We have all heard of lobbyists, both from “good” and “bad” organizations, companies and trade associations roaming through the halls of Congress and pretty much everywhere, trying to further their myriad economic, social and political agendas.

Those who still watch TV network news are very familiar with all kinds of erectile dysfunction drugs, arthritis, asthma, mental disorder, prostate, stomach, bladder, toe nail and other kinds of remedies offered by large pharmaceutical companies.

A lot of these drugs are found later to be downright deadly and pulled from the shelves, but until that time, they are perfectly able to bring billions to their manufacturers. After all, in most cases a huge part of the research leading to the development of many drugs is funded directly by government research grants and not really by the manufacturers, who have the gall of offering pills, costing them pennies for an often-exorbitant price. The Big Pharma excuses usually refer to “development costs”, indeed, those same costs, which you the taxpayer have already borne by paying for the research grants.

But lets not forget those expensive drug commercials during the network news, or multi-page ads in newspapers and magazines – those supremely annoying page-after-page ads, which contain warnings and disclaimers in fine print. Don’t be fooled for a minute that this information is meant as a “public service”. What it really amounts to is: “we warned you ahead of time, so if the drug damages your body, or kills you, you have been forewarned and shouldn’t sue us”.

This is not to say that all drugs are dangerous, or bad for you. There are some that actually help people, or cure them of all kinds of diseases. The lowly, inexpensive aspirin comes to mind, along with some antibiotics and some of the statin drugs (which should be used with care, in our opinion).

There is also no doubt that most drugs – at least those sold and pushed in the U.S. are way overpriced, others are way overused and others – at least according to Big Pharma-are actually underused.

That’s why you see so many of those drug ads and commercials and that is why that the big and even small pharmaceutical companies employ legions of sales representatives – not necessarily in the halls of Congress, but in physician’s offices, medical schools, publishing houses and everywhere their presence is deemed to be necessary for the financial well being of their companies.

How many of you have noticed the usually attractive, well-dressed women and men, towing roller cases through buildings housing “doctors’” offices? They seem to be ever-present. How about the reps bringing in catered lunches to the physician’s offices on a regular basis? Leaving tons of samples of their products, so the physicians can use them themselves, give them free of charge to their family members, or friends and to their patients?

Lets not be gullible and think that the samples and the lunches are given out of the goodness of the Big Pharma’s “hearts”. How about the exotic trips, golf vacations, dinners and gifts of all sorts?

Its is a nice, comfortable arrangement for many “doctors”, who in return for all of these favors often prescribe the drugs pushed by the reps, instead of treating their patients with the best (and often cheaper) of the available medicines.

At the same time, several university medical centers such as Yale have barred drug company sales reps from bringing free lunches to staff physicians. Yale might have been motivated to do so by the ‘C’ grade it received from the American Medical Student Association, a national group that rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money.

We wonder if this trend will flourish and eventually bring about a ban throughout the medical industry. Frankly, we doubt it, as the whole shtick is much too comfy and profitable for all of the beneficiaries of such practices. This is corruption on a grand scale.

In the meantime, expect for the medical and drug expenses to continue climbing out of sight and to continue paying through the nose for health care, whether the Democrats manage to push the health care reform through, or not.

Technorati Tags: ads, Big Pharma, commercials, dinners, Drugs, free lunches, gifts, golf vacations, sales reps, Unethical Game

The Washington, DC area got hit with the largest snowstorm in years last December, and then in late January a few more inches fell. Despite the fact that cross country skiing was just sublime in both cases, these events caused all kinds of problems, partly because the people responsible for clearing the roads were relying – as usual on chemicals, rather than snowplows and sand.

The pre-treating of the roads with salt has actually created ice under the beautiful, dry and powdery snow. There was no reason for spreading chemicals, particularly in view of the fact that the temperatures were much too low for salt to do any good. What it indeed caused were numerous accidents, and often the inability to slow down, stop, or climb inclines – all courtesy of the Virginia, Maryland and District of Columbia departments of transportation.

Where a plowed (or even unplowed) roadway would have been fairly easily to negotiate without salt, the authorities – that are apparently already running out of money because of their extravagant use of chemicals and hiring of often unnecessary private trucks – the salt-melted and then re-frozen snow created expensive and often very dangerous skating rinks for cars, usually in all the worst places.

Seems like still another example of our tax dollars at work.

As we write this on Friday morning, another snowstorm, which is supposed to last more than 24 hours and dump around two feet of snow in the area, is fast approaching.

The snow blowers, snow shovels and bags of salt have long been unavailable. The authorities – such as they might be – have strongly recommended that everyone stay indoors for the duration and basically get ready to watch the Super Bowl. Consequently, the grocery stores got totally overwhelmed by mobs of often glassy-eyed shoppers, filling their carts to overflowing with milk, beer, Wonder “bread”, pretzels, bottled water and the inevitable soup cans, “flavored” with among other things high fructose corn syrup.

Even late in the evening on Wednesday and Thursday it was almost impossible to find a parking spot at any of the local supermarkets. Inside, practically every person pushing a shopping cart was breaking the indoor speed limits, the shelves were often bare and the lines at the registers snaked around into almost every aisle. It appeared that it would take at least an hour just to get to a cashier, or a self-checkout gizmo.

If six, or even 24 inches of snow can cause such mayhem, we wonder how things would look, if we actually faced a real, serious emergency…

Technorati Tags: Nation’s Capital, Panic, Snow salt, Snowmageddon, stores, washington

Many of you must have heard by now that the Senate finance committee passed its version of health care reform legislation. The bill would expand coverage without increasing the deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, in part by taxing the most expensive health insurance plans, the so-called “Cadillac plans.”

The problem is that many of those plans, despite requiring fairly high premiums from both employees and of employers are really not that great at all. The Senate finance committee’s thinking is not along the lines of quality coverage, but rather along the actual cost of the plan.

There is a big difference between the $40,000-a-year plan offered to Goldman Sachs CEOs, with no co-payments, no deductibles, few limits on how much you can spend, and no need for prior authorization, before you get treated and other, run-of-the-mill “Cadillac plans” offered to average government, or corporate employees.

Many not so fancy plans, which also qualify as “Cadillacs” under the finance committee’s definition are so defined because the term refers to total cost – and not a particular set of benefits – and many factors, like for example the state you live in, the size of your company, and the makeup of that company’s work force, which can affect costs.

Premiums tend to be significantly higher in some states. The employer/employee contribution also varies by state. In addition, the smaller the business, the fewer employees who participate, the less leverage the organization has to negotiate lower premiums. And if the workers have an average age of, say, 55, their premiums are going to be a lot higher than if the average is 24.

As it stands, there should be considerably more emphasis on improving the coverage of existing health insurance plans, rather than just emphasizing the total cost. There is no doubt that the cost of health care in the United States has gone through the roof a long time ago and that issue needs to be urgently addressed, rather than only worrying whether the reform is going to increase our already skyrocketing deficit. Just think about the trillions of dollars doled out to banks and other financial conglomerates. That seemed to be quite painless to those who are now worrying about increasing our deficit. Couldn’t we have used that money to improve our health insurance system and our crumbling infrastructure, rather than bailing out the fat cats, who have actually caused the financial disaster?

If we are to truly reform the U.S. health care insurance system, along with the health care itself, the main points of the so-called reform should be: how to reduce the exorbitant costs of both the care and the insurance, to improve the quality of often substandard care (unless you are willing and able to pay for the very best care available) and to broaden, rather than reduce the coverage that the health plans offer.

Providing health care insurance to the uninsured is a noble quest, to be sure, but to further penalize others, who are ‘covered”, but who do pay their premiums, their ever-rising co-pays and who’s “Cadillac” plans do not offer coverage for such common procedures such as dental care in general, specifically root canals, crowns and necessary oral surgery is the wrong way to go about it.

We have strongly supported the reform of U.S. health care system as a whole for some time now, but taxing the people, already penalized by the inadequacies of some of our health insurance plans, including some of the “Cadillac” ones, seems more like an idea of still another bean counter, rather than a true reformer.

Let’s get this done now and lets get it done right!

Technorati Tags: banks, cadillac, financial institutions, Health care, health insurance, plans, reform, taxing

It is not that we didn’t expect it. After all, evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson has said many a dumb thing in the past, but his latest opinion on the Haiti earthquake, simply goes way beyond any boundaries of civility, decency, taste and common sense.

Robertson has said and we quote: “Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it,” he said. “They were under the heel of the French … and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’ True story. And the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal,’ Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another.”

After 9/11, after Katrina, or after Ariel Sharon’s stroke Robertson was there to explain to the victims and to anyone who would listen why they deserved it.

And they do listen. Pat Robertson is not only one of “our” televangelists, he is also founder and chairman, of The Christian Broadcasting Network, making it very easy to express his opinions.

We always wondered how and why did these “men of God” felt that they “knew” something more that the rest of us, or why do they feel that they are authorized by anyone, particularly God to express their harebrained points of view.

Even though he wasn’t a televangelist, George W. Bush did mention that God told him to invade Iraq. We always thought that was the low point of our presidential history as a whole.

Don’t also forget for a minute that Robertson has also run for the White House at one time…

At the same time, the darling of the conservatives Rush Limbaugh has voiced the opinion that…”We’ve already donated to Haiti “It’s called the U.S. income tax.”

Technorati Tags: 9/11, bush, evangelical, Haiti Quake, Katrina, Pat Robertson, tasteless, televangelist

At this point there’s a whole slew of official, Federal Heritage Months.

Some are obviously appropriate, a whole bunch is very obviously missing from the list and some are at least somewhat questionable.

You be the judge:

February is Black History Month

March is Women’s History Month

March is also Irish American Heritage Month

We can only assume that Irish women are officially celebrated in March as well.

March is also Greek American Heritage Month

May is National Asian Pacific American Month and Jewish American Heritage Month

June is Gay and Lesbian Pride Month as well as Caribbean American Heritage Month

For August the Back to School Month was created.

We always dreaded going back to school after the summer vacations, so what are we celebrating here?

September 15, to October 15 is National Hispanic Heritage Month

Strange definition of a month in our opinion…

At the same time, September is also German American Heritage Month, Italian American Heritage Month and Polish American Heritage Month.
What is it about September that so many categories were lumped in there?

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month

Doesn’t that overlap a bit the National Hispanic Heritage Month, by any chance?

November is American Indian Heritage Month and Alaska Native Heritage Month
Considering that these are the original inhabitants of this continent, shouldn’t they get more than just a measly month?

And December is Universal Human Rights Month

All fine and dandy, it would seem, except for the almost unlimited number of nationalities, cultures “preferences”, genders and so forth that seem to be missing from this list.

As you might have guessed, there is considerable lobbying going on by all kinds of groups, to be included in this Federal Heritage Month extravaganza. At the same time not many slots are still available. Our preference would be to change the whole heritage month concept to a heritage week, or even a heritage day.

Just imagine a Federal Internet Blogger Heritage Day, or a Federal Incorrigible Heterosexual Day, a Federal Spouse that Doesn’t Cheat Day, a Federal Taxpayer’s Day, or even a Federal Honest Politician Who’s Not a Lawyer Day.

Don’t you think that this would be just as dignified as the present arrangement and a whole lot more fun?

We would love to hear your opinions and suggestions on this one.

Technorati Tags: Federal Heritage Months