date on cannabidiol (CBD) usage, researchers found that nearly half of people using the products were able to quit using pharmaceutical drugs – something the pharmaceutical industry has long feared would happen.
The Brightfield Group and HelloMD – an online community that brings together doctors and cannabis patients – surveyed 2,400 people from HelloMD’s community of 150,000 members about their usage of CBD products and their effectiveness. [1]
Bethany Gomez, Director of Research for Brightfield Group, said:

The introduction of the Republican legislation to “repeal and replace” Obamacare is no more than latest scrimmage in the ongoing one-sided war against the poor and working class. The “Affordable Care Act” (ACA, better known as Obamacare) proved to be both unaffordable and unable to provide comprehensive care for millions.

The law applies to generic or off-patent drug makers that manufacture a medicine at least three other firms also make.
BALTIMORE — A trade group for generic drugmakers brought a federal complaint Thursday to block Maryland’s attempt of a crackdown on pharmaceutical price gouging.

2017 is the make or break year for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Seven years in, the flaws of the ACA are clear – tens of millions are still without health insurance, premiums and out-of-pocket costs are rising and causing people to either avoid and delay care or go into debt, and the US continues to rank poorly in health outcomes. There is one way to fix the ACA, and I call it the Private Extraction.
What are we to do?

image from ATTN.com.

The Amgen headquarters in Thousand Oaks, Calif. (AP/Mark J. Terrill)
The Supreme Court dealt a blow to big pharma on Monday, ruling that companies making generic “biosimilars” to brand-name drugs don’t have to wait an extra six months after gaining federal approval before selling their drugs.
The ruling, written by Justice Clarence Thomas for the unanimous court, is expected to speed up how quickly generic drugs become available to consumers.

Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.
— Henry A. Kissinger

It is time Americans rise up against the corruption, inefficiency, and cruelty of our healthcare system and tell its corporate captors and Congress – Enough Already!
For decades other countries have guaranteed universal health insurance for all their people, at lower costs and better outcomes (President Truman proposed it 72 years ago in the US). When are we going to break out of this taxpayer-subsidized prison built by the giant insurance companies, drug goliaths and monopolizing hospital chains?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is tasked with making sure that drugs and medical devices are safe and efficient for Americans to use. However, it appears that the agency doesn’t take its job seriously enough, because a new study shows that nearly 1/3 of medications approved from 2001 to 2010 had safety issues years after they were made widely available to patients, and some were quite serious. [1]