A collision with a semi-trailer truck seven years ago left 52-year-old Deborah Shank permanently brain-damaged and in a wheelchair. Her husband, Jim, and three sons found a small source of solace: a $700,000 accident settlement from the trucking company involved. After legal fees and other expenses, the remaining $417,000 was put in a special trust. It was to be used for Mrs. Shanks care.
Instead, all of it is now slated to go to Mrs. Shanks former employer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Two years ago, the retail giants health plan sued the Shanks for the $470,000 it had spent on her medical care. A federal judge ruled last year in Wal-Marts favor, backed by an appeals-court decision in August. Now, her family has to rely on Medicaid and Mrs. Shanks social-security payments to keep up her round-the-clock care.
Oh wait, it gets better
In August last year, U.S. district judge Lewis Blanton sided with Wal-Mart, ruling that when Mrs. Shank signed on to Wal-Mart’s health plan she was obligated to abide by its terms.
The ruling came six days before the Shanks’ 18-year-old son, Jeremy, was killed in September last year in Iraq shortly after he arrived in the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division.
If ever there was an entity that deserved strychnine in its reservoir, Wal-Mart would be the one.
Olberman has more
Now implement some goddamn national health insurance for fuck’s sake.
Samuel Walker saw combat in Iraq firsthand: He was splattered with human flesh and shrapnel in a dining hall when a suicide bomber blew himself up just a few feet away.
When Walker got back to the U.S., he brought some of the battlefield home with him. He heard phantom screams in broad daylight, smelled gunpowder that wasn’t there. A loud noise would send him into a defensive crouch. He’d been eating French fries in the mess hall at the time of the blast, and the sight of a McDonald’s restaurant now brought back violent memories.
Two doctors diagnosed Walker with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, directly related to his close encounters with violence in Iraq.
But Walker was not a combat soldier. He was a civilian recreation supervisor for KBR, the largest contractor in Iraq. And instead of getting the medical and counseling help he sought, Walker, a U.S. Army veteran, found himself caught in a morass of red tape and rejected insurance claims.
I post this for a few reasons including, inter alia, our country’s inability to treat mental illnesses as illnesses, the ridiculousness of our so-called “health-care system”, my interest in (and prediction that) the major systemic healthcare burden for our veterans (contactors included) is going to become increasingly psychology-focused rather than physicality-focused as field medical technology and other protective war tech preserves people’s bodies but leaves our minds as exposed as they’ve always been, and that the government has essentially been paying for Huguenots, but refuses to acknowledge them as such (no VA for you, buddy!)
That may be a record for longest run-on in the history of this blog. Probably.
It is expected there would be no problems securing funding to explore a drug that could shrink cancerous tumors and has no side-effects in humans, but University of Alberta researcher Evangelos Michelakis has hit a stalemate with the private sector who would normally fund such a venture.
Michelakis’ drug is none other than dichloroacetate (DCA), a drug which cannot be patented and costs pennies to make.
It’s no wonder he can’t secure the $400-600 million needed to conduct human trials with the medicine – the drug doesn’t have the potential to make enough money.
Michelakis told reporters they will be applying to public agencies for funding, as pharmaceuticals are reluctant to pick up the drug.
At roughly $2 a dose, there isn’t much chance to make a billion on the cancer treatment over the long term.
According to research on DCA, formerly used to fight metabolic disease in children, the drug apparently revitalizes damaged mitochondria in cancer cells, effectively triggering cell death and shrinking the cells.
“One of the really exciting things about this compound is that it might be able to treat many different forms of cancer,” explained Michelakis.
This is also a large part of what’s wrong with the American medical system.
Who would ever want a $2 pill that shrinks/kills tumors with no side effects? Don’t be ridiculous. The mere idea of such a thing being desirable is absurd.
There’s a slow poison out there that’s severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it’s a “health food,” one of our most popular.
Now, I’m a health-food guy, a fanatic who seldom allows anything into his kitchen unless it’s organic. I state my bias here just so you’ll know I’m not anti-health food.
The dangerous food I’m speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they’re all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore.
…
Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.
I… I… ehhhh, there’s really no need to snark in a witty-yet-devastatingly-cutting way, is there? Res ipsa, baby!
Watch as Keith Olbermann destroys Bloated Drug Whore Con Sex Tourist Asshole (new phrase: OxyMoron), and the best part is he destroys Limbaugh with Limbaugh’s own actions – they show the actual video of Limbaugh ridiculing Fox for Fox’s mannerisms. Who needs words or arguments when OxyMoron is doing just fine hanging himself?
Of key importance to note is that Parkinsons sufferers when off their medication move less not more. Also, Fox’s ad for (R-PA) Arlen Spector is somehow not manipulative. Go figure.
That said, Sam Seder was horrible – his one liners and quips detracted from his main point (which was OK). Namely, that Rush’s job is to insulate his listeners from reality. To give them not only an excuse, but the means by which to render impotent that which challenges their worldview.
Also… looks like the benefits of OxyMoron’s gastric bypass are no longer working. You know how much you have to eat post-bypass to put on the weight like he has? Like entire sides of buttered cow dipped in chocolate-much.