Study: Medicare for All Would Save 68,000 lives, Half a Trillion Dollars Per year

Under U.S. law, the government is barred from negotiating prices with drug companies, leading to a situation where American-made HIV medication sells for $8 in Australia and up to $2,000 in the US.

Alan Macleod
By Alan Macleod
Sign at Occupy St Pete: "Hands Off Social Security, Medicaid Medicare" "www.SayNoCuts.org" (Photo by Robert Neff)

A new study published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet has calculated that a switch to a Medicare for All healthcare system would save the United States over 68,000 lives and over 450 billion dollars annually. The report’s team, headed by Dr. Alison P. Galvani of Yale University, concluded that, “the shift to single-payer health care

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Trump’s Plan to “Liberate the Country from Opioids” Instead Liberates Big Pharma from Oversight

Ironically, it will be the areas of the country that voted Trump into power that are set to suffer the most from Trump’s decision to keep the DEA toothless, suggesting that Trump cares more about protecting corporate profits than protecting his base.

Whitney Webb
By Whitney Webb
trump 1984

WASHINGTON – In March, President Donald Trump outlined for the first time a broad plan aimed at combating the country’s opioid crisis, which kills an estimated 116 Americans every day. The plan, coming five months after he declared the epidemic a “national health emergency,” included an ad campaign discouraging drug use, expanding addiction

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Big Pharma, Big Oil and Big Banks Meet the Definition of Terrorists

Common threads persist throughout definitions of terrorism: violence, injury or death, intimidation, intentionality, multiple targets and political motivation. Big pharma, big oil and big banks meet them all.

Paul Buchheit
By Paul Buchheit
Big Oil

Various definitions of terrorism have been proposed in recent years, by organizations such as the FBI, the State Department, Homeland Security, and the ACLU. Some common threads persist throughout the definitions: violence, injury or death, intimidation, intentionality, multiple targets, political motivation. All the criteria are met by

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The Big Pharma Family that Brought Us the Opioid Crisis

We’re not talking El Chapo or any of his drug-running buddies. We’re talking about the mega-billionaire family behind one of America’s most profitable drug-industry empires, the privately held Purdue Pharma.

Sam Pizzigati
By Sam Pizzigati
Pills persciption pharma OpioidPills prescription pharma Opioid

If the devil wears Prada, what do America’s most destructive drug pushers wear? They wear smiles. The drug pushers we have in mind here have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, enough fatalities to decrease overall U.S. life expectancy at birth for the last two years running. Yet no police SWAT teams have pounded down any doors hunting these

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Big Pharma’s Azar to Head HHS: Trump Finds Another Fox to Guard Swamp’s Chicken Coops

President Trump has made much, in public, of his zeal for lowering the “out of control” drug prices in the U.S. market. Choosing former Eli Lilly top exec Alex Azar to replace the disgraced Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services will all but guarantee that doesn’t happen.

Whitney Webb
By Whitney Webb
Deputy Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar meets reporters at the HHS Department in Washington, Thursday, June 8, 2006. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Since the begging of October, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been without an official secretary following the ouster of Tom Price, who resigned due to public outrage over his extensive and costly travel on private jets for government business and his personal use. However, the department – tasked with regulating the

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DEA Whistleblowers Expose Govt Role in US Opiate Crisis

In the same week that he decided that the U.S. opiate epidemic is a “national emergency,” Trump was forced to withdraw his nominee for Drug Czar, when Rep. Tom Marino was recognized as a congressional water-carrier for Big Pharma opiate producers and one who has impeded the effort to battle the epidemic.

Whitney Webb
By Whitney Webb
Seized prescription drugs displayed in a glass flask in the controlled substance room of the Utah state crime lab in Taylorsville, Utah. (AP/Rick Bowmer)

For years, illicit opiate use has been on the rise in the United States, leading to the worst drug crisis in U.S. history, one that has claimed ten times more lives in a single year than all terrorist attacks (including 9/11) on U.S. soil over the last two decades. While the federal government has made public attempts to curb the problem --

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