Today on his radio program, Rush Limbaugh blamed Congressional pages for Mark Foley’s misconduct. He said that the communications reported by ABC were example of “young kids” who like to “make fun of gay people.” Rush’s evidence? As a child, he used to order refrigerators over the phone for adults he thought were “odd or weird” as a prank.
Did I mention inhuman and despicable? Bloated Drug Whore Con sure is.
The awful Medicare “reform”/big Pharma handout that the GOP put into effect is entering the donut hole stage for many seniors.
Millions of older Americans are confronting a temporary break in their Medicare drug coverage this month that will require them to pay the full cost of their prescriptions or face the painful prospect of going without.
This is the “doughnut hole” in the new Medicare drug benefit that began in January, and advocates for seniors say there is nothing sweet about it. Some seniors knew nothing of the coverage gap until they were hit with a bigger drug bill, advocates say.
“Virtually everyone who calls to say they’ve been denied coverage, they’re shocked,” said Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, a nonprofit that helps seniors navigate Medicare. “Trying to explain that this is the way the program was created by Congress angers folks who think it makes no sense. Many people feel blindsided.”
The coverage gap was one of the most contentious elements of the 2003 legislation that created the new benefit. It ends federal payments for a person’s drug purchases once an annual spending limit is reached, resuming them only after the beneficiary has spent thousands of dollars out of pocket.
…
Frances Acanfora, 65, had been paying $58 for a three-month supply of her five medications. But this month the retired school lunchroom aide learned that her next bill would be $1,294. She had entered the doughnut hole.
“It’s not my fault that I take this medicine,” the Brooklyn resident said. “I’ve got to take it. And they make a limit. That’s not fair.”
After talking to her doctor, Acanfora decided to temporarily stop taking a drug as part of her treatment for breast cancer. She hopes to obtain some free samples of eye drops for her glaucoma. Three other medicines — for high cholesterol, diabetes and osteoporosis — cost $506.62, which Acanfora put on her credit card.
“I pay a little bit at a time,” she said. “What am I going to do? I need it. . . . Sometimes, just to think about it, I cry.”
About 3 million of the 23 million Americans who receive the Medicare drug benefit are expected to reach the gap this year, officials said. That is fewer than half the 7 million cited in a 2004 report by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, which Medicare chief Mark B. McClellan called outdated.
Note: Mark McClellan is brother of former Press Secretary Scott.
I can think of at least three people who need to be fired here, but I’d settle for the pharmacist guild stripping these fucktards from their authority to dispense pharmaceuticals of any kind.
The New York Civil Liberties Union filed complaints Tuesday against three upstate pharmacists, saying they refused to fill prescriptions for refill doses of emergency contraception.
The NYCLU filed the complaints on behalf of Claudina Ashelman-Owen, Colleen Shaw and Dr. Marc Heller, health care providers from Planned Parenthood Mohawk-Hudson who had prescribed the morning-after pill to women who were their patients.
What makes this case different from many other similar cases in the U.S. is the pharmacists weren’t objecting to filling the initial prescription, just the refill, said Elisabeth Benjamin, Director of the NYCLU’s Reproductive Rights Project.
In most similar cases, pharmacists wouldn’t fill the prescriptions at all based on religious and moral grounds, Benjamin said. “But these refusals seem to just be based solely on moralistic assumptions of women’s sexuality.”
NYCLU officials asked the state Department of Education’s Office of Professions to discipline pharmacists Matt Weaver, Andrea Barcomb, and Lisa McGuiness for their failure to fill the emergency contraception prescriptions.
Calls to the Office of Professions were not immediately returned Tuesday.
According to the complaints, in November 2005 Weaver said he would fill a patient’s initial emergency contraceptive prescription at a CVS pharmacy in Saratoga Springs, but wouldn’t provide the refills. Weaver then altered the valid prescription so that it listed no refills, according to the complaint.
Ashelman-Owen spoke to Weaver’s supervisor, Barcomb, who allegedly said that in her opinion, women who needed emergency contraception were “irresponsible” and obtaining the drug should be inconvenient for women and their doctors. According to the organization’s filings, Barcomb allegedly defended Weaver’s right to refuse to fill the prescription because he felt that refills were “a bad idea.”
I have an idea. When these people are in the hospital or need drugs of any kind, let’s just say no. I think giving them drugs would be a bad idea. Pain is natural, and it is immoral not to embrace your own nausea.
Actually, I believe this is a criminal matter. Pharmacists have no authority under the law to issue prescriptions on their own, merely to fill them. By changing the terms of a validly-issued prescription, the pharmacists are thus issuing a new prescription.
You. Are. Pill. Dispensers. That is all. You are a meat sack version of my Dino Flinstone-head Pez dispenser. Any thought outside of your mechanical processes is not only unwanted, but unwarranted. Now STFU&GBTW, bitches.
… only now, he’s an IMPOTENT bloated drug whore con.
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh was detained at Palm Beach International Airport for the possible possession of illegal prescription drugs Monday evening.
Limbaugh was returning on a flight from the Dominican Republic when customs officials found a Viagra prescription that did not bear his name. Instead, the bottle of pills had the names of two doctors on it according to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents examined the 55-year-old’s luggage after his private plane landed at the airport from the Dominican Republic. The matter was then turned over to the Sheriff’s Office. Investigators seized the drugs – used to treat erectile dysfunction – from Limbaugh.
You just know this has to violate his probation agreement. Anyone know if there’s a 2-strike law in Florida with no judicial discretion? FSM doesn’t love me that much, I know (love me, bitch! I’ll even make some butter sauce for you!), but I thought it was worth asking.
He was probably just looking for a new mannish news anchor on a crappy network for a little beachtime lovin’ in the DR (you know, one who won’t dump his ass). Can’t you just imagine him whispering sweet genocidal bigoted nothings in her ear? Can’t you just hear him scream “what’s my anal cyst’s name, baby! Say my ANAL CYST’s name!” as he comes?
[fn1]
If anyone needs me, I’ll be over here in the corner pouring Drano in my skull to cleanse this image from my mind.
[fn1] Yes, I know I’m going to hell for this picture. In my defense someone else made this first for a now-defunct politics site and then someone besides those guys posted it on flickr, and then I modified it to take out the face of the (no longer BDWC’s gf) woman. Because I’m thoughtful like that.
Update: Wolcott joins the fray
Now there is no shame in requiring wood enhancement. Men have needs, and if Viagra enables the little fella to jut proudly from the folds of the dragon kimono bequeathed to Rush by the late Allan Bloom, it is not for us to cast judgement.
Dragon kimono. Nice one.
Update: Also, Firedoglake is totally copying me (see here and here, the second referring to a different-than-this post o’ mine, and I’ve had this photo available on my VoldemortSite for over 3 years!). Man, some people… Sure, they may say independent creation. They may say obviousness. They may even saaaay great minds think alike. But whatev… flattery!
That’s OK Firedoglaketistas, I’ll let you ride on Grumpy’s coattails. This once. And turn down that music! Damn kids.
Update 2: no charges against bloatie… yet. Note that the trip was an all-male excursion to the Dominican Republic, along with the producers of that wonderful pro-torture series 24 (and an actress on that show is currently, *shudder*, Shamu’s lover. Think she’s happy about the trip?). I wonder what they were doing there? Probably scouting for baseball talent.
This prohibition is just as idiotic and hyperbolic as the last one. In Michigan, you can now get a DUI if you have any traces of marijuana in your system… even weeks-old already metabolized marijuana.
Pot smokers beware! That joint you smoked four weeks ago could come back to haunt you under a ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court.
In a 4-3 vote, the court ruled that motorists can be prosecuted for driving under the influence of drugs if they test positive for any trace of marijuana, including a metabolized remnant that experts say can stay in a person’s system for weeks after the smoke.
This is ridiculous. The court’s ruling here has no basis in science or law and as such should be reversed on appeal. This is what happens when you let prohibitionists and the American Taliban try and rule American society from the bench. Here’s your activist judges, righties.
