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ohsalome · 2 years ago

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Thank you for speaking out about Western centrism.

In one of your last your last post you mentioned in the tags that Ukrainians were traumatized living in Germany and fled in horror.

What caused this? What can Germans do to make Ukrainians feel welcome here

I am Ukrainian diaspora living in Germany and working with Ukrainian refugees here. Ukrainians refugees have told me that they can't believe that some Germans are unwilling to support Ukraine, while their family and friends are bombed in Ukraine and they themselves experienced air strikes. They are angry that some Germans think they deserve to die and are calling for so called "peace"

Hi! First of all, thank you for helping our people out - this really means a lot. If not for the genuine help that came from common people, I don't know what we'd be doing by now. So thank you once again.

Appeasenick Germans are, undoubtely, an infuriating factor, but I have huge doubts they can be, like… talked out of it. It would be nice to at least keep them away from traumatised refugees, but I currently cannot see any realistic solutions to this problem.

The biggest trouble, of course, is the parts of the German government that advocate for appeasement and prevent us from getting weapons. Sorry but this is Нікчемщина

The things I've heard people complaining about the most are of bureocratic nature, and I'm afraid this is not something that can be changed overnight. But this comes back to my point that every country has its pros and cons; for many years we looked up to Germany as an ideal of perfect European life, and after going there, we discovered that many things are much more comfortable in Ukraine.

For example, opening a bank account. To do this in Ukraine, I don't even need to leave my home - this can be done in half an hour through an app. A shitton of governmental services are fully digital as well - like opening a private business or applying for a marriage - and full digitalisation of the governmental services is in the plans. Another thing that is much better in Ukraine - we don't need to wait months for a doctor's appointment. Some time ago I needed to visit a doctor, so I just walked into my nearest hospital, and there just was a free opening in an hour. I had a consultation, ultrasound and prescription in one go, and all of it was for free. Oh, and not to mention, shops and other establishments are open on Sundays. Should I even mention the difference between Deutschebahn and Ukrzaliznytsya? Guys, sometimes I wonder how do you even survive like this.

Now, to think about it, I have heard some problems ukrainians had in german refugee centres specifically. For example, the abundance of russian workers. Now, I fully understand and respect their desire to help refugees, it is a morally sound choice, but you have to understand that many people flee from occupied towns or places that underwent constant bombings. Many women escaped to Europe after being raped by russian soldiers. They might be literally triggered by being in the proximity of russians or hearing russian language, yet german government had dispatched them to work in centres because "we speak the same language"? At the very least there needs to be some type of filtering system to screen out the russians who will get angry at ukrainians for not acting sufficiently grateful for their help, or genuine rushists (I have heard a story of one old russian man in Germany who was yelling at the ukrainians for not taking russian passports and "provoking" russia into attacking Ukraine. wtf). Oh, and another issue I've heard about is that many paper materials like leaflets etc. are only avaliable in translated into russian, but not ukrainian. This is genuinely insulting because it reinforces the already existent stereotype that "ukrainians don't need ukrainian language since they understand russian anyway".

A necessary disclaimer that the problems described above are not an issue to everybody - a plenty of ukrainians are perfectly fine with being around russians.

Also, not all refugees from Ukraine are met equally as well - roma people in particular face much more trouble getting help and are often denied the services accessible to other ukrainians.

This topic was widely discussed around last summer, and most of the info I know is from that period; so if the issues I've described have been fixed - good. Hope my answer was of any help.

#response

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seventhscorpio · 4 months ago

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This take always fascinates me because wow yeah well I live in a country with free (albeit shitty, but still FREE) public healthcare system and I quite like the awareness that if push comes to shove I won't be debating whether to get medical care or buy food. When I had mono last spring, I got a referral from my doctor and just. walked to the hospital. went in and said, "here's the paper, please check me in". Just like that. And I was seen by a doctor, given a treatment plan and a prescription and everything, and told to go home because it's not as bad as to warrant a hospital stay, and I just. went home. I like that I can get my antidepressants cheaper because the government is paying 30% of the price. I like that I can get a surgery for free. There are many other issues with the healthcare system in Poland, but its biggest virtue is that it EXISTS.

The problem with medically assisted dying is of a different kind, I think. It's the lack of safety measures, either on paper or in practice, to make it absolutely fucking certain that the person who requests it is mentally capable and not under any duress, be it from the family or the medical staff. Two doctors aren't enough? Then have three, or four.

And the thing people seem to forget is that particular members of the medical staff don't speak in the name of the government lol. They're tired, overworked and bitter doctors and nurses who see a chronically ill patient as just another problem on their already sprawling list of duties, and sometimes that bitterness festers into something fucked up enough that they think, "well, if that person died my job would be easier". It IS fucked up!!!! It's not normal!!!! But the cause for this is understaffing of hospitals, not The Government specifically wanting to kill sick people off. We don't have medically assisted dying and the hospital nurses still treated my life-threateningly ill grandma as if she were an iron ball at their feet, because there were like four nurses to handle several dozen patients on a full ward and she was just one of many. The issue IS understaffing. Trust me, if doctors and nurses were any sort of mouthpiece or representation for the government, they'd be urging for many, many other policies first before they'd get to euthanasia.

Y'all ok up there Canada?

alt sources

Woman with cerebral palsy urged to consider assisted suicide

Canadian doctors accused of pushing medically assisted death on patients: ‘They make you feel less than human’

#idk how to tag #reply #rant #?

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tinyshe · 5 years ago

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Systems Biologist Speaks Out About COVID-19 Response

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola

[this is a long read but well worth the time, food for thought]

Download Interview Transcript Download my FREE Podcast

Story at-a-glance

According to systems biologist Shiva Ayyadurai, Ph.D., the COVID-19 pandemic is being used to shift global wealth

Systems biology deciphers the synergies within living systems to understand how to diagnose, assess and identify the underlying problem, and how to administer the most appropriate remedy

The economic collapse is a result of precisely engineered governmental policies, even though those policies, superficially, appear to be in the public’s best interest

Systems biology informs us one size does not fit all. Yet this knowledge is being ignored in this pandemic. Instead, everyone is told they must take the same precautions as those who are at high risk

Fearmongering is being used to suppress antigovernment dissent, to crash the economy and issue medical mandates that could generate trillions of dollars in ongoing revenue in years to come

Today, we continue to provide you information about the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of this recording, April 6, 2020, there are more than 1.4 million cases worldwide and 370,000 confirmed cases in the U.S., with New York City being one of the hotspots.1,2 Here, I interview Shiva Ayyadurai, who has a Ph.D. in systems biology from MIT.

What Is Systems Biology?

His academic background gives Ayyadurai a slightly different perspective on this outbreak, as it focuses on the foundational causes of disease rather than the conventional medical paradigm that tends to focus on pharmaceutical remedies. Ayyadurai explains:

“The MIT department of biological engineering was created in 2003. The notion was … that you needed an engineering approach to biology as new advances or new discoveries were coming out in biology. That created the department of biological engineering …

One of the big things that took place in 2003 that led to the formation of that department was, in an ironic way, what occurred with the human genome project starting in 1993. We went into the genome project with a reductionist view of biology.

Biologists essentially thought that the number of parts meant complexity. We knew in 1993, a worm had around 20,000 genes. So, we said, OK, we're going to start mapping out the human genome. We were at least 25 times more complex. The notion was we had about a half a million genes.

By 2003, they only found 20,000 protein coding genes. That flipped biology on its head because it said, wait a minute, we have the same number of parts, and they thought genes were a reflection of complexity. That led to systems biology starting around 2003, which said, look, genes create proteins and these proteins interact. So, it's about all these interactions …

Today, that has led to this field called epigenetics, in which we know that the external environment, what we interact with, can turn on and turn off genes. I came back to MIT in 2003. I did four degrees at MIT in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering. My Master's was in design, but I always was fascinated with medicine.”

The Cytosol Platform

The project Ayyadurai took on for his Ph.D. thesis was to mathematically model the whole human cell. His work led to the creation of a platform called CytoSolve “cyto” standing for “cell.” This approach is different from biology, computer science and chemistry.

“Biologists are essentially distributed knowledge engineers,” he says, “and the thing they're trying to understand is this thing called the body. No different than aeronautical engineers trying to build the airplane. The difference is when we build an airplane, we actually know what we want to build. And we know the parts in biology, we're finding the parts, that's what they're doing.

Some biologists can win a Nobel prize just for looking at how two proteins interact. So, they're very focused on understanding these parts. So, imagine if we could create a technology where we could take those parts, integrate them, and then essentially let them be sort of focused in their silos.

But there wouldn't be this framework that you could integrate, where you could integrate these molecular pathways. And that really created cytosol. To me, it was a big circling back because I grew up in India where my grandmother practiced traditional systems of medicine.

In that system of medicine, they had diagnosis methods, they looked at you, they figured out your body type and they would figure out the right types of foods and medicines, herbs or even body work to get you back into balance. That was always seen as a ‘black art’ from a Western medicine [perspective].

[CytoSolve] lets us decipher what they were doing and actually understand these synergies. So that's what systems biology is about. It's taking an engineering systems approach to the body … It's literally understanding how to diagnose and assess and identify what the problem is, and then how to administer a prescription within a few minutes. It’s essentially an ‘AI’-type model.”

COVID-19 — Health and Economic Perspectives

As noted by Ayyadurai, the COVID-19 pandemic is not only highlighting our immune health but also our economic health. We're seeing the integration of medical policy and economic policy.

“I had a very interesting discussion with a leading economist,” Ayyadurai says, “and he had a serious concern about the fact that economists are being forced to backfill in a misguided health policy, which is occurring. What he meant by that is, [they’re being told to] just use quantitative easing, which is basically printing money, and that will solve the problem.

Now that entire process does two things. First of all, we have I think 10 million unemployment claims in March alone. In addition to that, you have the fact that we're going to print money, which … if you look, since 2008 and 2009, when quantitative easing started … that has essentially been the biggest transfer of wealth — to the 0.01%, again.

It is essentially a weakened earning power and the [weakened value] of the dollar. So that's what's occurred. Now we have this COVID-19, and we have this economic overreaction, in my opinion, from the fear-mongering. In many ways, it reflects the immune system.

The immune system fundamentally wants to operate well for you and maintain homeostasis, and it's the overreaction of a weakened and dysfunctional immune system that causes harm. Similarly, when you look at it from the economic standpoint, we have this unbridled overreaction, in my view. [We’re] not looking at what modern medicine is saying — that we should take a personalized medicine approach, right?

One size doesn't fit all. This is basically flatten the curve: Kick the can down the street. We're just going to wait until, when? Until the vaccine is produced or until a drug comes out. The assumption is that the immune system of all of us is equally weak. That's what this is based on. The assumption is that all of us are going to get it and all of us will suffer from it.

It's a very interesting model. Look at the person leading this health policy, Dr. Fauci. His background is from the pharmaceutical world … [and] when you look at the NIH and the CDC, these organizations are heavily, heavily influenced by pharmaceutical companies.

In that environment, the model has always been never to discuss immune health, what we can do to support the immune system. It's always under the assumption that there's this big boogeyman, that the virus harms your body. Most medical doctors, again, they're victims of this education.

Many of them are taught the virus literally comes and attacks your body, and that a vaccine or a pharmaceutical intervention blocks it. It's not taught broadly that [the problem is that] the dysfunctional, weakened immune system is not running on all cylinders.

One part of it can overreact, and that overreaction is what goes in and attacks your own tissues. So, the issue is, we're not having a discussion at all in the media about ‘How do you modulate that overreaction and support people's immune health?’”

Similarly, Ayyadurai notes, the economic collapse is “a result of precisely engineered governmental policies,” even though those policies, superficially, appear to be in the public’s best interest.

Is COVID-19 a Real Pandemic?

COVID-19 meets the technical definition of a pandemic, and the World Health Organization did declare it a pandemic. However, the death toll is nowhere near that of earlier serious pandemics that would legitimately justify the extraordinary measures being deployed by the U.S. government.

The Spanish flu in 1918 infected 500 million people worldwide, killing between 20 million and 50 million. The bubonic plague also killed 50 million people, wiping out a shocking 60% of the European population. This is typically what people think of when they hear the word “pandemic.”

COVID-19 presently affects a tiny fraction of the global population — about 1.4 million cases out of a global population of 7.78 billion3 — and even with a death toll of 81,000 worldwide,4 COVID-19 has had a miniscule impact, having killed a mere 0.00001% of the population.

Don’t get me wrong. Any death is tragic. But any given individual’s risk of dying from the epidemics of diabetes, heart disease or cancer, for example, is greater than their risk of dying from COVID-19. Why is death from lifestyle-induced disease and environmental toxicity more preferable and acceptable than death from an infectious disease?

Dying from a preventable medical mistake is also a greater risk, as that kills up to 440,000 Americans every year. Where’s the panic about that? Isn’t the idea that conventional medicine kills 440,000 people a year terrifying?! 1 in 5 elderly patients are also injured by medical care. Where are the calls to protect our aging loved ones from this threat?

Were health policies more aligned with truth, we wouldn’t have these chronic disease epidemics and far fewer people would die from preventable medical mistakes. More people would lead healthy lives were they properly informed about what’s harmful and what’s healthy.

Similarly, when it comes to COVID-19, there are simple strategies with which we can address this infection that does not require collapsing the global economy, creating unheard of unemployment and isolating everyone from human contact for weeks on end. You can find many articles detailing such strategies on my Coronavirus Resource Page.

As noted by Ayyadurai, systems biology tells us that one size does not fit all. “We need to move to the right medicine for the right person at the right time,” he says. But this knowledge has not been applied in this pandemic. Instead, everyone is being treated as though they’re high risk for severe infection and death and therefore need to take identical precautions. So, what’s really going on here?

“We have not said, ‘Hey, let's shut down the economy to address the fact that we have skyrocketing obesity taking place, skyrocketing diabetes,” Ayyadurai says. “So, the level of contradiction, the level of hypocrisy should wake up everyone to understand that there is another agenda.

There is another agenda afoot. I repeat what my mentor said: ‘When things don't add up, take a step back and ask, what is the other agenda?’ And the only thing in a common-sense way that reveals itself to me is power, profit and control. Power, profit and control.”

The Power, Profit and Control Agenda

Like Ayyadurai, I believe the fearmongering is being used to suppress dissent, to crash the economy and to issue medical mandates. “If you look broadly, there were massive uprisings, antiestablishment uprisings [in different countries]. Well, they're all gone now. We don't even hear anything about them,” Ayyadurai says.

He also believes this fearmongering and social isolation mandates will be used as a way to acclimatize people to accept state wants or what a few people deem is good for everyone. “That, I think, is the milieu being set up,” he says. “That's being teed up.” Indeed, it simply doesn’t add up when you look at mortality rates.

“There's another agenda,” Ayyadurai says. “That's what I see, because it doesn't make any rational sense [to crash the economy over COVID-19]. I think that's why a number of the videos, the tweets I've done have gone viral, because to everyday working people, it doesn't make sense either. They're trying to sort this out.”

Interestingly, this epidemic is taking place just a few months after Google began censoring holistic health news. So, people searching for sound nutritional strategies can no longer find them. Instead, they’re directed to Big Pharma-backed sites promoting conventional medicine.

The censorship isn’t even about squashing nonscientific views anymore. Educated health professionals are being banned left and right simply for posting peer-reviewed studies showing nutraceuticals work, or that drugs or vaccines don’t work — including Ayyadurai himself, who got kicked off Twitter the day this interview was recorded over a vitamin D post.

“It has essentially moved to a model of a finite set of people serving the interests of another finite set of people,” Ayyadurai says. “That's what's fundamentally going on. When we really look back at the history of ‘infectious diseases,’ what actually caused the real decline in infectious disease? …

That came from sanitation, vitamin A, nutrition, elimination of child labor, refrigeration [and] infrastructure at the political level … Well, how did we get that? This is one layer people need to understand from a human standpoint. It came about because in the late 1800s, there was a massive force of the American working class who were militant, and they fought for those rights.

People lived in squalor. No one cared for them. It was the uprising of those people and very, very powerful independently self-organizing systems, all over this country, that forced the elites to give them these basic infrastructures …

So, what I see is the ability for people to organize and demand their rights and get them. That is what occurred in the late 1900s, and we got massive gains. Now look at infrastructure today. Dirty water, dirty air, dirty food … and we look at them in synergy, how they affect our body. None of that's discussed, none of that.

I think the United States has a D+ in infrastructure. The roads, the bridges and the water systems [are all crumbling]. And when you don't fix these things in time, they affect all types of environmental things. The elite in this country do not want to address that. They want to always create a fake problem and a fake solution to consolidate power.

And that's why when you look at this [COVID-19] phenomenon that's taking place, it's a penultimate of it … You create massive amounts of fear so people will be willing — because they're under economic stress, under what they think is a health [threat] — to give up their rights.

And that's where I see this headed. So, this is an interesting convergence of … economic attack, attack on people's health, [and attack on] people's autonomy and freedom. Truth, freedom and health are all under attack …

They do not want any discussion about indigenous people's medicines that have worked for centuries. They don't want to talk about simple solutions … so, they suppress discourse, suppress debate, suppress freedom, and move everything away from the scientific method — which is a process where you actually have to prove stuff, which is what they claim they want to do to scientific consensus.

Freedom gets suppressed and now you can move truth to scientific consensus. So, you go from suppression of freedom to fake science or outdated science at best. And then that is used to create a fake problem and a fake solution.

And then, if you go to the health part, what that means is you diminish people's health, you control people's health, and now you have a populace which is so controlled, they don't have the strength to fight for their freedom. So, you have the attack on freedom, the attack on truth, and the attack on health.

All of those are interconnected. They too are a system from a systems perspective. Without freedom, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can’t have health. And without health we don't have the strength to fight for our freedom. And the way that truth actually is discovered should be through the scientific method. That's what's really been compromised, starting, I would say, in the late ‘50s.”

Postal Service Could Be Used to Protect Free Communications

To summarize, the three-pronged agenda is: Power, profit and control. To counteract that three-pronged threat, we need academic freedom and the freedom to discourse and debate.

From that freedom, we get truth, and from truth, we’re able to understand health, not only physical health but also in the broadest sense the health of our systems, our infrastructure and environment. With health, we gain the strength to fight for even more freedoms.

“For each one of those, there's a solution. For example, when you go to freedom, if you look at communication, right now we are heavily relying on Google, Facebook and three major telecom companies. So, basically, five CEOs control our communication. One phone call to them, and you can essentially shut down communication ...

What is the solution? Well, it's going to sound weird, but … the founding fathers of this country created an institution called the United States Postal Service. Why did they create that? Because the crown was not allowing each individual to communicate. So, the notion of ‘the press’ was all of us. There was no New York Times. Each one of us were supposed to be the press ...

If anyone interfered with your communications, [they got a] 20-year prison sentence. It was criminal. So, the entire postal service system was a decentralized environment enabling every American to communicate for pennies …

In 1997 is when email volume overtook postal mail volume. I met with the executives of the postal service. I said, look, you guys should be living up to what you were chartered to do, which is to protect free communications. Why don't you offer a public email service and public social media services … that would be protected by the laws of the Constitution? No one, including the government, could interfere.

They thought it was a ridiculous idea … In 2011, the postal services were going out of business. Why? Because all the best parts of the postal service were privatized into DHL and FedEx. So, I again hit them really hard. The inspector general, Dave Williams, called me up.

He goes, ‘Shiva, why are you attacking us?’ I said, ‘Look, you guys are not doing your job. You're not in the postal mail business. You were supposed to be in the communications business. You are set up as a quasi-organization to protect our rights. So anyway, I did two chartered reports for them.

My point is we need a digital rights act, and there is an institution [that can supply us with that]. It is the postal service, in my view. All these postal service locations could be converted to a mesh network. So, there is an opportunity to have a network by the people for the people. Now if someone wants to go use Google and Facebook and you can, but there needs to be a public common.

Those few elite would object to this and have the power and control to prevent that from being implemented. Definitely. That's why I believe we need to have a mass movement. Nothing has ever been given to us. People think slavery ends one day and we have freedom the next. Every point in human history has always been people chipping away at slavery to get freedom from the elite."

Decentralization Is the Name of the Game

Ayyadurai discusses many additional issues and goes far deeper than I can summarize here, so please, listen to the interview in its entirety. He has many fascinating insights, ideas and solutions. For example, about 50 minutes in, he discusses how federally funded research systems can be improved to ensure scientific integrity and prevent scientific fraud.

“We need to take power away from the academics,” he says, “and one way to do that is to force decentralization. That's a common theme here.” He also analyzes the health care model, and discusses how health care, as a system, can be improved while simultaneously being made far less expensive.

“Broadly, we need to decentralize health care. The concept of centralized health care — which is what the purpose of this [COVID-19 pandemic is] — is that next year everyone's going to be mandated vaccines,” he says.

“For them to crash the economy, to drive it into a depression, for them it's a relatively great return on investment. You make the fed print $6 trillion, but you're going to make $7 trillion to $8 trillion recurring revenue [by way of mandated, annual vaccinations] … So, we have to do whatever it takes to decentralize health care …

When you look at these things I've said, it comes down to one word: Decentralization … I think the opportunity here is to start educating people. It is supposed to be We the People, and this does not mean it's going to happen without struggle.

We may have to rise up and fight in ways that we haven't done before, just like those people did in the late 1800s, and the idea is to compel the thing. We need to build a broad-based movement bottom-up … And I think it begins with taking care of your health.”

#covid-19 #pandemic

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shadyrest · 3 years ago

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How Toddlers Eat

Last week, I stumbled upon a relatively unknown Twitter account called The Wisdom of Taste. Its thesis is simple: Your body knows what it needs, so when it comes to diet, you should trust your taste buds and eat more of what tastes good.

I’ll talk more about processed food in a second, but let’s start with a study about toddlers who could eat whatever they wanted. They simply ate what tasted good, and the researchers discovered that they were neither too fat nor too thin, and never deficient in any kind of vitamin or mineral.

You’ll find the list of foods the kids could eat below. There was no processed food. Instead, they ate foods like red meat, bone marrow, carbs, fruits, and eggs. Since there was nobody to govern their choices, they could eat as much as they wanted.

— —

Over-Eating

Reading this study makes me think that even though taste buds are intelligent, processed food causes them to malfunction.

First, let’s talk about overeating because “eat less” is such a common dietary prescription. People don’t over-eat on steak. They over-eat on junk food. Thus, the majority of binge-eating problems begin with the kinds of food people put into their mouths in the first place. This is true even for sweets. You can binge-eat Twinkies, but if you eat too much honey, your body will scream at you to stop.

That brings us to processed food. Warren Buffett was once asked about Coca-Cola, and said: “Cola has no taste memory. You can drink one at 9am, 11am, 5pm. You can't do that with cream soda, root beer, orange, grape. You get sick of them after a while. The average person drinks 64 ounces of liquid per day, and you can have all 64 ounces of that be Coke.”

A lack of taste memory is one reason why Coca-Cola is such a profitable business. The recipe is engineered to not come with a taste memory, which is why the drink is so addicting.

Cheetos are similar. According to the food scientist Steven Witherly, they bring so much pleasure because of the way each puff melts in your mouth. The way the food melts in the mouth is known as “vanishing caloric density,” which makes your brain think there are no calories in the food, which is why you can eat them for so long.

— —

When the Natural Becomes Boring

There’s a scary line in an article called The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, where one food scientist who worked for some of America’s biggest food companies: Campbell Soup, General Foods, Kraft and PepsiCo, said: “I’ve optimized soups. I’ve optimized pizzas. I’ve optimized salad dressings and pickles. In this field, I’m a game changer.”

How are the kinds of natural foods that toddlers ate in the original experiment supposed to compete with that?

Companies who don’t optimize will get crushed. A few years ago, I spent a week with a professional food scientist. I asked her: “When it comes to choosing food, what do consumers care about most?”

Her answer was emphatic: “Taste.”

That’s why foods are engineered so heavily to taste good, often at the expense of nutrition. Consider Prego’s Pasta Tomato Sauce. How bad could it be? It’s just tomato sauce, right? Not so fast. The second biggest ingredient, after tomatoes, is sugar. A half-cup of Prego Traditional has as much sugar as two-plus Oreo Cookies — and more than one-third of the daily recommended sodium count for an adult.

We can’t expect average people to be vigilant about reading every nutrition label. They have too many other things going on in their lives. Instead, they do what’s served humans exceptionally well throughout the centuries: trust biology.

But processed food distorts the signals we rightfully used to trust.

— —

Information is Food

How does all this apply to my work with Write of Passage?

Becoming a better writer begins with becoming a better information consumer. Information is a surprisingly good metaphor for food. Deep down, we already know this. When we talk about information, we say things like:

I need to digest that idea.

She has a thirst for knowledge.

He consumes a lot of news.

But like modern supermarkets, the Internet is riddled with information that’s engineered to invert your intuitions and encourage addictive consumption. There are uncanny similarities between the mindlessness of binge-scrolling Instagram and binge-eating junk food. They’ve both been so scientifically engineered that we engage in both against our better nature.

To become a better information consumer, start by asking: Where’s the processed information in my life, and how can I remove it?

The point isn’t that you only need to eat vegetables. The aforementioned toddlers ate steaks and fruits and bone marrow and so many other delicious foods. But you should wean off the hyper-engineered junk food. Do it right, and you’ll be able to trust the wisdom of taste again.

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robertreich · 7 years ago

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How to End Crony Capitalism

The largest corporations and richest people in America -- who donated billions of dollars to Republican candidates the House and Senate in the 2106 election -- appear on the way to getting what they paid for: a giant tax cut.

The New York Times reports that business groups are meeting frequently with key Republicans in order to shape the tax bill, whose details remain secret.

Speed and secrecy are critical. The quicker Republicans get this done, and without hearings, the less likely will the rest of the country discover how much it will cost in foregone Medicaid and Medicare or ballooning budget deficits.

Donald Trump has been trashing democratic institutions – the independence of the press, judges who disagree with him, uncooperative legislators -- while raking in money off his presidency. But don’t lose sight of the larger attack on our democracy that was underway even before Trump was elected: A flood of big money into politics.

Lest you conclude it’s only Republicans who have been pocketing big bucks in exchange for political favors, consider what Big Tech – the industry that’s mostly bankrolled Democrats – is up to.

It’s mobilizing an army of lobbyists and lawyers -- including senior advisors to Hillary Clinton’s campaign -- to help scuttle a proposed law requiring Google, Facebook, and other major Internet companies to disclose who is purchasing their online political advertising.

After revelations that Russian-linked operatives bought deceptive ads in the run-up to the 2016 election, you’d think this would be a no-brainer. But never underestimate the power of big money, whichever side of the aisle it’s aimed at.

Often, it’s both sides. Last week The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” reported that Big Pharma contributed close to $1.5 million to Democrats as well as Republicans in order to secure enactment of the so-called “Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016.”

This shameful law weakened the Drug Enforcement Authority’s power to stop prescription opioids from being shipped to pharmacies and doctors suspected of taking bribes to distribute them -- a major cause of the opioid crisis. Last year, Americans got 236 million opioid prescriptions, the equivalent of one bottle for every adult.

Overwhelming majorities of House and Senate Democrats voted for the bill, as well as Republicans, and President Obama signed it into law.

There you have it, folks. Big money is buying giant tax cuts, allowing Russia to interfere in future elections, and killing Americans. That’s just the tip of the corrupt iceberg that’s sinking our democracy.

Republicans may be taking more big money, but both parties have been raking it in.

Average Americans know exactly what’s going on.

I just returned from several days in Kentucky and Tennessee, both of which voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

A number of Trump voters told me they voted for him because they wanted someone who’d shake up Washington, drain the swamp, and get rid of crony capitalism. They saw Hillary Clinton as part of the problem.

These people aren’t white nationalists. They’re decent folks who just want a government that’s not of, by, and for the moneyed interests.

Many are now suffering buyer’s remorse. They recognize Trump has sold his administration to corporate lobbyists and Wall Street. “He conned us,” was the most polite response I heard.

The big money that’s taken over American politics in recent years has created the biggest political backlash in postwar American history – inside both parties.

It’s splitting the Republican Party between its large corporate patrons and a base that detests big corporations and Wall Street.

Trump is trying to straddle both by pretending he’s a champion of the working class while pushing for giant tax cuts. But if my free-floating focus group in Kentucky and Tennessee is any indication, the base is starting to see through it.

Which you might think creates a huge opportunity for Democrats heading into the 2018 midterms and the presidential election of 2020.

Think again. Much of the official Democratic Party is still in denial, continuing to debate whether it should be on the proverbial “left” or move to the “middle.”

But when it comes to getting big money out of politics and ending crony capitalism, there’s no right or left, and certainly no middle. There’s just democracy or oligarchy.

Democrats should be fighting for commonsense steps to reclaim our democracy from the moneyed interests -- public financing of elections, full disclosure of all sources of political funding, an end to revolving door between government and business, and attempts to reverse the bonkers Supreme Court decision “Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission.”

For that matter, Republicans should be fighting for these, too.

Heres’a wild idea. What if the anti-establishment wings of both parties came together in a pro-democracy coalition to get big money out of politics?

Then it might actually happen.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years ago

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THIS IS GREAT NEWS FOR THE MARGINAL, WHO RETAIN THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING AN INSIDER, AND IN SOME KINDS OF WORK—THAT HACKING WAS COLD, PRECISE, AND METHODICAL, AND THAT HE DID ALL THE ACTUAL DESIGN OF THE APPLE I AND APPLE II IN HIS APARTMENT OR HIS CUBE AT HP

But gradually I realized it wasn't luck. We need a language that lets us scribble and smudge and smear, not a pen. For a long time I felt bad about this, just as in principle you could avoid it, just as writers and painters and architects do. But this mistake is less excusable than most. Boy, was I wrong. In hacking, like painting, work comes in cycles. So did Apple. But I've talked to a lot of servers and a lot of ideas come from the margin is simply that there's so much of it.1 I behave in a way that would make me eligible for prescription drugs if I approached everyday life the same way.

Over and over we see the same pattern. Maybe I'm excessively attached to conciseness.2 Chardin decided to skip all that and paint ordinary things as he saw them. But Cybercash was so bad and most stores' order volumes were so low that it was very remiss of me to have forgotten all that stuff within three weeks of the final exam.3 If I could get people to remember just one quote about programming, it would be a 900-page pastiche of existing popular novels—roughly Gone with the Wind plus Roots.4 In hacking, this can literally mean saving up bugs. It turns out there is, and the visual arts is the resistance of the medium. It's never so pure as it was when they were young.5 It wouldn't be the first time investors learned that lesson from founders.6 That phrase draws in most threads I've mentioned here.

Shakespeare appeared just as professional theater was being born, and pushed the medium so far that every playwright since has had to live in his shadow. The other problem with startups is that there are today. If I had only looked over at the other makers. But there are plenty of dumb people who are bad at empathy too.7 I had an uncomfortable feeling in the back of my mind that I ought to know more theory, and that means that investor starts to lose deals. So, if hacking works like painting and writing, is it as cool?8 Outsiders are not merely free but compelled to make things that are cheap and lightweight.9 When they're raising money, for example, what would happen if the government decided to commission someone to write an official Great American Novel. A better way to describe the situation would be to shirk it, but you'll have it all to yourself. Relentless. In particular, new things.10 This is already clear in cases like GPSes, music players, and cameras.

So it was literally IPO or bust. Imagine, for example. Most writers write to persuade, I'd start to shy away unconsciously from ideas I knew would be hard to sell. So that, I think. Inappropriate is the null criticism. It was like watching a car you're chasing turn down a street that you know has no outlet. Facebook did. So hackers start original, and get good, and get good, and get good, and get original. But in retrospect you're probably better off studying something moderately interesting with someone who isn't. There's nothing more than a slight stirring of discomfort. That's why oil paintings look so different from watercolors.

But I think the goal of an essay should be to discover surprising things.11 Some hackers are quite smart, but they can't have looked good on paper. You might as well open it. Particularly to young companies that are otherwise benevolent. Someone who doesn't know what these things are, either. Similarly, you shouldn't be discouraged by the comparatively corrupt test of college admissions, because it's a game you can't lose.12 And when you do it consciously you'll do it even better. How common is it for founders to keep control after an A round? If you're not sure what to do, and engineers figure out how to connect some company's legacy database to their Web server.13 Com of their name.

Considering how basic a red circle is, it seemed surprising to me when we started YC. There's a huge weight of tradition advising us to play it safe. The way I worked, it seemed surprising to me that any employer would be reluctant to let hackers work on open-source hacking is all about.14 But so do people who inherit money, and another for love. Give hackers an inch and they'll take you a mile. How long will it take to catch up with where you'd have been if you were extracting every penny?15 Not merely hardware, but software too. But this wasn't what made them eminent—it was more a flaw their eminence had allowed them to sink into. In hacking, like painting, work comes in cycles. This is what open-source projects. Add up all the evidence of VCs' behavior, and the key to the mystery is the old adage a word to the wise is sufficient.

The fact that you can change font sizes easily means the iPad effectively replaces reading glasses. Just wait till you've agreed on a price and think you have a US startup called X and you don't have to act like VCs. Programmers were seen as technicians who translated the visions if that is the word of product managers into code. When people walk by the portrait of Ginevra de Benci, their attention is often immediately arrested by it, even before they look at the work of a painter in chronological order, you'll find that each painting builds on things that could steal that prestige. That version 4. The puffed-up companies that went public during the Bubble didn't do it just because they were pulled into it by unscrupulous investment bankers. They ask whatever it is they're asking in such a roundabout way that the hosts often have to rephrase the question for them. Whereas hackers, from the start, are doing original work; it's just very bad. Since the custom is to write to persuade the actual reader, someone who doesn't will seem arrogant. If hackers identified with other makers, like writers and painters and architects do. I like debugging: it's the standard image.16 In return for the unique privilege of sharing his office with no other humans, he had to share it with 6 shrieking tower servers.

Notes

This is actually from the most, it's probably good grazing. One of the Daddy Model and reality is the last step in this evolution. I have a better education. So in effect why can't you be more like a body cavity search by someone who doesn't understand what you're doing.

Many of these companies substitute progress for revenue growth.

Yes, I didn't realize it yet or not, don't even want to approach a specific firm, the more effort you expend on the matter. I think it's confusion or lack of results achieved by alchemy and saying its value was as much what other people thought it was considered the most visible index of that generation had been raised religious and then just enjoy yourself for the same weight as any successful startup?

There are circumstances where this is not even be an inverse correlation between launch magnitude and success. It's hard for us, they have to say exactly what they're doing. Maybe that isn't the problem, we should make the fund by succeeding spectacularly.

That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day. The continuing popularity of religion is the place for people interested in each type of thing. Though they were getting results.

We currently advise startups mostly to ignore what your GPA was. People and The CRM114 Discriminator.

A preliminary result, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been climbing in through the buzz that surrounds wisdom in ancient philosophy may be whether what you learn via users anyway. The University of Vermont, 1991. A round about the origins of the biggest discoveries in any field.

One VC who read this to realize that in fact they don't, but some do. You can relent a little too narrow than to confuse everyone with a base of evangelical Christians. On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1983. I called to check and in fact they don't have to.

When I was there when it was the ads they show first.

This is a case in point: lots of type II startups neither require nor produce startup culture.

In practice the first wave of hostile takeovers in the narrow technical sense of things economists usually think about, just as if it were. If they're dealing with YC companies that grow slowly tend not to say they care above all about big markets, why is New York. 0001. In a limited way, I should degenerate from words to their returns.

That's a valid point. Everyone's taught about it. 5 more I didn't.

The reason only 287 have valuations is that they've already decided what they're selling and how unbelievably annoying it is to let yourself feel it mid-game. So it's a collection itself. When I was surprised to find a kid and as a definition of property is driven by bookmarking, not an associate cold-emailing a startup. It would be to say yet how much you get nothing.

The main one was nothing special. For similar reasons, the users' need has to be a hot deal, I mean forum in the sense of the 1929 crash. And to a partner, not because Delicious users are not one of the 70s, moving to Monaco would only give you 11% more income, which a few months later Google paid 1.

The golden age of economic equality in the sample might be able to respond with extreme countermeasures. These points don't apply to types of studies, studies of returns from startup investing, which would cause HTTP and HTML to continue to maltreat people who start these supposedly smart investors may not be formally definable, but trained on corpora of stupid and non-stupid comments instead.

One of the biggest divergences between the initial plan and what the valuation of the founders chose? But becoming a police state. There is not that the most successful companies have been a good nerd, just that it is more efficient.

Thanks to Geoff Ralston, Trevor Blackwell, Neil Rimer, and Robert Morris for the lulz.

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infectious-awareness · 7 years ago

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Before anything I'd like to give a very special, !!!FUCK YOU!!! to Jeff Sessions... Now I am sure you ladies and gentlemen have all heard the news; Jeff Sessions has rescinded a policy allowing states to handle the laws and prosecution around marijuana within its borders. This cannot stand.... Are we just going to stand by and allow this to happen?!?! WE BEST FUCKING NOT!!! I Want You To Get Mad!!! REAL MAD!!! Do I really have to go over the multiple benefits this plant can provide to society as a whole?! Apparently Fucking So. First let's go over the medical applications of this miraculous plant: -Marijuana slows and halts the production of cancer cells. It's amazing the United States Government even has a patent on cannabis as a treatment for cancer yet lists it as a class one felony substance... -Marijuana reduces the tremors and improves the motor function of Parkinson's patients... FUCKING AMAZING -Marijuana has been proven to reduce the occurrence and severity of epileptic seizures. Many children in the U.S. Really on CBD oil which allows them to live their life with two-three seizures a week as opposed to 12 a day... -Marijuana is used to treat Glaucoma. Left untreated the disease causes excess pressure on the optic nerve which is damaging and leads to blindness. When smoked marijuana relieves intraocular pressure preventing this blinding damage. -Marijuana is used to treat many psychological disorders such as PTSD, Autism, Bipolar Disorder, and anxiety. -Believe it or not marijuana has been shown to improve lung health, reversing the carcinogenic effects of tobacco and increase lung capacity. -Marijuana is Used to reduce the Severity of side effects of extreme treatments for diseases like cancer, hepatitis, and HIV. -Marijuana universally helps with pain management. BUT WAIT! THERES MORE!!! -Legal Marijuana provides a substantial boost to tax revenue. Taxes that fund our schools and welfare programs -Hemp can be manufactured sustainably into biodegradable plastics. Useable in both the packing industries and construction. -Marijuana absorbs carbon dioxide at an exceptional rate, growing vast swaths of hemp for industrial and medical use helps substantially put a dent in our carbon footprint and detoxify the planet. I myself have benefited from medical cannabis, I like to consider myself a marijuana success story. I used to buy into the "anti-drug" propaganda and was a full subscriber to big pharma prescription medications in my youth... by the time I was 18 I had already been on well over a dozen different medications and was suffering from debilitating insomnia, depression, and bipolar disorder. I literally could not function, my moods would swing sporadically throughout the day, I was under a constant sedation from the medication, and my manic episodes would keep me wired and high strung 3-4 days at a time. I was 80lbs overweight, and I couldn't even hold a job because of this instability. When I was 18 I was desperate to find something, anything that could help me, after reading some articles on medical marijuana's success in treating insomnia & depression, and having tried every sleeping pill on the market, I let go of my anti-marijuana prejudice and got a medical card.... It changed my life... every night since I've gotten a full nights sleep... with my sleeping schedule repaired my mood swings began to level out and soon my bi-polar disorder became a fraction of the demon it used to be. I am no longer plagued with hypo-manic episodes, just minor mood swings which are a whole other world of manageability. My depression simultaneously also seemed to dissipate over several months. By month three of smoking i was living a completely different life. I became hyper aware of my health, and changed my diet and exercise regiments, and lost 85lbs over the next year. I was able to hold my first job for over a year and was finally able to enter into my adult life stably. The biggest gift medical marijuana has given to me to me is the eradication of my hellish nightmares... my insomnia began when I was 8 years old... I started getting these nightmares that were extremely lucid, I could feel, taste, touch, everything, even feel pain. Every night or so I'd disappear to another world for what often felt like days... a world filled with horrific demons and ghouls more terrifying than anything I've seen in movies or video games... they'd rip me apart and I'd feel myself get disembowled it was literally the worst period of my life. Every night became hell and I didn't want to sleep anymore... and after several months I seldom did. The nightmares would come in waves, I'd have them for several months, then there would be a week or two I didn't have them. By the age of 18 they had become less frequent but were still very real, even with the decline in frequency my body still found it extremely difficult to shut down and sleep. With the introduction of medical marijuana both problems were solved over night... In addition to getting healthy sleep I began having vivid dreams of a whole different variety. The majority are really intense futuristic dreams typically in a dystopian society(which I will gladly take over ghouls and demons any night). I no longer feel pain in my dreams, nightmares or not, which is the biggest god-sent none of you will ever understand. With the demonic dreamscape behind me, I practically consider every dream a good dream now. A good portion of my family relies on medical marijuana. My mother specifically, suffers from a severe spinal injury which has destroyed several vertebrae and damaged her nerve tissue. The nerve pain is the worst for her to manage, her biggest struggles IS pain management. For years it's been a tough trade, 4-5 hours of impaired mental capacity for 4-5 hours of pain relief; one pill at a time. She too sought an alternative treatment in medical marijuana. Now she uses non-psychoactive CBD and it's the only thing that allows her to get through the day while keeping a clear head. And she is by far not the only person seeking non-mind altering pain management with this medicine. That's one of the beautiful things about medical cannabis, you don't even have to intake the psychoactive THC to receive its benefits. How many cancer patients, epileptics, Parkinson's suffers, individuals managing pain, insomniacs, depression sufferers, and all manor of other people are going to suffer because Jeff Sessions thinks marijuana is "Bad". This is fucked up, I'm not going back to my nightmares, I'm not watching my mother have to pop narcotics every day, and I know my story is not unique. We have to stand up and tell them "We're Not Fucking Taking It Anymore!!!!"

#Jeff sessions #medical marijuana #cannabis #legalize #weed

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eyeslikejules · 6 years ago

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An ADHD Life

Hey guys! So this is going to be a longer post about some of the daily struggles I’ve personally gone through (and still go through) having severe ADHD. I think this is an important topic to discuss because one of the biggest things I’ve dealt with is that when you discuss ADHD with people who don’t have it, they often know very little about it, and if they do, it’s just the most basic symptoms.

1) mess

If you talk to my family or roommates they can tell you my room is basically always in a state of absolute disaster. I spend so much of my mental power making sure the other parts of my life don’t fall apart that when it comes to cleaning I’ve just got nothing left in the tank. This is a problem. One, because I can’t find things. And two, because as someone with ADHD, I need a clean environment in order to function. But I need to function to keep a clean environment. See the problem?

2) meds

I take medication every day so I can just have the CHANCE of getting something done. But what most people don’t understand about medication for adhd is that it’s a two way street, which is different from other meds. I also happen to take an iron supplement. With that, all I have to do is take it, and magically my iron levels are good. With my adhd meds they don’t magically give you the executive functioning you need to get stuff done. Rather it’s more like they make it easier for you to choose to get stuff done. I call them my motivation drug.

3) discipline

Discipline is HUGE in managing ADHD. Having the will power to sit down and not let yourself get up until you finish your work is something everyone, ADHD or not, has to learn, and for us adhd folk it’s especially hard. When our brain is doing something it doesn’t want to, like homework, it SCREAMS at us to do something else. And we have to drown that out.

4) meds pt. 2

My meds are schedule 1. If you don’t know what schedule means in terms of drugs it’s basically a rank of how likely the drug is to be abused. Therefore it is also a rank of how tightly the government restricts the drug. Schedule 4 would be something not very likely to be abused, these items you probably can buy at your local store no problem. Schedule 1 means it is very likely to be abused and must be prescribed by a doctor. This means a lot of hoop jumping for people like me who are prescribed to two different schedule 1 drugs. The bigger problem however is that as an adult, I have to order my pills myself. You’re asking someone who has adhd to remember to go get a prescription, go get that prescription filled, then remember to pick up said prescription, on a monthly basis. Do you see the problem? I regularly forget to feed myself and you want me to do that? Not to mention actually remembering to TAKE the medication every single day.

5) social situations

Adhd is not simply the inability to focus, as it is often portrayed. Adhd has many many symptoms that very case to case. One thing found in many cases is that kids with adhd often have trouble learning and recognizing social cues. This causes other kids to treat them as weird and often exclude them. It took me until high school to figure out appropriate times to laugh during a conversation. Even to this day I spend a lot of effort ensuring I’m reacting correctly during interactions, something that is instinctual in non adhd people.

This is just a couple of things I deal with on a daily basis and I sincerely hope that everyone can take away something from this post whether it’s consolidation as a fellow adhd person or new knowledge and understanding as someone without adhd.

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rosemarieca · 4 years ago

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What we know and what we don't about CBD

Cannabidiol (CBD) has been as of late shrouded in the media, and you may have even considered it to be an included supporter of your post-exercise smoothie or morning espresso. What precisely is CBD? For what reason is it unexpectedly so well known?

How is cannabidiol not the same as cannabis?

CBD represents cannabidiol. It is the second generally pervasive of the dynamic elements of cannabis (marijuana). While CBD is a basic part of clinical cannabis, it is gotten straightforwardly from the hemp plant, which is a cousin of the weed plant. While CBD is a segment of weed (one of the hundreds), without anyone else it doesn't cause a "high." According to a report from the World Health Organization, "In people, CBD shows no impact characteristic of any maltreatment or reliance potential…. Until this point in time, there is no proof of general well being related issues related to the utilization of unadulterated CBD."

Is cannabidiol legitimate?

CBD is promptly reachable in many pieces of the United States, however, its definite legitimate status is in motion. Every one of the 50 states has laws sanctioning CBD with differing levels of limitation, and keeping in mind that the central government actually thinks about CBD in a similar class as pot, it doesn't routinely authorize it. In December 2015, the FDA facilitated the administrative prerequisites to permit specialists to direct CBD preliminaries. Right now, numerous individuals acquire CBD online without a clinical cannabis permit. The public authority's situation on CBD is befuddling and depends to some extent on whether the CBD comes from hemp or marijuana. The legitimacy of CBD is relied upon to change, as there is at a present bipartisan agreement in Congress to make the hemp crop lawful which would, in every practical sense, make CBD hard to forbid.

The proof for cannabidiol medical advantages

CBD has been promoted for a wide assortment of medical problems, however, the most grounded logical proof is for its viability in treating probably the cruelest youth epilepsy conditions, for example, Dravet disorder and Lennox-Gastaut condition (LGS), which commonly don't react to anti-seizure prescriptions. In various examinations, CBD had the option to lessen the number of seizures, and at times, it had the option to stop them by and large. Recordings of the impacts of CBD on these kids and their seizures are promptly accessible on the Internet for a survey, and they are very striking. As of late, the FDA affirmed the first-historically speaking cannabis-inferred medication for these conditions, Epidiolex, which contains CBD.

CBD is regularly used to address nervousness, and for patients who endure the wretchedness of sleep deprivation, consider proposing that CBD may assist with both nodding off and staying unconscious.

CBD may offer a possibility for treating various kinds of constant torment. An examination from the European Journal of Pain appeared, utilizing a creature model, CBD applied on the skin could help lower agony and aggravation because of joint inflammation. Another investigation showed the component by which CBD hinders fiery and neuropathic torment, two of the most troublesome sorts of persistent agony to treat. More investigation in people is required here to prove the cases of CBD advocates about agony control.

Is cannabidiol safe?

Symptoms of CBD incorporate queasiness, weakness, and peevishness. CBD can build the level in your blood of the blood more slender coumadin, and it can raise levels of certain different prescriptions in your blood by precisely the same instrument that grapefruit juice does. A critical wellbeing worry with CBD is that it is essentially advertised and sold as an enhancement, not a drug. At present, the FDA doesn't control the wellbeing and immaculateness of dietary enhancements. So you can't know without a doubt that the item you purchase has dynamic fixings at the portion recorded on the mark. Moreover, the item may contain other (obscure) components. We additionally don't have the foggiest idea about the best helpful portion of CBD for a specific ailment.

The lawful status of CBD in Spain

Spain is quite possibly the most liberal hemp creating nations in the European Union, just after the Netherlands. Spanish laws are agreeable to the overall EU law on mechanical hemp to formally permit the creation and acquisition of quality CBD products as like as KSP CBD Barcelona containing under 0,2% of THC. A portion of the self-ruling areas in Spain permit the deals of clinical items containing over the predetermined level of THC, however, Spain doesn't permit it on a state level.

In 2018, the EU restricted the utilization of CBD oil as a food added substance for human utilization. Hemp seeds and skincare items are as yet permitted under EU enactment, however.

Spain is both a problem area of modern Hemp development just as probably the biggest center for Cannabis research in Europe. This additionally appears through the way that Spain has the greatest cannabis occasion in Europe called Spannabis. It is a yearly occasion that has been held in Barcelona since 2002.

Barcelona is also one of the first places on the European continent to host the culture of cannabis culturally and semi-legally. This is a warm climate with a young population. His diverse outlook and an entrepreneurial mindset are important factors that have recently influenced the growth of cannabis culture in this Hispanic region. With the progress that the KSP CBD Barcelona industry has already made here in such a short time, we can only predict great things to come in the future!

In Spannabis you can discover items identified with the cannabis plant, and its modern uses like beautifiers, footwear, materials, building materials, or food.

Great offer near you for CBD products

If you want to buy KSP CBD Quality Products you can visit our website Kingskarrapharm.com because we are running a promo: KSP WINTER OFFER Use the coupon INVIERNO and get a 25% discount on all our products! Unlimited use, hurry up!

#CBD

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michaela-renee-blog · 7 years ago

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Skin Blemishes: At the Core

My journey with Products, Diet, Hormones, and Learning to Accept Myself.

Hello beautiful souls,

Time is slipping by faster than I expected as I’m preparing for my move across the country. It feels a little surreal to be honest. In the midst of finishing up my classes and trying to get my ducks in a row for the move, I’ve also been working really hard to get my health on track… and I’m sure you all can attest to that being way easier said than done!

In all honesty — I am stressed as all get out and really trying to get that under control. When I thought about how I wanted to structure this post, my initial thought was to make it seem like things were fine and just give an update with some advice for those who can resonate with my present journey… but then I realized I’d be leaving out some crucial truths. Things aren’t always peachy, and pretending as if they are hurts no one other than ourselves because living that façade suppresses our true emotions. And Lord knows what gets suppressed will always find a way to surface eventually. So, as said by Gabrielle Bernstein, your wounds are your wisdom. Your wounds have transcended you above that low place; sharing your story is your life credibility and will be what moves others.

So here I am, sharing my truths in

hopes that my light might shine bright

enough to show you yours as well.

My Wound: Adult Acne

It might sound silly but one of my biggest wounds is my adult acne — I’m 20 years old and have had it on and off since age 13. Most of my health reforms and lifestyle changes have actually come from trying to combat it. Of course I spent the first few years trying every acne scrub, cleanser, topical and prescription but they all left me feeling hopeless. My spiritual journey has skyrocketed within the past year and I quickly realized we are what we eat. So I stopped consuming alcohol, dairy, refined carbs and sugar, grains, and most meats. I’d say my diet is mainly paleo but almost vegan. The key to a paleo diet is consuming whole foods- fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, healthy oils, and lean protein. I haven’t eaten red meat since last year but I sometimes use egg whites in my recipes and have the occasional can of tuna or piece of chicken — no one is perfect but if I do eat an animal product I make sure it’s hormone free.

Some of you might think that sounds miserable but honestly it doesn’t feel like a restricting diet anymore because my body has actually begun to crave these healthy foods. My biggest weakness was chocolate and lucky for me cacao is actually a pretty healthy food as well — in moderation of course! I also traded my daily coffee for spearmint tea (which is good for decreasing androgen levels); this transition is still a little challenging because I LOVE coffee but it’s known to cause lots of inflammation so I gave it up. I also threw out all of my toxic cleansers, makeups, and hair products and have started replacing everything with essential oils and products that are made from plants instead. I stopped taking my acne prescription, Spironolactone (because after 4 months I saw no difference despite it supposedly being the miracle drug for hormonal acne) and replaced it with a vitamin called Saw Palmetto.

You might have noticed my concern with the hormonal aspect of acne. I hypothesize that I have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) but I haven’t been tested yet because for one, who has the time right now (not this girl) and two, having government provided health insurance doesn’t give me the best medical care options (I’m still grateful to have at least that though). PCOS causes women to have higher androgen levels which produces more sebum and therefore acne; it also causes problems with hair growth, weight loss, menstruation and even fertility. Which concerns me because I currently have the Mirena IUD, which could also be triggering acne and potentially making the PCOS worse — there are just so many factors to control for! I also take an array of vitamins for that, but I won’t bore you with listing them unless you ask me.

Spiritual Cause of Acne

As you can see, this is causing me lots of distress because I’m trying so hard but still with no prevail. Appearance isn’t everything but what gets displayed on our skin is an obvious indication of what’s going on beneath it. So after all this time, I finally looked up the spiritual cause of acne this past weekend. When I tell you what I found you’re probably going to think, “Duh, Michaela I could have told you that” but it was a significant confirmation for me. I found that strong emotions such as worry and stress might be the culprit because they cultivate a spirit of fear. I mean obviously I’m stressed — I set the bar way too high for myself in almost all aspects of my life and am extremely hard on myself whenever I can’t meet those expectations.

I mentally exert myself and work way too hard every day for a degree I don’t even want. As I said in a previous blog, I chose to study psychology my sophomore year and got my very first 4.0 during the first semester. I became addicted to that little number and have pushed myself so hard to meet that expectation again this semester — and currently I’ve succeeded — but at what cost? My mental balance, my skin and my health. That GPA was important for quite some time because I thought I’d be going on to get my doctorate, but I now know that what I want to do doesn’t even require a doctorate. However, I still wanted to get one. For one, because I knew I could and for two, the satisfaction of my fear-based human ego.

I want to be a spiritual leader and help people break away from the chains of instilled fear, encouraged ignorance and their own personal bondage. With this passion, I am often times telling people very uncomfortable, suppressed truths that they might not be ready to hear. This leads to a lot of public rejection which naturally depresses the spirit. This is why I felt it necessary to attain my doctorate and prove to others that I know what I’m talking about. The sad part is, the wisdom I discover can’t be cited from any book or increased with any institutionalized education because it comes to me divinely — when my human thoughts are quieted and my third eye is open.

The third eye can only be open when you have healed your wounds, transcended above your human concerns, and are at a peaceful state of existence because you know that God’s plan is far greater than your own. Participating in any fear based thoughts distances you from this divine reality and for me, rejection is my biggest fear based thought. I’ve been publicly rejected for nearly my entire life — when I was the baby no one wanted, the “poor kid” that didn’t quite know how to fit in with the “normal kids,” the teenager with “daddy and mommy problems,” and finally the college freshman with a drinking problem (not that that’s abnormal at IU though). All of these instances also lead to me disliking and rejecting myself as well. With the skin being the largest filter organ of the body, these negative thoughts and suppressed emotions actually manifested into physical clogs on my face.

Before this weekend, I couldn’t understand why I was still dealing with these clogs now that I’ve taken responsibility for my life and changed nearly every aspect of it. I now understand that deep down I am still dealing with some self-rejection. After a weekend of devastation over my skin, I started my morning by practicing some self-love yoga and when I was finished I whispered to myself, you are worthy of your purpose. I do not know where it came from but as soon as I said it tears started streaming down my face and I felt my body become lighter as my worries and rejection slipped away. I’m repeating this mantra to myself whenever I begin to doubt it because our bodies are our divinely created vessels, sent here from the cosmos to

Follow our hearts.

Live our purpose.

And do so fearlessly.

I must remember that I am worthy of becoming a spiritual leader. I am doing the right thing in following my heart to Arizona. I am wise enough to share the universal truths… and I don’t need to prove anything to anyone. The same goes for you; you ARE enough. We are in this together, as one collective unit and I hope the honesty of my story might help you remember and embrace your truths today. You’ll know you’re warm when you uncover something that brings you great discomfort because that is the place that so desperately needs your attention… and when you find that wounded place, it will be valuable to remember what Rumi said, the wound is the place where the light enters you.

Peace and blessings,

Michaela

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clinicalcannabisincontext · 7 years ago

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Poisoning or Overdose: Can you tell me a funny story about a time when you overdosed on alcohol?

With the fentanyl crisis, this comes up over and over again. What is the difference and why should we care? For overdose vs poisoning, it is useful to start with alcohol, which holds a privileged place in our society. As an ER doc, I frequently have patients who are extremely intoxicated, to the point of being unable to get up. We generally refer to these people as drunk, but the proper diagnosis is overdose of alcohol. Poisoning refers to when people ingest something that they weren’t expecting or given something that is not generally for people (laundry pods). In the case of alcohol, people generally are aware that the Jager shots they have consumed actually contain Jägermeister, they just choose to ingest too much of it, therefore the appropriate term is alcohol overdose. Many of us have frequently told stories of events or behaviour that happened after alcohol excess, but how many phrase it in terms of “the time they overdosed on alcohol”?

Now let’s go back to America under Prohibition, where someone searching for clean alcohol would run into the same problems as a heroin user today. If you were rich you could have a doctor write you a prescription for alcohol or purchase high quality black market products. If you didn’t have the money, but still wanted to continue your recreational drug (alcohol) abuse, you were forced onto the street, risking the purchase of adulterated alcohol, from which you might overdose (get too much alcohol) or be poisoned (by methanol or by one of toxins added to industrial alcohol by the US government). Many thousands of people were poisoned by their use of recreational alcohol, but the prevailing attitude in the newspapers was of indifference as “they knew the risks” http://time.com/3665643/deadly-drinking/

Moving on to current issues. Heroin is not the problem. While the chance of acute overdose is higher with heroin than alcohol, if the heroin is pharmaceutically produced, given in known quantities, and not mixed with other sedatives, the risks are minimal. In fact, if you had the choice between consuming a moderate amount of heroin every day of your life versus taking a moderate amount of alcohol every day of your life, you would likely live longer with the heroin as the long term consequences of alcohol use are so grave. I began my career at St. Paul’s during an increase in heroin deaths that ultimately spurred the opening of Insite, the first supervised injection site in North America. This increase in deaths was due to the introduction of very potent heroin, destabilizing the supply. To bring it back to the alcohol analogy, it was like a bar where you have to spin a wheel to see if you get a choice of drinking your beer or chugging a pint of Everclear. I would term this an accidental overdose.

Despite numerous claims that there has been fentanyl in cannabis, even a few days ago from a Vice President of the CMA, Snopes recently debunked this. Despite this, many of my patients are terrified of purchasing street cannabis because of the risk of fentanyl poisoning. Again, they aren’t expecting fentanyl at all in this product, so the correct term is poisoning. Now, I think people have many good reasons to purchase from licensed producers or dispensaries, but fentanyl phobia shouldn’t be one of them because so far it has remained as much of an urban legend as cannabis edibles being given out to Trick or Treaters.

People developed a taste for fentanyl through pharmaceutical diversion. Smoking old fentanyl patches and diversion of patches dovetailed with physician’s ease in prescribing them to cause some market need. But the change in fentanyl really happened with industrial scale fentanyl production and exporting from China. Heroin is hard to get and often involves travel to places where people sport as much weaponry as facial hair (I’m thinking about you, Afghanistan). While for relatively small risk, some technical savvy can let you use bitcoins to order a kilo brick of fentanyl to be delivered to the door of your stooge. The rates of interception are low and the profit margin is extreme. While poisoning your clients with a new incredibly potent opiate isn’t great for business, the fact that few care about their lives makes it easier for it to happen. Cocaine is not terribly toxic as far as acute overdose. Chronic moderate use lacks the carcinogenic potential of alcohol and would be a better choice for longevity, if one had to make a decision between the two. Of course, addition of a superpotent illicit opiate increases the possibility of death, but this would be by poisoning rather than overdose. I don’t generally support manslaughter charges for those accused of selling fentanyl, but it’s easier to make this case for the adulteration of cocaine than for heroin. These cases tend to be quite high profile, both because of their unexpected nature and the victims tend to be of a higher socioeconomic status than heroin users.

So why does all this matter?

Because stigma matters. Because this stigma makes someone think it’s ok to dump a load of manure at an overdose prevention site. Because it allows us to downplay the damage done by alcohol and tobacco. Because it makes us look at someone who takes prescribed opiates or amphetamines so differently from those who use them on the street, despite identical clinical effects. Because it seems unbelievable to me that naloxone kits were not available to people up until a few years ago and still remain inaccessible to many now. Because this stigma allowed the previous Canadian government to ignore sound medical evidence that safe injection sites save lives and do not encourage drug use.

But the biggest reason is that no one wakes up in the morning and says, “Today is the day I’m going to die from fentanyl”

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lifesobeautiful · 5 years ago

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How Employers Can Help Fight The Opioid Crisis

The opioid crisis is raging on. The news of pharmaceutical companies being sued by consumer groups and state governments grows more frequent every day. Lots of people are pointing the finger at various causes of this epidemic — prescription advertising being deregulated in the 90s, the increase in opioid prescriptions, the availability of opioids streaming in from China.

Proven methods of reducing harm and ending the epidemic are often, unfortunately, swept under the rug. The opioid epidemic is a multi-faceted issue with many different causes and many different outcomes. It’s going to take a multitude of approaches to stop this problem from destroying society. Employers can even help end the opioid epidemic and probably in ways you haven’t even thought of before.

The History of The Opioid Epidemic

Opioid medications have been used since the beginning of human medicine. In 2017, the CDC announced that opioid use had reached epidemic levels in the United States, but the problem had already been building for years before that.

In the 1990s, there was deregulation in pharmaceutical advertising. People started seeing advertisements for different medications and conditions they may never have heard of before, including powerful opioids. Around the same time, medical providers started to include pain levels as a vital sign. Physicians who were assured these medications were safe and only minimally addictive began prescribing them in great numbers.

Deaths from opioids surged 450% from 2001 to 2016 and heroin use and subsequent overdoses also grew significantly. By 2012, people had started to talk about the opioid crisis which resulted in a 20% reduction in prescriptions by 2016, just 4 years later.

Unfortunately, this alone hasn’t been enough to stop the crisis. Subsequent crises such as heroin use and hepatitis outbreaks have continued to rise.

Opioids Have Been Disruptive To The Workplace

The pervasiveness of this epidemic means that you probably know someone who is currently struggling or someone who has died. Even in the workplace, there are employers who consider prescription abuse as a worse issue than using illegal drugs. The biggest challenge, though, is that if an employee has a prescription, this sort of thing won’t show up in a drug test.

Substance abusers miss considerably more work than non-substance abusers. Apart from that, substance abuse in the workplace can lead to more injuries and accidents, too. Nearly a third of employers reported experiencing an arrest, overdose or injury in their place of business.

76% of HR professionals don’t know how to spot the signs of opioid abuse

64% of HR professionals don’t have the training to know how to help an addicted coworker

71% of employers believe addiction should be treated as a medical problem

See Also: Drug Side Effects: More Dangerous Than You Think

Drug Policies Should Be About More Than Drug Testing

Having a drug testing policy in place and following it is a must in this day and age. But if employers are going to join the fight against opioid addiction, they are going to have to take their policies a few steps further.

Many like to think of addicts as people who have made terrible decisions and deserve what they get. But consider this — many people with opioid addiction developed the life-shattering habit after getting a prescription from a doctor. They had surgery of some kind and received prescriptions to help the pain. After a while, they found they have an addiction.

In this situation, you have two options. One is to continue to do what you are doing because you have to keep your job and support your family. Or tell your employer you are going to rehab and risk losing the very health insurance you need to pay for your rehabilitation.

This is why it is crucial for employers to provide a path to rehab for any employee who requests it. This path should include an assurance that they won’t lose their job (which is also included as protection for employees under Federal law), help paying for rehab costs, and a path back to work. It should also include mentoring to keep them on the right track and help them feel normal.

The opioid epidemic is reaching crisis levels. Overall, it’s going to take help from everyone to get things back under control. Learn more about the problem of opioids in the workplace and what can be done about it from the infographic below.

Infographic by US Drug Test Centers

The post How Employers Can Help Fight The Opioid Crisis appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

This article was first shared from Dumb Little Man

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worldwide-blackfolk · 7 years ago

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There are 10 U.S. Army posts named after men who were Confederate generals during the Civil War. Top row, from left: Braxton Bragg, George Edward Pickett, Henry Benning, A.P. Hill and Leonidas Polk. Bottom row, from left: John Brown Gordon, John Bell Hood, Robert E. Lee, Edmund Rucker and Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.

By VERA BERGENGRUEN | McClatchy Washington Bureau (Tribune News Service) | Published: August 17, 2017

WASHINGTON — All around the country, officials are discussing whether to remove memorials and rename public spaces dedicated to Confederate leaders. But not at the Pentagon.

Three of the largest military bases in the world — Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Hood in Texas and Fort Benning in Georgia — are named for Confederate generals. In all, 10 major U.S. Army bases and installations in the South pay tribute to military leaders of the secessionist states, including one named for the reputed Georgia chief of the Ku Klux Klan.

The U.S. Army on Wednesday did not answer repeated questions on whether that is expected to change. But two years ago, the military made it clear that there was “no discussion of adjusting the naming policy,” refusing to follow the path being paved by some state and local officials to rename public squares, schools, roads and even entire cities across the country.

“Every Army installation is named for a soldier who holds a place in our military history,” public affairs chief Army Brig. Gen. Malcolm Frost said in 2015, following a mass shooting by a white supremacist in a Charleston, S.C., church. “Accordingly, these historic names represent individuals, not causes or ideologies.”

On Wednesday, after reports that some of the white supremacists who organized the deadly Charlottesville, Va., rally were linked to the U.S. military, the Army chief of staff tweeted his condemnation.

“The Army doesn’t tolerate racism, extremism, or hatred in our ranks. It’s against our Values and everything we’ve stood for since 1775,” Gen. Mark Milley tweeted.

That same weekend, two black paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division were killed in Iraq. They trained at and deployed from Fort Bragg, a military base that honors a Confederate general who owned more than 100 slaves.

For some, it’s a stark and obvious injustice.

“They are coming out saying ‘we won’t tolerate bigotry’ while operating from bases that honor traitors, who had slaves, who fought against the United States. How does that happen?” said retired Army Lt. Col. Jason Dempsey, who served as special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and is now at the Center for a New American Security. “The senior leadership is more afraid of the ghost of the Columbus, Georgia city council than thinking about all the young black soldiers who pass through Fort Benning.”

Americans are much more likely to face off against civilian government officials to get a public space renamed than they are to go against the military, he said. The military is consistently the most respected institution in the country, according to Gallup. It’s also conservative by nature and loath to get caught up in any contentious debate, Dempsey said.

“People say, ‘I’ll defer to what those guys think.’ As long as the military just wants to ignore it, people are happy to ignore it,” he said. “But the problem is that when it’s senior Army leaders around a table, it’s mostly a bunch of white guys discussing race.”

It’s largely because of the military’s unique position that advocacy groups, from black veterans organizations to the NAACP, have not pushed strongly to rename the bases. Instead, they have focused on issues where public pressure has a bigger impact.

“We have fought for the rights of veterans for many years and have been ignored,” Katherine Washington-Williams, commander for the North Carolina chapter of the National Association of Black Veterans, told McClatchy. “Some battles are not ours … the naming of Fort Bragg is not my concern, veterans rights is more important.”

That does not mean they are forgetting whom these military installations are named after.

Greg Marles, a 69-year old veteran who was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, for five years, says his skin crawled when he had to write down the name of the Confederate general as his work address. He still has scars from being beaten and bitten by police dogs when he and other civil rights activists were detained in Mississippi in 1966, he says.

“Out of all the things I have been involved in in the military, in southeast Asia, in Latin America, the biggest fear for my life was when I was in the South … the hatred of these people was beyond belief,” he said. “I will not, will not go back to that. We cannot go back.”

The base could be named after countless Texan military leaders who had “nothing to do with the Civil War,” he said.

But even Marles, a lifelong civil rights activist who used to wear wigs and sunglasses to register people to vote because he was on active duty, is focusing his energy on the removal of a statue in San Antonio along with his local NAACP chapter. It’s “more of a sure thing” than changing the name of Fort Hood, he says, even though that is “beyond insulting.”

Critics point out that with a rich history of American military leaders to choose from, it’s ridiculous to argue for major bases to keep the names of Confederate generals who weren’t even particularly skilled or liked in their own time.

The namesake of Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Gen. Braxton Bragg, was a disastrous military leader during the Civil War. Known as a bully and loathed by his fellow generals, his outdated tactics led to the slaughter of many of his troops. His most recent biography is titled “The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy.”

Even so, the largest military installation in the world, by population, proudly bears his name. More than a quarter of the 50,000 active duty personnel are African-American. Except for a few scattered editorials and social media posts, there has been little movement to change it.

Three thousand miles away, a coastal city with the same name has engaged in a passionate debate about history and memory. After the Charleston shooting, the California Legislative Black Caucus called for Fort Bragg, Calif., to change its name. Lawmakers argued that the name sullied the state’s reputation and insulted black Californians by glorifying “such a disgraced and treasonous figure in our nation’s history.”

But that was unusual. In most of the country there’s been little such talk. Take Camp Beauregard in Louisiana, a National Guard base, which honors Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, a Confederate general who led the attack on Fort Sumter that marked the beginning of the Civil War.

While a 102-year old statue of the general was removed from New Orleans in May, there has been no discussion about changing the camp’s name.

“To literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places of honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past,” New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in May about removing the monument. “It is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future.”

Some installations openly celebrate the lore of Confederate battles. The U.S. Army Garrison at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia is named after Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill, “a Virginia native who distinguished himself as a Confederate commander during the Civil War,” its website states. “He was mortally wounded as he rode his stallion, Champ, to the front. He had not yet reached his 40th birthday.”

Fort Gordon, another U.S. Army base in Georgia, is named after John Brown Gordon; not only was he a Confederate general, but he was reported to be the leader of the state’s Ku Klux Klan. By the time he died in 1904, he had “become for many Georgians, and southerners in general, the living embodiment of the Confederacy,” according to a Georgia Historical Society publication.

#confederate flag #us army

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fitnesshealthyoga-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/us-lawmakers-hone-in-on-pbm-role-in-insulin-prices/

US Lawmakers Hone in on PBM Role in Insulin Prices

US lawmakers are focusing on the role that pharmaceutical middlemen may play in the rising cost of insulin, which is making the critical drug unaffordable for many people with diabetes.

Influential members of Congress from both parties say they will work together to try to put insulin within financial reach of more Americans.

It’s estimated that around 7.5 million Americans are taking insulin, including 1.2 million who have type 1 diabetes and require daily insulin. Type 2 diabetes, which affects nearly 30 million Americans according to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), is treated with a variety of other medications but many of those patients may also eventually become dependent on insulin.

In letters released yesterday, leaders of the Senate Finance Committee demanded detailed information from three of the nation’s biggest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs): Cigna’s Express Scripts, CVS Health Corp, and UnitedHealth’s Optum unit.

The senators want to bring into the light the often unseen mechanisms that let PBMs profit from serving as a go-between on insulin prescriptions between patients and manufacturers.

“Even though insulin has been used to treat diabetes for almost 100 years, its price has continued to increase, putting stress on patients and taxpayers alike,” wrote Senate Finance Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the committee’s ranking Democrat.

The information demanded by Grassley and Wyden will likely frame the debate for an April 9 Senate Finance hearing on PBMs. Senate Finance has also summoned executives from Humana and Prime Therapeutics to appear at the hearing.

And in the House of Representatives yesterday, a hearing with diabetes experts also set the stage for an expected deeper examination of insulin costs later this month.

Prices for commonly prescribed insulins rose over the past two decades from about $20 per vial to over $250 per vial — a more than 700% increase after adjusting for inflation, said the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee in a background memo for the hearing.

Spiraling insulin prices reflect poorly on the work of PBMs as negotiators, at least when it comes to serving patients, according to Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-GA), who owns drugstores in his community and describes himself as Congress’ only pharmacist.

“Their mission is to keep prescription drug prices low,” Carter said at the hearing. “Well, I would ask you, ‘How’s that working out?’ Obviously, it’s not working out very well at all.”

Call for More Transparency Around PBM Pricing Strategies

Like the Senate Finance Committee, Carter argues for a need for greater information about the rebates paid to PBMs. In January, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a plan to allow discounts on prescription medicines to flow more directly to patients in the Medicare Part D pharmacy program, while disrupting the flow of rebates to PBMs.

Carter and his Democratic and Republican colleagues want more open access to information about PBMs’ rebates, price concessions, and other direct or indirect remuneration in prescription drug plans.

The House Energy and Commerce’s Health Subcommittee last month approved a bill to increase transparency in drug pricing that Carter had put forward with Democratic and GOP colleagues. It would provide the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission with more access to data on rebates, a step that could aid Congress with future PBM legislation.

“When you have three PBMs that control almost 80% of the market, I don’t think we have enough competition in that area,” Carter said. “We need transparency. It’s the only way that we’re ever going to see exactly how we attack this problem that impacts everyone. It is a nonpartisan problem.”

There’s deep shared interest among Democrats and Republicans in Congress in addressing drug costs, with insulin a particular cause of concern.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations panel, said she and her GOP counterpart on the panel had planned yesterday’s hearing together.

She and Rep. Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, the panel’s ranking Republican, had agreed on the selection of witnesses. That’s a break from tradition, in which the minority party usually gets to weigh in on only one choice of a witness for a hearing, DeGette said.

DeGette has a notable track record for helping bring both parties together to pass health law. She was a key lawmaker behind the 2016 passage of the 21st Century Cures Act, a law meant to aid biomedical research. DeGette has cited her daughter’s type 1 diabetes as one of her reasons for championing that measure.

“We are committed to fixing this,” said DeGette at the hearing on insulin prices. “We are committed to a bipartisan solution.”

Why Can’t CMS Pay for Insulin?

A perhaps more surprising example of bipartisanship at the hearing was a quick endorsement from Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a liberal Democrat from Illinois, for an idea tossed out by Rep. Michael C. Burgess, MD, a conservative Republican from Texas.

Burgess suggested having Medicare and Medicaid pick up the tab for insulin for patients with diabetes. Burgess and Schakowsky spoke of this idea as a potential cost saver for these programs, sparing them from having to pay to treat complications people suffer because of poorly controlled diabetes.

“Why do we even charge for insulin? If someone has got a diagnosis of diabetes, why not just treat it?” Burgess said. “Why would the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS] not just cover that?”

Skipping doses of insulin because of cost puts people at risk for “devastating and sometimes deadly complications,” including cardiovascular and kidney disease, blindness, and lower-limb amputations, William T. Cefalu, MD, chief scientific and medical officer of the ADA, told the House panel.

“The amount of money a person pays for insulin is going to have a direct effect on their adherence,” Cefalu said in reply to Burgess’ suggestion. “Whatever we can do to lower the cost of insulin is going to increase adherence.”

Burgess noted that Energy and Commerce has jurisdiction for the Medicare and Medicaid programs. He said he intended to follow up with CMS Administrator Seema Verma on the idea of providing insulin without charging patients in government health plans.

“In a federal program, why don’t we just cover it?” Burgess wondered.

“That’s a question that I think this committee in Congress needs to ask,” replied Cefalu.

Sellers’ Market: Patients Skimping on Insulin a Common Occurrence

In his testimony, Cefalu also urged Congress to have the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) further streamline the process for clearing so-called biosimilar insulins.

Prices for these copycat versions of pricier insulin analogs won’t drop until there are several potential rivals that can be substituted for the brand-name version, he said.

The FDA has also announced a May 13 public hearing about steps needed to bring more competition to the insulin market. As previously reported by Medscape Medical News, there has been some reluctance on the part of physicians and patients to switch to biosimilars.

Although biosimilar insulins are cheaper than branded insulins, the prices have not yet been low enough to make changing products enticing in some cases.

“While the regulatory transition of insulin products nears, we’re cognizant of the fact that it won’t be soon enough for the millions of Americans who struggle to pay for their insulin today,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, said in a statement. “We all need to do our part. A drug that’s nearly a century old should not have a list price that increases between 15% to 17% annually.”

At the House hearing, Kasia Lipska, MD, MHS, of Yale-New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, spoke about her published research that found one in four insulin-treated patients surveyed at the Yale Diabetes Center rationed their insulin because of cost.

Lipska told the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations panel these results indicate the phenomenon of people skimping on insulin is common nationwide.

And Rep. Raul Ruiz, MD, (D-CA) told his colleagues on the Energy and Commerce panel about having seen this phenomenon in both his own family and his own practice, as an emergency room physician. Patients who are not yet suffering ill effects or diabetes complications may be unwilling to pay for insulin, putting themselves at risk, he said.

“I’ve done talks about how this is the silent killer,” Ruiz said.

He explained how he has struggled to persuade his uncle, who has diabetes, to take adequate insulin. Ruiz said his uncle rebuffs the advice, saying he’d rather put his money toward buying groceries and filling his gas tank to get to work.

In the ER, Ruiz said he saw people who had fallen into diabetic ketoacidosis and hyperglycemic comas because of missing insulin doses, and he said he has treated people for pain caused by neuropathy and cardiac arrest.

And through his work as a community activist, he has witnessed the struggles of people to come up with the money for insulin. He said he once encountered an elderly woman rummaging through trash. She told him she was looking for aluminum cans, for which she could collect rebates. The money she earned this way would pay for insulin. Ruiz said the woman tried to reassure him about her situation.

“‘Don’t worry, doctor,’ she told me. ‘Don’t worry. I only take half a dose, so it can last,'” Ruiz recalled.

Ask the Tough Questions: Why Has the Price of Insulin Skyrocketed?

Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-CA), who also has family members with diabetes, said lawmakers must act quickly to address the forces that are putting insulin beyond the reach of many Americans.

“Something is broken and people look to Congress” to fix it, Barragán said, calling for a hearing with representatives of PBMs and insulin makers as witnesses.

“I want us to ask the tough questions,” she said. “We’ve got to get down to why this is happening. Why is it that [the price of] insulin has skyrocketed?”

Barragán said Congress should also act to assuage public concerns about lawmakers’ financial ties to drugmakers, noting that many Americans think Congress has failed to do much on drug prices because of the lobbying influence of drugmakers.

The pharmaceutical industry has been a significant contributor for many years to congressional campaigns of both Democratic and Republican candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a well-respected nonprofit group based in Washington.

“We have to come together to show that we don’t care about the lobby, we don’t care about private industry in the sense that we are colluding with them, because sometimes the American people think that,” she observed.

Barragán seemed to have missed an earlier comment from DeGette, who said her panel will call executives from three insulin makers to appear at a hearing.

She did not immediately name the companies whose representatives she has summoned. But, given her comment, it appears likely that she meant the three big insulin manufacturers, Eli Lilly, Sanofi, and Novo Nordisk.

At the hearing, DeGette asked permission to interrupt Barragán as the junior member of the committee argued for a need to call a hearing with drugmakers and PBMs.

“We’re bringing them in next week,” DeGette told Barragán, who replied “Fantastic.” “You’re welcome,” DeGette said.

For more diabetes and endocrinology news, follow us on Twitter and on Facebook.

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toldnews-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/health/curbing-surprise-medical-bills-draws-rare-bipartisan-interest/

Curbing surprise medical bills draws rare bipartisan interest

This story is from Kaiser Health News

Surrounded by patients who told horror stories of being stuck with hefty bills, President Donald Trump recently waded into a widespread health care problem for which almost everyone — even those with insurance — is at risk: surprise medical billing.

Trump’s declaration that taming unexpected bills would be a top priority for his administration echoed through the halls of Congress, where a handful of Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been studying the problem the past couple of years.

The sudden presidential interest has lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressing optimism about attacking a problem that has affected 57 percent of American adults, according to a University of Chicago survey conducted last summer. Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the influential Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, recently told reporters that he expects to see surprise billing legislation “in the next several months.”

Alexander is encouraged by the movement on both sides of the aisle, said a committee spokesman — giving a particular nod to the efforts of Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.). “The chairman looks forward to reviewing their work and hopes it leads to a bipartisan consensus on how to address the issue,” the spokesman added.

“Indications in Congress have always been that this would be something they could do on a bipartisan basis,” said Paul Ginsburg, a health economist at the Brookings Institution, a D.C.-based think tank.

Attention to this practice, which involves charging patients for care that is more expensive than anticipated or not covered by their insurance, has grown following an ongoing Kaiser Health News-NPR “Bill of the Month” investigation into medical billing at large.

While appetite for policymaking is on the upswing, the details of a possible solution remain up in the air.

The Trump administration has not laid out precisely how it would take on surprise bills. But key lawmakers, including Alexander and Cassidy, have met with administration officials to discuss how to reduce health care costs.

With an eye toward drafting legislation, these two senators and several others have been consulting with billing experts, as well as state and local officials, about the biggest challenges and most promising approaches being used around the country.

And, though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has yet to address the issue, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said it would be a priority.

“Ending surprise billing is an important part of Democrats’ ongoing effort to lower out-of-pocket health costs, and we’ll be working on it in the coming Congress,” said Henry Connelly, a Pelosi spokesman.

Previously introduced bills would impose new notification requirements, as well as limitations on what doctors and hospitals might charge patients. They would regulate bills for either emergency care at an out-of-network facility, or non-emergency care when the facility is in-network but the doctor is not.

A draft bill pushed by Cassidy — a gastroenterologist by trade and the leader of a small, bipartisan group of senators studying the issue — would cap what patients pay, and prohibit balance billing, when a patient is expected to make up the difference between what the provider charged and what the insurer paid. Instead of arbitration, the state would set the amount a health plan must pay. In the absence of a local policy, health plans would default to a federal formula outlined in the bill. (This is similar to laws passed in California and Connecticut.)

(MORE: Parents who don’t vaccinate kids tend to be affluent, better educated, experts say)

A bill from Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) would tackle the issue by preventing a hospital, physician group or other medical provider from charging patients more for an emergency procedure than they would have expected to pay for in-network care. It would then establish an arbitration process to determine what the patient’s health plan should pay. (This is similar to laws passed in New York and New Jersey.) A bill from Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), the chairman of the House Ways and Means’ health subcommittee, introduced during the last Congress with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), would require hospitals to notify patients whether they, and the doctors and other providers the patient would see there, are in-network, as well as how much patients could expect to pay out-of-pocket. Without at least 24 hours’ notice and the patient’s consent — or if the patient was receiving same-day, emergency treatment — the hospital would be able to charge the patient no more than an in-network provider would.

To draw attention to the issue, Hassan planned to bring a guest to Tuesday’s State of the Union address who was billed more than $1,600 for a trip to an in-network emergency room. The patient learned after the fact that the doctor she briefly saw there was out-of-network.

“There does seem to be across-the-board understanding that what’s happening to patients right now isn’t right or fair,” Hassan told KHN.

Other members of Congress, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), will bring guests with painful, personal stories regarding the high cost of prescription drugs.

For its part, the administration says its commitment to addressing surprise medical bills is firm.

“President Trump has identified surprise medical bills as a serious concern of the administration. Protecting patients from these outrageous and unexpected bills and charges is a top priority for Secretary [Alex] Azar,” said Caitlin Oakley, a Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman.

Hassan said she has not heard anything from the White House. But as Congress shifts its focus away from the partial government shutdown, she predicted, surprise billing could emerge as a legislative priority, adding that she and Cassidy have coordinated on the issue.

Both Hassan’s and Cassidy’s bills “would go a long way toward protecting patients,” suggested Zack Cooper, a Yale health economist who researches surprise billing. Hassan’s legislation, he said, has the additional benefit of likely bringing down health care costs.

“There are a lot of issues that can’t be fixed or at least can’t be fixed easily. This is an issue that causes immense pain and is quite visceral and can be fixed,” Cooper said.

And federal legislation is likely necessary, experts say. Some states have passed laws meant to curb surprise billing, and to protect patients from the costs — but those laws don’t affect self-insured large employers, which fall under federal jurisdiction and affect more than 60 percent of people who get insurance through work.

The presidential bully pulpit could be hugely influential — in particular, Ginsburg suggested, by “leaning on Congress” to bring legislation to Trump’s desk.

And new legislation probably is the most effective vehicle, health policy experts said. It’s unclear whether or what kind of executive action HHS could take without Congress.

“Some creative lawyers could come up with creative interpretations [of existing laws] and lead to smart policy,” said Barak Richman, a Duke University law school professor who focuses on health policy.

But re-interpreting federal law would almost certainly invite legal challenges, he added.

Already, competing industry groups are lobbying to put their stamp on any federal policy. The emergency physicians’ trade group has backed an approach like Hassan’s, while the insurance lobby is calling for a Cassidy-style bill. When asked about the industry’s response, Hassan said she has gotten “a variety of feedback — as you would expect.”

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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