News media fails to "Fact Check" itself when it comes to Harris and Trump
Whose idea was it to place a co-pay ceiling on insulin costs to help senior citizens. The news media won't tell the truth cuz it hurts their political agenda, and profits. Big Pharma buys media Ads
By Ray Hanania
FREE/Political Seniors/Baby Boomers/Wednesday August 21, 2024
The news media continues to play an impactful role in distorting truth and spinning facts to help their favored presidential candidate, but their deception is easy to expose.
For example, Vice President Kamala Harris continues to assert as does President Joe Biden, that they fought big pharma to reduce the costs of prescriptions.
In fact, that is not true at all.
First, neither Biden nor Harris reduced the costs of prescriptions during their four years in office. Instead, their claim is based on the reduction of one prescription, for insulin, capping insulin co-pay costs to only $35. And, it is based on an announcement they just made on August 15, 2024, last week, to push for lower prices on some other prescriptions.
They announced that insulin cap on March 2, 2023 to help mainly seniors who suffer from Diabetes.
Biden and Harris have been busy with a lot of last minute spin to help Harris’ election bid in the upcoming November presidential election.
But the mainstream news media won't tell you the truth, that it is all spin, and. a rehash and rewrite of something introduced several years earlier by their predecessor, President Donald Trump.
The proposal to reduce insulin co-pays to $35 was actually launched three years earlier by President Trump. But the news media won’t tell you that because it undermines the core foundation of Harris’ new election campaign that the media is promoting.
At first, Trump pushed the Pharmaceutical and insurance companies to voluntarily reduce the costs, making that announcement on March 11, 2020. But on May 26, 2020, he issued an order forcing the reduction in co-pay costs.
https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/president-trump-announces-lower-out-pocket-insulin-costs-medicares-seniors
The reduction comes under Medicare Part D. In the past, when Medicare lowered the costs of prescriptions, the pharmaceutical companies would pressure the insurance companies who would then increase premium costs.
Trump also pushed Part D Plans (run by the insurance companies in conjunction with Medicare) to reduce other prescription costs for the seniors who rely on Medicare.
But, when Biden and Haris came to office in January 2021, the first thing they did was to suspend the Trump insulin reduction act and they began rewriting the plan, changing it so they could claim it for themselves. It took them three years, as I noted.
The world was focused on other issues that first year and few noticed the suspension until the co-pay reduction to $35 per month was reimposed by Biden.
The bigger problem however is the complexity of the Medicare System, the various "Plans" that are offered by the robber baron insurance companies who are backed by the pharmaceutical companies whose lobbyists pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of members of Congress.
The system needs to be simplified. Seniors are forced to analyze reems of documents in order to understand which plan is best and they are pelted hourly by insurance company ads which twist and distort benefits to sucker them into signing away their insurance.
To protect the insurance companies, Congress -- bought and paid for by the insurance companies -- long ago allowed the insurance companies to impose time restricted windows to apply or lose coverage, and allowed the implementation of the notorious "donut hole" which strips away savings and forces the insured to pay higher costs.
What seniors need is a revamped Medicare system that is simplified and easy to engage, stripping away all of the restrictions that were imposed to benefit the insurance companies and harm the insured, mostly seniors.
That's never happened in part because Big Pharma has bought off the mainstream news media. Pharmaceutical companies are now forced to advertise in the news media to promote their drugs.
The Ads are deceptive and make all kinds of claims about their benefits, although the majority of the 60 second television Ads are dominated by hazard-to-health disclaimers.
The Ads feature people of cultural diversity dancing and singing, to convey a positive attitude about the drug. Meanwhile, the Ads speed up the spoken descriptions of the potential life-threatening hazards in fast talking quickness that is hard to understand. The printed disclaimers on the TV Screens are impossible to read.
THE SACKLERS AND BIG PHARMA
For many people, the dangers imposed by the pharmaceutical companies only came out when a TV Producer decided to detail the case of how one family, the Sacklers, ignored warnings about the dangers of opioids to make billions in profits through their company Purdue Pharma.
They were forced into bankruptcy in 2019 and their company was described as "the worst drug dealers in history" and "the most evil family in America." Hulu did a miniseries, Dopesick, of the criminal enterprise in 2021 and Netflix did one, Painkiller, in 2023.
Richard Sackler told his company in a memo to push the lie that the opioid Oxycotin addiction was the result of "criminals," drug dealers and users, and not because of the drug itself.
The Sacklers were one of the biggest donors to the Pro-Israel lobby PACs and they lived in Tel Aviv, Israel. AIPAC is one of the most powerful PAC lobbies in America influencing and impacting American government policies at all levels. Much of that money, $4.2 million, went to support Biden.
The fact is that government, and mainly Congress, continue to do nothing about the excesses of the pharmaceutical companies. Big Pharma owns Washington D.C. and Congress and the American people so far are helpless to do anything about it.
Part of that weakness is that the major mainstream news media doesn't want to disrupt a system they are profiting greatly from, through drug advertising.
So you won't read much about the truth when it comes to the prescription rip-offs preying on our most vulnerable citizens, our seniors.
DRUG LIST
Here is an updated list of all of the drugs that are currently advertised on television, exaggerating to seniors how these can be helpful:
1- avysmo
2- jardiance (type 2 diabetes)
3- skyrizi (chrome disease, intestine relief)
4- uqura
5- sotyktu (psoriasis)
6- kisqali, (slows cancer)
7- ozempic (sugar blood)
8- ingrezza (TD tardic disconesia)
9- ocrevus
10- vraylar, (anti depressant booster)
11- rinvoq (for joint pains)
12- trylesta
13- opdevo
14- yurvoy
15- vyvgart (myasthenia gravis)
16- otezla (psoriasis arthritis)
17- lybalvi (
18- stelara (chrones disease)
19- tremfya (clearer skin, ease joint pains)
20- paxlovid (for bounce back covid)
21- arexvy (rsv)
22- vabysmo (eye problems)
23- fasenra (asthma)
24- camzyos (breathing/heart)
25- rexulti (depression, dementia)
26- farxiga (kidney disease)
27- rybelsus
28- cabenuva (HIV)
29- bretztri (copd)
30- verzenio (prevent recurrence of breast cancer)
31- trintellix (for depression)
32- gardasil (hpv)
33- caplyta (depression)
34- kisympta
35- librela
36- veozah (for hot flashes)
37- entresto
38- veozah (hot flashes)
39- keytruda (bladder and other cancers)
40- ocrevus
41- kerendia (delays kidney damage)
42- austedo
43- evenity (cardio vascular issues)
44- wegovy
45- voquezna (stomach acid)