Friday, June 25, 2004
HAVING TO CHOOSE BETWEEN MEDS AND FOOD? JUST WIN THE DUBYA LOTTO!
Here's a totally radical concept, you fucking twinks: stop charging an obscene fortune for meds! And here's another one, Mistah pResident: Stop letting your buddies in the drug companies charge an obscene fortune for meds!
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Medicare Lottery to Cover 50,000 People
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will give "50,000 lucky individuals" chosen in a lottery up to a 16-month jump on Medicare prescription drug coverage, paying for costly medications for cancer and other illnesses this year.
Health and Human Services (news - web sites) Secretary Tommy Thompson estimated that 500,000 to 600,000 Medicare recipients without prescription drug coverage are eligible for the program Congress wrote into last year's prescription drug law.
"There'll be a lottery to be chosen as one of 50,000 lucky individuals," Thompson said at a news conference Thursday to announce the program. More than 450,000 others must wait until prescription drug insurance under Medicare begins in 2006.
The law limits the new program to 50,000 people and $500 million, at least $200 million of which must be spent on oral cancer drugs that can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. Treatments for multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and six other illnesses that can be administered at home also will be covered. Similar drugs often are paid for when dispensed in doctors' offices and hospitals.
"This initiative will get these breakthrough oral medications into the hands of seniors fighting cancer so that they have the best opportunity possible to beat the disease," said Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, whose daughter died of cancer. She wrote the provision, along with Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.
Wendy Selig, vice president for legislative affairs for the American Cancer Society (news - web sites), said some coverage is better than none. "It's clearly not going to meet the needs of every person who may be eligible. Then again, Congress didn't give them the authority to go out and do that so we can't hold them responsible," she said, referring to Medicare.
The American Society for Clinical Oncology, an organization of cancer doctors, has said that because of the limits, the program "will have a minimal impact on people with cancer" until 2006.
The new law, thought to be an election-year boon for the GOP, actually has been a thorn. Allegations of ethical improprieties in the law's passage and a slow, confusing start to the Medicare-approved discount drug cards have plagued the Bush administration and congressional Republicans.
Pryce and two other Republican lawmakers joined Thompson and Medicare chief Mark McClellan to announce the start of the new program. Thompson said it offered a taste of the savings that will be available in 2006.
Medicare will accept applications for the lottery from July 6 to Sept. 30, and will randomly select 25,000 cancer patients and 25,000 people with the other illnesses.
People who apply by Aug. 16 will be eligible for an early draw, with coverage beginning Sept. 1.
McClellan said people can call the Medicare hotline at 1-800-633-4227 or visit its Web site, www.medicare.gov for information.
The government is paying Trailblazer Health Enterprises, a subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, $8.7 million to run the program, Medicare officials said.
Among the cancer drugs covered are Gleevec for stomach cancer, thalidomide for blood cancer and tamoxifen for breast cancer. The new cancer drugs are increasingly available only in oral form. Medicare has long paid for chemotherapy and other cancer treatments administered in hospitals and doctors' offices.
The program will mirror the 2006 drug benefit, meaning that there will be a gap in coverage — known as a doughnut hole — in which patients will bear the entire cost of the medicines. People still will have to spend about $5,300 a year for Gleevec, but that represents nearly 90 percent off the annual average wholesale price of $45,952, Medicare said.
"Only a cynical pessimist can look at a doughnut and complain about the hole," Thompson said.Friday, June 25, 2004
UNCLE DICKIE LOSES TEMEPER
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney blurted out the "F word" at Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont during a heated exchange on the Senate floor, congressional aides said on Thursday.
The incident occurred on Tuesday in a terse discussion between the two that touched on politics, religion and money, with Cheney finally telling Leahy to "f--- off" or "go f--- yourself," the aides said.
"I think he was just having a bad day," Leahy was quoted as saying on CNN, which first reported the incident. "I was kind of shocked to hear that kind of language on the floor."
"That doesn't sound like language the vice president would use but there was a frank exchange of views," said Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems.
According to congressional aides, Leahy said hello to Cheney following the taking of the Senate group photo on the floor of the chamber.
Cheney, who is president of the Senate, then ripped into Leahy for the Democratic senator's criticism this week of alleged war profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton, the oil services company that Cheney once ran.
Leahy and other Democrats have called for congressional hearings into whether the vice president helped the firm win lucrative contracts in Iraq after the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein.
During their exchange, Leahy noted that Republicans had accused Democrats of being anti-Catholic because they are opposed to some of President Bush's anti-abortion judges, the aides said.
That's when Cheney unloaded with the "F-bomb," aides said.
With the Senate sharply divided, Democrats and Republicans have had numerous partisan battles in recent years on matters from taxes to health care.
"Things have been pretty bad around here," said Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat. "But as far as I know, as far as I'm concerned, this is a new low."
According to Senate rules, profanity is not permitted while the chamber is in session. But when the exchange occurred between Leahy and Cheney, the Senate was not in session so there was technically no foul.
Earlier on Thursday, before word of the exchange spread, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, stood in the chamber and spoke of the need to improve civility with what he called the "politics of common ground."Thursday, June 24, 2004
IMPEACH BUSH
George W. Bush should be immediately impeached for (as drafted by Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark):
1) Seizing power to wage wars of aggression in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter and the rule of law; carrying out a massive assault on and occupation of Iraq, a country that was not threatening the United States, resulting
ino the death and maiming of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and hundreds of U.S. G.I.s.
2) Lying to the people of the U.S., to Congress, and to the U.N., providing false and deceptive rationales for war.
3) Authorizing, ordering and condoning direct attacks on civilians, civilian facilities and locations where civilian casualties were unavoidable.
4) Threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently changing its government by force and assaulting Iraq in a war of aggression.
4) Authorizing, ordering and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secret and other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and psychological coercion of prisoners to obtain false statements concerning acts and intentions of governments and individuals and violating within the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agents elsewhere, the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
5) Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about the conduct of foreign governments and individuals and acts by U.S. government personnel; manipulating the media and foreign governments with false information; concealing information vital to public discussion and informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate of fear and destroy opposition to U.S. wars of aggression and first strike attacks.
6) Violations and subversions of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, both a part of the "Supreme Law of the land" under Article VI, paragraph 2, of the Constitution, in an attempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes in wars and threats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and others and usurping powers of the United Nations and the peoples of its nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejecting treaties, committing treaty violations, and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroy any means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate the exercise of U.S. military and economic power against the international community.
7) Acting to strip United States citizens of their constitutional and human rights, ordering indefinite detention of citizens, without access to counsel, without charge, and without opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the Executive of a citizen as an "enemy combatant."
8) Ordering indefinite detention of non-citizens in the United States and elsewhere, and without charge, at the discretionary designation of the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense.
9) Ordering and authorizing the Attorney General to override judicial orders of release of detainees under INS jurisdiction, even where the judicial officer after full hearing determines a detainee is wrongfully held by the government.
10) Authorizing secret military tribunals and summary execution of persons who are not citizens who are designated solely at the discretion of the Executive who acts as indicting official, prosecutor and as the only avenue of appellate relief.
11) Refusing to provide public disclosure of the identities and locations of persons who have been arrested, detained and imprisoned by the U.S. government in the United States, including in response to Congressional inquiry.
12) Use of secret arrests of persons within the United States and elsewhere and denial of the right to public trials.
13) Authorizing the monitoring of confidential attorney-client privileged communications by the government, even in the absence of a court order and even where an incarcerated person has not been charged with a crime.
14) Ordering and authorizing the seizure of assets of persons in the United States, prior to hearing or trial, for lawful or innocent association with any entity that at the discretionary designation of the Executive has been deemed "terrorist."
15) Institutionalization of racial and religious profiling and authorization of domestic spying by federal law enforcement on persons based on their engagement in noncriminal religious and political activity.
16) Refusal to provide information and records necessary and appropriate for the constitutional right of legislative oversight of executive functions.
17) Rejecting treaties protective of peace and human rights and abrogation of the obligations of the United States under, and withdrawal from, international treaties and obligations without consent of the legislative branch, and including termination of the ABM treaty between the United States and Russia, and rescission of the authorizing signature from the Treaty of Rome which served as the basis for the International Criminal Court.