Politicians - Profiteers - Public health

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

Naloxone isn't magic, but its power to rescue a heroin user from the brink of death can certainly seem miraculous. The anti-overdose drug, also known by the brand name Narcan, is easy to administer and has saved thousands of lives. First responders are often awestruck at how swiftly it can revive a dying addict.

"It's just incredible," the deputy fire chief of Revere, Mass., marveled in a public-radio interview last year. "There's somebody who's on the ground who's literally dead. They have no pulse. Sometimes they're blue, sometimes they're black. And you administer this stuff and sometimes in a minute or two or three, they're actually up and talking to you."

Free markets aren't magic either. Yet their ability to generate a life-saving drug like Naloxone, supplying quantities sufficient to make it widely available even when the need is great, can seem even more miraculous. That miracle is not enhanced when politicians rebuke the entrepreneurs who manufacture or distribute such wonder drugs for charging a price that the market will bear.

Politicians, for instance, like Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. She lists opiate abuse among her most urgent public concerns, yet is going out of her way to pick a fight with vendors who actually help make things better.

In recent years, drug overdoses have surpassed automobile accidents as the leading cause of death from injury in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control, opiate painkillers alone account for 16,000 fatalities annually; deaths involving heroin have increased fivefold since 2001.

Amid this grim crisis of opioid overdoses, Naloxone has been a godsend. While public-health experts debate the causes of the epidemic, officials nationwide have been moving rapidly to expand access to the drug. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that 30 states and the District of Columbia have adopted a variety of measures to facilitate the use of Naloxone.

Among those measures: allowing it to be administered by non-medical personnel, paying for police and firefighters to carry supplies of the drug, and permitting pharmacies to dispense Naloxone without a prescription.

Of course, with demand for the medication skyrocketing, the price has climbed as well. The workings of economics apply to pharmaceuticals just as they apply to housing, bourbon, iPhones, or tickets to NFL playoff games. When demand for a product or service rises, the price of that product or service can't help but rise in response. That is especially true when the growth in demand has come about quickly or in unexpectedly short order.

Heroin overdose rates have increased markedly since 2010, and only in the last year or two has there has been such a strong push by state and local authorities to equip first responders — police officers, sheriffs, firefighters, and even civilian bystanders — with Naloxone kits.

So it stands to reason that in Massachusetts, as in most other states, the price of Naloxone is up sharply. A 2-milliliter dose that used to cost the state $19.56 has more than doubled to $41.43. That's a sizeable increase, and it is putting a strain on public-safety and drug-treatment budgets.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey

The price spike may be unwelcome — no one likes to pay more for vital supplies — but it is hard to see anything unfair or unethical, let alone unlawful, about it.

That hasn't stopped Healey from demanding that companies selling Naloxone in Massachusetts provide detailed explanations for the higher costs of the drug, and account for "any changes in prices over time" since the opioid crisis was declared a public emergency. Healey's spokesman insists the attorney general "isn't suggesting anything nefarious," and is simply conducting "a fact-finding mission." But the innuendo is all too obvious.

Healey has said she is just being "aggressive" and wants to be sure "that nobody is out there unnecessarily profiteering from a public health crisis." Yet who is the real "profiteer" here? The drug maker who responds to an unprecedented surge in demand for a critical medication by raising prices to ensure that inventories of the drugs aren't immediately depleted?

Or the ambitious politician, who sees a chance to score political points by posing as a defender of the public against the very suppliers who are making available what the public needs?

Demand for Naloxone is way up; consequently the price of Naloxone is up. Eventually the price will fall, as new supplies come on line. In the meantime, thanks to the workings of the market, more lives are being saved.

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From Bill to Bill - Clinton to Cosby

From One Bill to Another - A.F. (Tony) Branco from his political art studios featured at Comically Incorrect.com

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New Presidential lie: Illegals were not criminals

New lie from Obama administration: Released illegals weren’t criminals from the files of Colonel Allen B. West

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Last year President Barack Hussein Obama was awarded the “Lie of the Year” from the Washington Post over his “you can keep your doctor line.” Didn’t think he could top that whopper? Ha. Here comes another one with potentially dangerous consequences for Americans.

As reported by Breitbart, “The Obama Administration lied last year when they informed Congress and the public that the 2,200 people that the Administration released from incarceration to save money had only minor criminal records.

USA TODAY, gaining the data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the Freedom of information Act, reports that some of the illegal immigrants had been charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking, and homicide. After the new information was released, ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen protested, “Discretionary releases made by ICE were of low-level offenders.

However, the releases involving individuals with more significant criminal histories were, by and large, dictated by special circumstances outside of the agency’s control.”

I wonder what defines “special circumstances outside of the agency’s control?” Would that happen to be “politics?” I wouldn’t put it past the vindictive nature of Valerie Jarrett and Barack Obama – after all, they closed veterans’ memorials – to do such a thing. Was it the intent of the Obama administration to use “sequestration” as a punishment upon the American people by placing fiscal restraints on agencies such as ICE, forcing them to release hardened illegal immigrant criminals?

Here is the background to the situation. As Breitbart reports, “ICE releases immigrants with serious criminal records only if their legal status has changed or if they cannot be deported. Every illegal immigrant held in jail costs ICE an average of $122 a day.

Last year, GOP members asked ICE Director John Morton for specifics about the immigrants the agency had released. Rep. J. Randy Forbes, R-VA, asked Morton, “No one on that list has been charged or convicted with murder, rape or sexual abuse of a minor, were they?” Morton responded, “They were not.”

He added that none of the released immigrants had been charged with child pornography charges. White House spokesman Jay Carney echoed that the prisoners who were released were “low-risk, non-criminal detainees.”

“However, an ICE spreadsheet reveals one immigrant from Texas had been charged with aggravated kidnapping and sexually assaulting a child, and others had charges including armed assaults or assaulting police officers. One immigrant had been charged with conspiracy to commit homicide. Two more had charges of aggravated assault using a weapon, and another had been charged with sexual assault.”

I know what you’re thinking — what can be done about the corruption, lies, and deceit of the Obama administration? Well the immediate remedy is to remove Harry Reid from the post of Senate Majority Leader. After all, Obama stated his policies were on the ballot this midterm election cycle — including lies like this one about illegals. This lie puts American citizens at risk, and that is unconscionable.

Breitbart says, “Morton had informed Congress that of the over 2,200 immigrants ICE released, 629 had criminal records, all of them misdemeanors “or other criminals whose prior conviction did not pose a violent threat to public safety.”

Of course, Morton did not mention the 144 other released immigrants who were filed under “special issues.” They were largely released because ICE had six months to jail them legally if the agency could not deport them.”

Of course, all of this comes to light at the time when there is NO ONE in Washington D.C. until a week after the midterm election, and you can bet that in a lame duck session, this won’t be considered — especially not in a Harry Reid-controlled Senate.

I hope you’ll keep this in mind as you head to the polling booth — hopefully those with accurate voting processes and machines — and recall that Obama promised the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Foundation he would find a way to implement an executive order amnesty — another of Obama’s policies which are on the ballot.

The fundamental transformation of America includes the demographic transformation of our Republic — by any means necessary — which apparently includes placing your public safety in danger.

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Drink to your health

Drink to your health from the files of Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe

Read the Jacoby Files at the Boston Globe

IF YOUR drinking companions are French, you toast each other with "À votre santé !" With Russians, it's "Za zdorovje!" For Spanish-speakers, "Salud!" In Hebrew, "L'chaim!"

Perhaps it's just a coincidence that when drinkers almost anywhere clink glasses, they are apt to invoke good health or long life. More likely, it reflects a truth humankind discovered long ago: Drinking alcohol can be a source of not only short-term enjoyment, but of long-term health benefits too.

That may ring heretical at a time when headlines routinely sound alarms about the dangers of alcohol abuse. A search of the phrase "binge drinking" in Google News turns up nearly 7,000 recent articles. Many focus on the connection between drunkenness and campus sexual assault; others dwell on the serious consequences of drinking to excess, from alcohol poisoning to liver disease.

No question about it: Binge drinking is unsafe and unhealthy. But moderate drinking can be just what the doctor ordered.

A remarkable amount of research suggests that having one or two alcoholic drinks a day lowers most people's risk of being stricken with heart disease, ischemic stroke, and even dementia. One major study published in 2010 by the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, for example, concluded that "in nine nationally representative samples of US adults, light and moderate alcohol consumption were inversely associated with CVD [cardiovascular disease] mortality, even when compared with lifetime abstainers."

Harvard's School of Public Health notes on its nutrition website: "For most moderate drinkers, alcohol has overall health benefits." In more than 100 long-term studies, many of which monitored their subjects' health for 10 years or longer, researchers consistently documented a significant inverse association between moderate drinking and death from many forms of heart disease.

And not just heart disease. Numerous studies bear out the finding that moderate drinkers tend to live longer than both teetotalers and heavy drinkers. According to sociologist David Hanson of the State University of New York at Potsdam, even the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism — an organization plainly not inclined to downplay the potential dangers of liquor — has found that "the lowest death rate from all causes occurs at the level of one to two drinks each day."

Federal law has required a health-warning label on alcoholic beverages since 1988. Yet even the government's own dietary guidelines, regularly revised by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services, acknowledge that adult beverages confer "beneficial effects when consumed in moderation."

Fewer heart attacks, better cholesterol levels, reduced hospitalization rates, less weight gain, lower risk of dementia and cognitive decline — all these life-saving or life-enhancing advantages, the data suggest, are likelier to be found among men and women who down a daily drink or two than among those who never drink at all.

"The evidence that abstinence from alcohol is a cause of heart disease and early death is irrefutable," writes addiction and public-health specialist Stanton Peele, "yet this is almost unmentionable in the United States." Accompanying Peele's essay at Substance.com is a picture of a classic Guinness beer ad proclaiming: "Guinness Is Good For You." It turns out that having a beer — or a glass of wine, or a vodka tonic, or a bourbon on the rocks — really is good for most people.

So, numerous long-term studies suggest, is a
glass of wine, a vodka tonic, or a
bourbon on the rocks

Yet brewers, distillers, and other alcoholic beverage manufacturers aren't allowed to say so on their bottles. General Mills can tout the "heart-healthy" qualities of Cheerios on every cereal box; StarKist can do the same on cans of tuna.

But Americans apparently can't be trusted with accurate information about the gains associated with moderate imbibing. The public health establishment plays down the benefits of drinking in moderation, no doubt for fear of sending any kind of encouragement to those who'll be tempted to drink to excess.

Regulators can be obsessive about stamping out any hint that alcoholic beverages might be good for you. The Treasury Department bureaucrat charged with approving beer labels, reported The Daily Beast last month, rejected a King of Hearts beer, on the grounds that its logo depicting a playing card "implied that the beer would have a health benefit."

Similarly, "he rejected an Adnams Broadside beer, which touted itself as a 'heart-warming ale,' because this supposedly involved a medical claim."

And what if it were? Alcohol has been known for centuries as "aqua vitae." That's Latin for "water of life," and it could hardly be more aptly named.