Bush's Medicare Bill Gave Drug Industry $139 bill. WHERE ARE OUR VACCINES?

[bigtree]

– 61% of the Medicare Bill’s Drug Spending. As a result of Bush's Medicare bill, the drug industry will receive an additional $139.2 billion in profits over the next eight years. That will amount to 61 percent of the spending in the bill for prescription drugs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38776-2004Oct16_4.html


What the hell did we ask of these companies that we gave our tax bucks? What we got was an outsourcing of our needs again. Couple this with the U.S. drug industry's collective bail out on the vaccine buisness because they claim they are losing money on unused vaccines. Even more ironic is the fact that the only company left standing is A FRENCH COMPANY! The one country that Bush and his cronies would have us demonize:


How U.S. Got Down to Two Makers Of Flu Vaccine

{snips}

". . . there is one (company) left: Aventis Pasteur. Every flu shot that goes into an American arm this season will come from the French company's plant in the northeast Pennsylvania town of Swiftwater."

>>>>Gregory Poland, of the Mayo Clinic, favors a system of incentives: Vaccine makers would make a given number of doses of flu vaccine for the private market at their own risk; a given number for government purchase; and an additional amount that the government would agree to buy back at a specified price if there were unsold stocks at the end of the season.

Donald Burke, director of the Center for Immunization Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, favors "a fixed and mutually beneficial relationship" between the government and companies that make vaccines against bioterrorism agents. He's coming to think the same may be the solution for flu, too.

"I think it's in our national interest to promote 'health security' as well as national security," he said last week. "I would be inclined to extend the model of government-industry cooperation to diseases in the 'health security' arena, such as flu, as well."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38776-20...


and this:


Congress Investigating Flu Shot Shortage

Congress started an investigation Tuesday into whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration overlooked problems at a British plant that led to the withdrawal of half the country's flu vaccine supply.

Earlier this month Britain's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency suspended the license of Chiron Corp. to ship influenza vaccine from its plant in Liverpool, saying it had found systemic problems that led to some bacterial contamination.

The House Government Reform Committee sent a letter to the FDA asking what the agency knew and when about the decision on Chiron

"Recent news reports raise questions about whether CDC (the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and FDA officials had knowledge of the impending suspension of Chiron's license as early as September 13, 2004," the committee's letter to FDA said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30027-2004Oct13.html


Where are the flu victims who have lost their health care under Bush going to end up? At our over-burdened hospitals:

5.2 million more Americans without health insurance under President Bush - 1.4 million in the last year alone. In 2003, an additional 1.4 million people joined the ranks of the uninsured. There are 5.2 million more people without health insurance than in 2000. In total, 45 million people are uninsured. Since 2000 there are:

397,000 more African Americans without health insurance
1.4 million more Hispanics without health insurance
2.2 million more women without health insurance
The number of uninsured has risen in every income group. The number of uninsured rose for every income group:

556,000 people with incomes under $25,000 lost health insurance
185,000 people with incomes from $25,000 - $50,000 lost health insurance
323,000 people with incomes from $50,000 - $75,000 lost health insurance
324,000 people with incomes over $75,000 lost health insurance

http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/health_care/kit/uninsured_bush.html


As the nation's overburdened and underfunded emergency rooms are pushed to the brink, our medical safety net is starting to unravel.

By David Hilfiker

April 19, 2004

Ambulance diversion is an astonishingly common necessity. According to a 2003 report from Congress' Government Accounting Office (GAO), two-thirds of all hospitals turn away ambulances at some point during a given year, and of those hospitals, 10 percent average over 5 hours a day on diversion. In one four-month period, all 29 ERs in metropolitan Phoenix's went on diversion simultaneously on eight occasions. In a one-month period all the ERs in Cleveland's were on diversion simultaneously for an average of over two hours a day.

Not only do crowded ERs lead to poorer patient care and worse results, but by tying up ambulances (like the seven now idling outside Providence), they also slow the city's ambulance system's ability to respond. Although the District fire department would not release official figures, Kenneth Lyons, a paramedic and president of the local paramedics' union, estimated that about 40 percent of the time, all the district's ambulances are occupied.

"When patients have to wait 12 to 24 hours in the emergency room to get a hospital bed," said Mark Smith, Chairman of the Department Emergency Medicine at Washington Hospital Center, "I think that's a crisis. But we're also close to a tipping point. We haven't had a flu epidemic for two years; the next one we might find ourselves in a real crisis." As it is, Washington Hospital Center is on diversion an average of about five hours a day.

http://www.mojones.com/commentary/columns/2004/04/04_300.html


Bush has been AWOL on health care.

JEAPORDIZING HEALTH CARE ACCESS FOR SENIORS AND KIDS: George Bush chose to pass a $2.3 trillion tax cut geared toward the wealthy instead of shoring up federal health care programs. Instead of using the enormous surpluses available to help make health care more affordable for Medicare AND Medicaid beneficiaries, as well as Americans across the country, George Bush chose to pass a $2.3 trillion tax cut, leading to enormous federal deficits. Now, he wants to make the tax cut permanent, which will drain billions more -putting critical health care programs like Medicaid and Medicare on the chopping block.

Already, Bush has proposed cutting approximately $16 billion from Medicaid. The Bush proposal would force between 490,000 to 650,000 children off of S-CHIP. This is at a time when 45 million Americans are uninsured - 5 million more than when President Bush took office.

http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/health_care/kit/uninsured_bush.html

[Blue Moon]

1. It's a conspiracy

It's obvious that Bush eliminated this year's vaccine hoping that Kerry supporters would become ill and not be able to get to the polls and vote. Wake up people.

[bigtree]

2. I wish we could find a vaccine against freepers

Oh yeah! We have one! We can kick freeper flu's ass at the polls.

The ignorance of some folks never ceases to amaze me. Some folks almost never care about these issues of life and death until it's their own ass on the line. Hope it's not your ass that gets caught with the flu this year and no health coverage. Hope you don't end up at one of these overburdened hospitals looking for relief.

Flu Dangers Serious for Seniors
http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1074887&nav=5D7lDF5i

The flu can be deadly, and despite advances in medical care and better vaccines, the number of people who die from the flu keeps rising.

Each year millions of Americans get sick with the influenza virus. On average, 20,000 Americans die from the disease and another 100,000 are hospitalized.

What's more, those statistics are getting worse. The number of Americans who die from the flu has increased dramatically over the past twenty years, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As reported in the journal of the American Medical Association, the 1976-1977 flu season claimed more than 16,000 lives. By 1998, that number had jumped to over sixty-four thousand.
______________________________________

National Foundation for Infectious Diseases Survey Highlights Influenza as a Significant Threat to People in The United States - More Serious than SARS
Despite Findings Nearly Half of People in U.S.
Don't Get Vaccinated Against the Flu
http://www.todaysseniorsnetwork.com/flu_a_danger.htm

BETHESDA, Md., Oct. 13, 2003 -- A national survey sponsored by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID) to assess consumers' misperceptions about influenza and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) finds that while only one percent of respondents believe that someone in their household will catch SARS this winter, 42 percent believe that someone in their household will come down with the flu.

Results from the survey also show that almost half of consumers overestimate the number of people who became infected with SARS in the U.S. since the beginning of 2003, and nearly 70 percent of consumers believe that there were deaths in the U.S. caused by SARS, even though there were none. In addition, the survey finds that consumers are aware that flu is much more prevalent than SARS, but they underestimate significantly the number of people in the U.S. that are hospitalized and die from the flu each year. According to the World Health Organization, during the SARS outbreak of 2003, a total of 192 people in the U.S. became sick with SARS, all of whom recovered and no one died. By comparison, in an average year, the flu is responsible for more than 114,000 hospitalizations and approximately 36,000 deaths in the U.S. According to the CDC, this year is predicted to be a moderate to severe flu season.

"There's no doubt that SARS is a serious illness and a potentially
deadly disease, but nobody knows if it is going to re-emerge this
winter, unlike the flu, which can cause tens of thousands of hospitalizations and deaths each year," says Gregory A. Poland, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Infectious Diseases, Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and Director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group. "Results from this survey show that too few people in the United States get vaccinated against the flu each year, which is why NFID is encouraging everyone, including healthy people, to do so this flu season. If everyone in the U.S. got vaccinated each year against the flu it would significantly cut down on the number of flu related illnesses and save tens of thousands of lives."
_______________________________________

[newyawker99]

4. Hi Blue Moon!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[rndmprsn]

3. great talking point!

please email this to the K/E campaign and the DNC...another example of bush close ties to an industry producing failure for the american ppl.