From consumerist.com :

Researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver looked at sales figures and prices for the blood thinner Plavix after direct-to-consumer advertising started in 2001. What they found was that the campaign was largely ineffective at increasing prescribing rates, but that the price of the drug shot up 12% almost immediately to cover the cost of the marketing campaign.

In other words, direct-to-consumer drug marketing may be both ineffective and expensive for the consumer. For the state as well: the Plavix campaign ended up costing 27 state Medicaid programs an additional $207 million from 2001-2005, say the authors of the study.

If you want health care, please consider helping Greens get elected to Congress.

From SinglePayerAction.org :

Sanders: No Line in the Sand

Filed under: News — russell @ 12:41 pm

What’s the difference between our side and their side?

Their side fights for what they believe in.

Our side wimps out.

Take health care reform.

Those opposed to a public option and to single payer are willing to bring the Senate to its knees on behalf of Aenta, CIGNA and the health insurance industry.

Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut) say they’ll filibuster any health care bill that includes any form of public option.

Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) says he favors single payer.

In lieu of that, Sanders says he favors a strong public option.

But will Sanders filibuster the health care bill if there is no strong public option?

This morning, on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanapoulos asked Sanders that exact question.

Sanders dodged it — and refused to draw a line in the sand.

So, it looks like the Nation magazine got it wrong when it ran a story yesterday under the headline: Sanders Stands on Principle: No Reform without Public Option.

From C-SPAN, (click here).

From TruthOut.org :

 Washington - One day after the State Department announced that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama will not sign the 10-year-old treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, it insisted that Washington’s policy on the issue was still being reviewed.Human rights and disarmament activists had reacted with outrage Wednesday to Tuesday’s announcement by State Department spokesman Ian Kelly that the review had concluded and that Washington “would not be able to meet our national defence needs, nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we sign the [landmine] convention”.“The administration is committed to a comprehensive review of its landmine policy,” Kelly said in a written statement issued by the State Department press office Wednesday afternoon. “That review is still ongoing.”The statement did not make clear whether Tuesday’s announcement had been made in error or whether the anger provoked by it had persuaded the administration to reconsider. The fact that Kelly was reading from guidance prepared in advance and presumably cleared at higher levels, however, suggested that the latter explanation was more likely.The U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL), a coalition of scores of activist groups, had called the Tuesday’s announcement “shocking”, while Human Rights Watch (HRW) described it as “reprehensible”.“President Obama’s decision to cling to anti-personnel mines keeps the U.S. on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of humanity,” said Steve Goose, the director of HRW’s Arms Division, who also noted that Washington stood alone among its NATO allies in refusing to sign the treaty.“This decision lacks vision, compassion, and basic common sense, and contradicts the Obama administration’s professed emphasis on multilateralism, disarmament, and humanitarian affairs,” he added.

Thinking about going out today to buy that discounted big-screen TV, DVD player, or brand-new sandwich maker?  Before you rush out and buy, try taking the day off, staying at home, and thinking about what you really want to promote this holiday season with your hard-earned money.  We hope you’ll pick your Green Party - not Wal-Mart’s quarterly earnings - by planning to give your family and friends some Green Party merchandise. Click here to see our variety of items, including a special price on our Green Party hooded sweatshirts.We hope you will think about what you spend this year - perhaps shop at thrift stores or flea (or even “free”) markets.  Instead of buying new goods, think about making donations or providing services.  Instead of buying gifts, look for crafts and other hand-made objects, or make your own gifts for your friends.  Many people are refraining from buying anything today as a protest again constant advertisements and consumer culture.  The Green Party supports these efforts.  We hope, however, if you decide to buy something new for your friends and family, you will consider buying them some Green Party goods.  Here are a couple of reasons we think this is a good choice:Green Party goods support a good cause.  The Green Party and its candidates work throughout the year to represent Green Party values on City Councils, in your local newspaper, and to our representatives in Congress.  Purchases from our store directly fund the Green Party’s efforts.Green Party goods are made in the USA.  We support American workers so they can grow strong and take on the corporate management that threatens their wages, communities, and livelihoods.Green Party goods are all union-made.  When Americans are allowed to organize themselves at work, in their communities, and at the ballot box, we are all better off.Your Green Party sweatshirts, t-shirts, buttons, water bottles, and tote bags all promote your political party and your candidates. Whenever you or your friends take them out of the house, everyone sees who are supporting and learns more about their political options.

Check out our holiday specials!

Green Party sweatshirts are on sale for only $30!  That’s a savings of almost ten dollars.  These sweatshirts are 100% cotton and have a handy front pocket for your wallet, cell phone, or to keep your hands warm.Green Party buttons are back!  Due to overwhelming demand we sold out of these buttons over the summer, but they are back just in time for the holidays.  Each one proudly advertises the Green Party and our website,www.gp.org.Green Party water bottles, tote bags, magnets and jar openers make great stocking stuffers!We hope you will sit back, relax, and enjoy a day at home, not out at the mall or racing through the nearest big-box store.  When you do decide to buy, you can do it home through our online store, and you can do it knowing that your purchase won’t buy a corporate CEO a new mansion, but will help America’s largest anti-corporate, grassroots political party spread its message of economic justice and ecological wisdom.

Remember, the Green Party takes no money from real estate companies, private health insurance providers, or lobbyists.  In fact, we don’t take ANY corporate money because we think corporate money in politics is wrong.  If you agree, please help us today.  Your donation to the Green Party will help us make sure we have a strong Green Party today and into the future.You can help us reach the goal we set in July at our national meeting of funding our operations with the help of 500 sustainers giving $10,000 a month by the end of 2009.  In July we had 250 sustainers - currently we have 331.   Click here to become a sustaining donor to the Green Party today!Your gift of any amount will help to strengthen our voice so that we can make our vision a reality.  With your help we can provide support for candidates and spread the Green message.  If you have given recently, please consider giving more.  And, if you haven’t given in some time, please make today the day you give.Email: gpinfo@gp.org

Here we go again…Does an email controversy mean that global warming/climate change is a hoax?

No. It just means scientists are real people too- it does not change the scientific facts of this phenomenon.

Boston Globe editorial excerpt:

Yet Obama made the deal. It was understandable that he sought a crack in the stone wall of industry opposition to reform. But the continued price-gouging is the biggest insult thus far to the first-year White House. This does not even get into how drug companies have repeatedly been fined or forced into agreements with many states totaling several billions dollars for misleading marketing. The public has also learned of drug company financing of ghostwritten articles in medical journals, the burying of unfavorable laboratory findings, and the insidious manipulation of consumers in television ads, to get consumers to pressure their doctors to prescribe highly profitable brand-name drugs.

In March, Obama said he was cracking down on the “broken system’’ of military contracting. But drug companies still have the free hand of a Halliburton.

Obama and Congress must tear up the $8 billion a year agreement and tie drug maker cost cuts much more directly to actual profits and the consumer’s ability to pay. If they do not, there is no hope for the rest of reform. At this very moment, according to the AARP analysis, the prices for many brand name prescription sedatives and medicines for asthma, arthritis, dementia, osteoporosis, and elevated cholesterol have shot up between 12 percent and 19 percent.

Obama long ago ruled out the best way to end the gouging, a single-payer system. But with these price hikes, the single payer left holding the bag will forever be the patient. Obama, by capitulating too soon to the drug companies, has now given himself the biggest test yet of who governs Washington, he or the lobbyists he promised to curtail.

Not only is the health care industry the top lobbying force so far in 2009 and pharmaceuticals the top subgroup, spending $200 million, but in the 2008 presidential election, drug makers switched to Obama, a Democrat, from their historical tilt toward Republicans.

They gave Obama $1.1 million in campaign contributions, 3 1/2 times more than Republican John McCain. Without action against the gouging, it will become too charitable to say that Big Pharma took Obama for a fool. It will become clear Obama was in bed with Big Pharma all along.

From SinglePayerAction.org :

The Democratic health care bill is a massive bailout of the private health insurance industry.

It is convoluted and complicated.

And it should be defeated.

That’s the take of a number of leading single payer activists.

They will hold a press conference the day before Thanksgiving.

And call on Congress to defeat the more than 2,000 page bill.

Start from scratch.

And pass single payer, Medicare for all, national health insurance.

The press conference will be held in the Murrow Room at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 10 a.m.

The press conference is being organized by Single Payer Action.

Speakers include:

Russell Mokhiber, Single Payer Action.

Dr. Margaret Flowers, Physicians for a National Health Program.

Kevin Zeese, Prosperity Agenda.

Dr. Carol Paris, Physicians for a National Health Program.

Mokhiber, Flowers, Zeese and Paris are four of the Baucus 8 – the eight protesters who were ordered arrested and charged with “disruption of Congress” by Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) in early May 2009 after they rose to ask Baucus why single payer was taken off the table by the Democrats.

Baucus had scheduled 41 health care experts to testify over three days of hearings of the Senate Finance Committee.

Not one of the 41 experts was an advocate for a single payer system.

This despite national polls showing a majority of Americans and a majority of doctors support a Canadian-style, Medicare-for-all single payer system.

On Wednesday, the Baucus Four will call on single payer supporters in the Congress – like Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) – and the 88 members of the House who are sponsors of HR 676 – the single payer bill – to stand with Congressmen Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Eric Massa (D-New York) – and vote against the pending legislation.

HR 676 is about 30 pages in length.

It’s simple.

It covers everyone.

And it saves money.

Kucinich and Massa were the only single payer supporters in the House who voted last week against Obama and the Democratic leadership.

Kucinich called the Democratic bill “a bailout under a Blue Cross.”

Massa said the bill would “enshrine in law the monopolistic powers of the private health insurance industry.”

“The Obama health care legislation is a 2,000-page turkey,” said Mokhiber. “It should be defeated and served up to the American people as an example of what happens when corporate lobbyists hijack Congress.”

Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, earlier this month called on Congress to do nothing instead of passing the Democratic bill.

“Is the House bill better than nothing?” Angell asked. “I don’t think so. It simply throws more money into a dysfunctional and unsustainable system, with only a few improvements at the edges, and it augments the central role of the investor-owned insurance industry. The danger is that as costs continue to rise and coverage becomes less comprehensive, people will conclude that we’ve tried health reform and it didn’t work. But the real problem will be that we didn’t really try it. I would rather see us do nothing now, and have a better chance of trying again later and then doing it right.”

Healthcare-Now! – a coalition of labor unions and other single payer activists – adopted a resolution earlier this month at its national strategy conference in St. Louis – calling on Congress to defeat the legislation.

The Healthcare-Now! board is co-chaired by Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers Union, Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, Dr. Quintin Young of Physicians for a National Health Program, and Jim Winkler of the United Methodist Church.

From CommonDreams.org :

by Dedrick MuhammadThis Thanksgiving season, the nation should finally commit itself to bridging the socioeconomic divide between the descendents of those who came together during the first Thanksgiving: the Native Americans and the white newcomers. More than cranberry sauce and turkey, this type of reflection and action is essential to the holiday season.Recently, President Barack Obama hosted a White House Tribal Nations conference with representatives from all 564 federally recognized U.S. tribes. Bringing “about meaningful change for those who had, for too long, been excluded from the American dream,” was a driving force behind his presidential bid, Obama said. “And few have been more marginalized and ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans, our first Americans.” The president’s words deeply resonate with the findings in my upcoming report, “Challenges to Native American Advancement.”This Institute for Policy Studies report reviews a federal policy that, for most of U.S. history, was more apt at removing land and natural resources from American Indians than protecting their resources and property as was agreed to in federally recognized treaties.Whether it was the allotment system, a kind of privatization of Indian land that resulted in transferring about 100 million acres to non-Native Americans, or the Reagan administration’s “New Federalism,” which in the name of self-determination cut funding for American Indian development, the federal government has too often blocked Native American advancement rather than supported it.Over the last few decades, Native Americans have made important gains in cutting poverty rates and unemployment while increasing their educational levels. Yet even with these gains, Native Americans are nowhere near parity with white Americans. For example, in 2007 Native Americans had a poverty rate of almost 25 percent, triple the white poverty rate. In this weak economic condition, American Indians face a serious challenge in today’s “Great Recession.” During the 1980s recession, Native Americans on reservations saw a decline of real family income that lasted for a decade. We can’t let this history repeat itself.If the country is serious about the words Obama spoke during the White House Tribal Conference, where he stated he is “absolutely committed…that [American Indians] can be full partners in the American economy and…have an equal shot at pursuing the American dream,” then federal investment will be necessary to finally turn the page on the history where America marginalized and alienated the “first Americans.”It was through years of intentional and focused government policy that American Indians were separated from the wealth and resources that were properly theirs. It’s through intentional and focused government policy that Native Americans will once again receive their rightful share of the wealth of this land.During this Native American Heritage month and Thanksgiving season, let’s as a country unite behind the president’s call and demand that the plight of American Indians be at the forefront of the effort to rebuild the American economy.Distributed by Minuteman MediaDedrick Muhammad is a senior organizer and research associate at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive multi-issue think tank that transforms ideas into action for peace, justice, and the environment.

From Philadelphia ABC affiliate:THREE MILE ISLAND - November 22, 2009 (WPVI) – We are learning more this morning about the fallout from a reported radiation leak at Three Mile Island.