On the travesty which is our healthcare system
No on Amendment D, Medicaid expansion
It’s an outrage that Medicaid expansion is on the ballot this November. We have to finally take a stand and demand healthcare reform. It is unacceptable that we are being asked to pay more into our already ridiculously vast, wasteful and fraudulent government healthcare system. Not only would it bind our state to future federal government limitations, regulations, and mandates, it would also restrict resources and the autonomous authority of our primary care managers to practice medicine as they deem best.
I believe that the fact we rarely hear the following points raised by either democrat or republican representatives during Medicaid expansion discussions is related to how many from both sides of the aisle accept Big Medical funding. South Dakota politicians are no exception. According to Open Secrets’ database, South Dakota’s John Thune is ranked in the top 20 largest recipients of Big Pharma funding (out of all members of Congress).
I am VOTING NO on Amendment D. Opting for healthcare reform over medicaid expansion is in the interest of everyone, even those who would start to receive federal funding through Medicaid with the expansion(!!) Here are the biggest reasons why.
1. Our healthcare system has become radically more focused on maintaining large profit margins than on optimizing health and protecting lives, explains Harvard Medical School’s Dr. John Abramson in his recent book Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care And Hoe We Can Repair It. This is in no small part, he explains, because “pharmaceutical companies now control most of the research agenda, and their primary goal is not to improve American health but to maximize their own profits.” Wendell Potter was a former VP at Cigna, and has a recent substack post that does a great job detailing the scope of the Big Medical scandal. Seven of our country's biggest health insurers took in $620.6 billion in revenue for mid-year earnings this year and $43.8 billion in profits, much of it from taxpayers. Fifty-three percent of all Medicaid beneficiaries are now enrolled in health plans managed by the Big 7 Medical Insurers. Meanwhile, 43.4% of U.S. adults between 19-64 are underinsured primarily because of insurers’ out-of-pocket demands…!
The job of Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) was originally conceived to drive down rates of new drugs so that patients could afford them. PBMs now negotiate lucrative rebates with pharmaceutical companies in return for recommending that the pharmaceutical company’s drug gets insured. PBMs have become nothing more than healthcare "middlemen" who drive higher out-of-pocket costs for patients and less access to prescription medicines. Senator Grassley reports on the extent of the problem: "The PBMs are collecting more than $9 billion a year from pharmacies." No one in congress has been more tenacious in bringing anticompetitive prescription drug market practices and PBM abuses to light than Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
At this time, almost every drug on an insurance plan that's a Tier 1 (endorsed/pushed by medical insurance) has a rebate that goes to the PBM. The three big PBMs control 80% of the prescription drug market in America. A further scandal and little known outrage is that the three biggest PBMs are owned by the 3 biggest Medical Insurance Companies (Cigna, CVS/Aetna, UnitedHealth)!! Dr. Adam J. Fein recently mapped the vertical integration of Big Insurance, PBMs, Specialty Pharmacies, and Providers: a horrifying look at the state of U.S. drug channels, which should infuriate us all:
Insurance companies are the single most influential part of healthcare, controlling every aspect of medicine. The steep increase in profits of medical insurance’s Big 7 comes at the expense of a huge climb of underinsured adults ages 19-64. Big Insurance cleared $43.8 billion mid-year earnings this year, and yet America has these percentages of working aged people underinsured ⬇️
At this very significant juncture, failing to demand elimination of superfluous middlemen, accountability for fraud and corrupt actors in the system, and transparency of drug pricing all will jettison us another giant and perhaps irreversible stage away from thriving under the limited government powers envisioned by our Founding Fathers. If you missed Brigham Buhler's conversation with Joe Rogan (#1873), you can go to his website and check out all the links which educate in more detail on PBMs and Big Medical.
In June 2022, Rebecca Pifer published a couple important stories on PBMs at HealthcareDive. In her first, she details the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s investigation into the six largest PBMs in the U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley reported on the urgency of the FTC’s investigation and its bipartisan support on his website:
In a bipartisan letter to FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) were joined by Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in arguing that Americans cannot afford a delay in the results of this investigation, since PBMs’ potential anticompetitive behavior could be increasing the cost of medicine for consumers.
In her second report, Pifer summarized findings of a recent white paper which found that PBM practices are keeping consumers from generic drug prescription savings, and that in fact consumers overpay by as much as 20%
2. There has never been a time in history where our federal level public health agencies have had such massive conflicts of interest, making it doubtful that a meaningful portion of their attention is actually focused on supporting public health outcomes. Why do we want to entrust control over medical welfare for our most vulnerable to a sickcare system? The CDC owns 56 vaccine patents and spends over 40% of its $12 billion-dollar annual budget ($4.6 billion) buying and distributing vaccines. Ginger Taylor makes a good point: “Does this seem like a public health agency making “independent” vaccine recommendations, or a private company with an impressive portfolio to which one might look for investment opportunities?“ NIH also owns vaccine patents and frequently profits from the sale of these products it’s supposed to be regulating. OpenTheBooks forced the NIH to disclose over 22,100 royalty payments between 2010 and 2014, although the total number paid to each scientist was rededacted from disclosures. They are still waiting on information up to 2020, but estimate there will be over $350 million in royalties paid by third-parties to the NIH and its scientists. Every royalty payment must be disclosed to properly report conflicts of interest impacting research reliability.
High level officials get royalty payments on these products they are supposed to be regulating. Senator Rand Paul demanded more information on that topic, but has yet to receive any information
About 45% of the FDA’s total budget ($2.7 billion) comes from pharmaceutical industry user fees. But actually, a fact sheet that the FDA released in November 2020 shows industry fees account for most of the funding in many departments including regulatory activities involving human drugs (which account for a third of the FDA’s total budget) where a whopping 65% ($656 million) is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical industry additionally provides 75% of the FDA’s drug review budget. These “user fees” only started to become a lucrative source of funding for the FDA since 1992 when the Prescription Drug User Fee Act was passed by the US Congress. According to Maryanne Demasi’s research published in 2022 (BMJ):
With the act, the FDA moved from a fully taxpayer funded entity to one supplemented by industry money. Net PDUFA fees collected have increased 30 fold—from around $29m in 1993 to $884m in 2016.
The conflict of interest problem, where regulatory agencies have large percentages of their budgets funded by the very industry they have pledged to regulate, is an issue worldwide, according to Demasi’s research:
In Europe, industry fees funded 20% of the new EU-wide regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), in 1995. By 2010 that had risen to 75%; today it is 89%.
In America, the FDA, CDC, and NIH (including particularly the NIAID) are all essentially wholly owned subsidiaries of Big Medical. Dr. John Abramson in Sickening reveals:
“one of the best-kept secrets in all of health care - understood by few doctors - is that the peer reviewers, medical journal editors, and guideline writers, who are assumed to be performing due diligence to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the data reported from company-sponsored studies, do not have access to the real data from these trials. The published reports that doctors accept as fully verified scientific evidence can be more accurately described as unverified data summaries prepared largely by or for the sponsoring drug companies.”
The pharmaceutical industry shapes public perceptions by providing the bulk of funding for corporate news stations. The Gates Foundation alone has donated millions to corporate media outlets, and has invested millions in journalism training.
There is a critical risk of failure to provide informed consent when the results of research are improperly presented and we have no access to raw trial data. It was the Nuernberg Code in 1947 which established the principle of informed consent in human experimentation. There can be no informed consent, if we cannot see the data. In December of 2021, the FDA said it needed 75 years to release Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine data to the public.
In response, on 19 January 2022 Senior editor & the editor in chief of the British Medical Journal wrote:
"Today, despite the global rollout of covid-19 vaccines and treatments, the anonymised participant level data underlying the trials for these new products remain inaccessible to doctors, researchers, and the public—and are likely to remain that way for years to come. This is morally indefensible for all trials, but especially for those involving major public health interventions...The public has paid for covid-19 vaccines through vast public funding of research, and it is the public that takes on the balance of benefits & harms that accompany vaccination. The public, therefore, has a right and entitlement to those data, as well as to the interrogation of those data by experts. Pharmaceutical companies are reaping vast profits without adequate independent scrutiny of their scientific claims. The purpose of regulators is not to dance to the tune of rich global corporations and enrich them further; it is to protect the health of their populations. We need complete data transparency for all studies, we need it in the public interest, and we need it now.”
Decide for yourself if anything has changed. There has certainly been zero accountability:
According to The Epoch Times story:
The refusal was issued to The Epoch Times, which submitted a Freedom of Information Act for all autopsy reported obtained by the FDA concerning any deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System following COVID-19 vaccination. The FDA declined to release any reports, even redacted copies. The Epoch Times has appealed the denial, in addition to the recent denial of results of data analysis of VAERS reports.”
Many research articles, including one by Jureidini & McHenry published 16 March in the BMJ, have acknowledged "evidence based medicine has been corrupted by corporate interests, failed regulation, and commercialisation of academia". Given these weaknesses inherent even when following standard of care procedures, the medical community's only option moving forward is adopting a policy of openness and transparency, especially where it regards brainstorming future global pandemic preparedness and response. All conflicts of interest must be openly acknowledged. Raw data must be anonymized and shared with the academic research community to allow the methodology and trial results to be rigorously evaluated (Jureidini, 2022). Adverse events & negative trial results must be promptly and publicly reported.
The public's trust of scientific research has been thrown into question by widespread healthcare fraud and research misconduct. Transgressions must be handled promptly, and with fierce, public accountability. Vested interests must not be permitted to override the rationality of evidence (Jureidini, 2022), for example, when repurposed drugs show superior efficacy for treatment than more lucrative medicines. Ultimately, any public health regulatory body including the WHO, must be populated by independent experts, and not funded to any significant extent by entities which profit from global deployment of pharmaceuticals and vaccines. Science must continue to be regarded as a process of inquiry rather than rules handed down by a bureaucracy on high. Science to be trusted will consistently be the science that is transparent, free from censorship, and open to debate.
3. Never before has America’s federal government so successfully come in between doctors and their patients. There has never been a more critical time to give Primary Care Managers freedom over their own patients’ care and treatment strategies. Briefly, only a few examples - and one from South Dakota.
a) The FDA authorized state-licensed pharmacists to circumvent doctors by directly prescribing Paxlovid, despite an analysis of the Pfizer trial which found little difference in the number of hospitalizations or deaths between placebo and Paxlovid recipients
b) A group of physicians are suing to hold the FDA accountable for its interference with physicians’ ability to treat Covid-19 (Apter v. HHS). The FDA is accused of improperly exploiting misunderstandings about the legality and prevalence of off-label uses of medication, in order to mislead courts, state medical boards, and the public into thinking there is something improper about physicians prescribing drugs off-label. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) General Counsel Andrew Schlafly told the court that once the FDA approves a medication as safe, then physicians have full authority to prescribe it to treat any illness, and particularly a novel virus like Covid-19. Dr. McCullough clarifies in an October 2021 speech: “in Cardiology, more than 60% of drugs prescribed are off-label. And only 6% of the time are there guidelines that tell us what to do. All day long we use our judgement!! If there ever was a time for clinical judgement, it was the mass casualty situation of the Covid-19 epidemic.”
Public health outcomes will improve if we support regulation allowing doctors to be doctors.
c) HB1267, which would have protected doctors’ rights to treat their own patients as they deemed best, was defeated by a South Dakota Senate panel earlier this year. The second most published critical care doctor in the world, Dr Paul Marik, spoke out on behalf of HB1267, as did many South Dakota medical doctors, who complained they had been unable to treat their patients as they deemed most appropriate for individual needs and recovery. For shame, South Dakota!! Specifically, use of an award-winning repurposed medication, taken by billions of humans (adults, children, elderly and pregnant) worldwide over decades, that had long been approved as fully safe for human use was debated. “Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance“ yet doctors were restricted, smeared, and in Dr. Marik’s case suspended for wanting to prescribe the inexpensive, non-patented medicine to their patients.
d) When doctors note clinical improvements, they should have the authority to proceed with treatment in the best interest of the patient. The same thing goes for treatments which they’ve observed to have no clinical impact or harmful clinical impact on patient outcomes. In a 2005 essay, Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis explained that a majority of published findings, even those with statistical significance, were more likely to be false than true, and that findings often reflected simply the prevailing bias. The following treatments are aggressively promoted by regulatory authorities and hospitals, but some doctors supported by quality research suggest they are harming patients:
Statins
Statins have been overprescribed, their risks undisclosed, and their benefit overhyped. In March of 2022, a systematic review and meta-analysis published in JAMA revealed “the absolute benefits of statins are modest, may not be strongly mediated through the degree of LDL-C reduction, and should be communicated to patients as part of informed clinical decision-making as well as to inform clinical guidelines and policy.” But studies much earlier were demonstrating this was the case. Statins in low-risk populations have shown little benefit in comparison to their potential to harm. Lack of access to raw data on potential harms of statins for years hindered proper independent research.
Dr. Aseem Malhotra summarizes the extent of the problem in an October 2019 article: “A gross injustice continues to be committed against tens of millions of patients around the world who are not given the truth about a pill they are prescribed. We cannot be naïve to the fact that fear of cholesterol is a multibillion-dollar industry and total statin revenues are estimated to reach $ 1 trillion by next year.“
Antidepressants
Antidepressants have been overprescribed as well, their risks undisclosed, and their benefit overhyped. Just one example of a recent very damning research conclusion:
“the pooled efficacy of antidepressants is weak and below the threshold of a minimally clinically important change once publication and reporting biases are considered. Moreover, the small mean difference in symptom reductions relative to placebo is possibly attributable to observer effects in unblinded assessors and patient expectancies…a growing body of evidence from hundreds of randomized controlled trials suggests that antidepressants cause suicidality, but this risk is underestimated because data from industry-funded trials are systematically flawed… The strong reliance on industry-funded research results in an uncritical approval of antidepressants. Due to several flaws such as publication and reporting bias, unblinding of outcome assessors, concealment and recoding of serious adverse events, the efficacy of antidepressants is systematically overestimated, and harm is systematically underestimated. Therefore, I conclude that antidepressants are largely ineffective and potentially harmful.”
Alzheimer’s
Recently, significant data manipulation, image tampering, fraud, and ethics violations were found in Alzheimers research with complaints about the problem for years ignored by NIH
Cancer
The FDA approved 18 cancer drugs in 2020, and "Only 4 (22%) of the approvals were based on a randomized placebo-controlled trial. The remaining 14 approvals (78%) were based on uncontrolled, single-arm phase I/II trials. Eleven of these were accelerated approvals and will require further efficacy data" The average number of patients evaluated to obtain approval? It was only 159 patients !!!!! Dr. Vinay Prasad’s research on surrogate endpoints is extremely enlightening on this topic.
Opioids
Dr. Andrew Kolodny, MD published "How FDA Failures Contributed to the Opioid Crisis" in August of 2020 in the Journal of Ethics. The piece highlights regulatory mistakes made by the FDA in approving and labeling drugs, and astonishingly, it is rapidly apparent upon reading that nothing has been fundamentally changed in the FDA/Pharma relationship. In October 2021, the FDA authorized a change in the formulation of Pfizer's mRNA covid-19 vaccine for 5-11yr olds **without any safety or efficacy studies prior to it being rolled out to millions of children**. More recently, the FDA authorized new Covid boosters for very mild Omicron without trials in humans. Very mild illnesses make it difficult to rationalize side effect risk over benefit of a medication/treatment.
You Are Fat ‘Cause You’re Lazy
Campaigns such as “Let’s Move” successfully diverted attention from the role America’s Ultra-processed Food Industry was playing in the Obesity Epidemic. Big Food and Drink helped fund increased focus on “calories out” to keep people from questioning “calories in”. CrossFit exposed the CDC and NIH in 2018 for failing to disclose large contributions they received from Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Ordered to provide full funding transparency and stop “anonymous” listings, CDC and NIH ignored Congress and continued to hide the information. CrossFit had to sue HHS to compel them to comply with an early FOIA request. After finally releasing the information, HHS attorneys belatedly noticed that some emailed information was embarrassing and tried to retroactively redact the content. Not only corrupt; simply incompetent.
According to CrossFit’s post in November 2019:
In its FY 2015 report, the CDC Foundation received funds from Coca-Cola, the PepsiCo Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Amgen, Pfizer, and a host of other companies in the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries. They have donated millions of dollars to the CDC Foundation, likely at least in part in order to influence its guidelines and activities. There’s no reason why all Americans should not know why these companies are donating to the CDC through the CDC Foundation.
This should not come as a surprise. At least one CDC researcher has described the CDC Foundation as a “professional money-laundering facility,” and it is increasingly clear that the organization turns food/beverage and pharmaceutical industry dollars into information and recommendations favorable to those industries, all with the federal government’s seal of approval.
Conflicts of interest are endemic, and these emails stand as evidence that the CDC prioritizes industry partnerships over its charter to protect and inform the American public. They demonstrate yet another way in which the CDC and its parent agency, HHS, have simultaneously failed to address the chronic disease epidemic.
The dramatic, aggressive, and synchronized pile-on following Greg Glassman’s comment regarding George Floyd’s death, retrospectively makes so much sense in light of corporate media’s cancelations since that time of so many other voices which provided broader perspective on key issues. Not a single one of our federal public health agencies was sorry to see Greg Glassman go in 2020.
Recognizing the importance of doctors demanding freedom over their own patients’ care and treatment strategies, Dr. Tess Lawrie, a world-class researcher and consultant to the World Health Organization, addressed doctors who’d been restricted in decision-making and providing care: “At this fateful juncture, we must therefore choose, will we continue to be held ransom by corrupt organizations, health authorities, Big Pharma, and billionaire sociopaths, or will we do our moral and professional duty to do no harm and always do the best for those in our care?”
Instead of allowing a balanced debate of issues on corporate media platforms, many prominent speakers, experts, and organizations have been censored from discussion. Sharyl Attkisson keeps a running list of the biggest names. Recently, Twitter censored Dr. Lawrie. Eventually she was reinstated:
Without conversation, the public cannot make informed decisions.
Social media platforms also tried to cancel peer-reviewed and published research from the British Medical Journal, one of the world’s oldest and most influential general medical journals. The BMJ had published a story which:
“revealed a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at [a contract research company helping carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial] that could impact data integrity and patient safety. We also discovered that, despite receiving a direct complaint about these problems over a year ago, the FDA did not inspect [the research company’s] trial sites.“
A fact checker flagged the BMJ’s research with a “missing context” and “misleading” label, even going so far as to label BMJ a “news blog”. Here is the BMJ’s response in the form of an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg. It labels “Meta’s fact checking regime” (both Facebook and Instagram) as incompetent.
4. Our healthcare system is not set up to put patients' interests first. It’s not built in a manner that incentivizes preventative medicine, which is why many people call it “sickcare”. Our healthcare system is not incentivized to actually prevent disease states from happening. Pharmaceuticals treat symptoms, and there is very little time or funding invested in sleuthing out root causes of pathology. This sickcare is incentivized. According to Brigham Buhler, a 15-year pharmaceutical representative with Eli Lily and Stryker, most insurance companies won't cover preventative care because it is not profitable for them to do so. He says that less than 2% of an insurance company's spend is geared toward preventative care (requests are often denied). When incentives for healthy behavior are granted, then a definition of healthy behavior must be established by an independent scientific panel of professionals. Our federal health agencies are too bogged down with conflicts of interest to be trusted to provide one. According to Dr. John Abramson, since the year 2000, American’s healthy life expectancy fell from 38th to 68th in 2019. We trail behind China, Cuba, and Jamaica. He explains in Sickening:
Unlike other wealthy countries, the United States lets drug companies charge as much as they want, so the drugs that offer unique benefits are generally priced at ransomlike levels. Moreover, because the industry controls much of the scientific evidence that reaches health-care professionals and the public, the seven out of eight newly approved drugs that do not provide previously unavailable benefits can be promoted as if they do. The business environment for prescription drugs in the United States is so different from that of other wealthy countries, that an estimated two-thirds to three-quarters of global pharmaceutical profits come from the United States.
5. We have to take into consideration issues raised by States which have experience and have been reporting on issues with Medicaid expansion. The John Locke Foundation reported on pages of problems that North Carolina experienced with their Medicaid program in 2011, and provided recommendations of how it could be reformed, to incorporate the principles of limited government into health policy. The John Locke Foundation has not changed its tune at all this year:
“For years, most state senators have rightfully recognized that Medicaid expansion is bad medicine for North Carolina,” said Locke Chief Executive Officer Amy O. Cooke. “Their changed view is disappointing.”
“Data show that the D.C.-controlled health insurance scheme will leave North Carolinians with less health care access and higher tax burdens because it’s paid for through D.C. deficit spending, adding to inflationary pressures and driving costs even higher,” Cooke added.
“The Senate’s Medicaid expansion bill includes some positive supply-side reforms, such as scaling back certificate-of-need restrictions and granting nurses full practice authority,” Cooke said. “We should exhaust those avenues before ceding control of North Carolinians’ health care to Washington, D.C.”
“Larger-than-expected Medicaid enrollment spikes in other states, combined with today’s economic uncertainty, mean lawmakers could be setting themselves up for another long-term fiscal headache,” Bryson added.
Brian Balfour, Locke’s senior vice president of research, offered multiple reasons for lawmakers to reject Medicaid expansion today. “Expansion would make hundreds of thousands of additional North Carolinians dependent on government for their health care,” Balfour said. “Increased government dependency is decidedly not a conservative value.”
“Increased health insurance coverage will not mean increased access to care,” he added. “Plus, healthier people joining the Medicaid program almost certainly will crowd out services for more needy populations.”
“The federal government is broke and dysfunctional, and chasing short-term funding options from Washington, D.C. makes for bad long-term policy,”
Medicaid comes with unpredictable costs which will end up playing a part in dictating South Dakota’s budget choices. Expansion would make tens of thousands more SD citizens dependent on government handouts for healthcare which we’ve already established doesn’t even prioritize health! We are essentially enrolling tens of thousands more citizens into government-funded sickcare, where symptoms will be pharmaceutically treated rather than root-cause issues being addressed.
The Heritage Foundation reported on the concerning implications of expanding Medicaid on States’ sovereignty and flexibility in a 2021 article entitled: “Build Back Better” Plan Would Make Medicaid Bigger with Less Flexibility, Accountability. According to the Heritage Foundation:
“the Biden administration took unprecedented steps to curb states’ ability to manage and stabilize Medicaid…This proposal not only would increase the number of Americans on government-run health care, but also expand the federal government’s role in delivering that care. Moreover, while the program seems narrowly focused, it is certainly reasonable to assume that it could be expanded and pave the way for a full-blown government takeover.
Rather than expand the broken welfare state, President Joe Biden and Congress should focus on addressing the root causes of the country’s health care woes, such as costly regulations that drive up health care premiums and drive down affordable coverage options.”
Sounds like my thoughts exactly. Another report from KHN in Montana provides more information on the “unprecedented steps” taken under Biden’s Presidency :
Three years after the Trump administration encouraged states to require proof that adult enrollees are working a certain number of hours or looking for work as a condition of receiving Medicaid expansion benefits, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has reversed course under Democratic President Joe Biden
…Since Biden took office, CMS has withdrawn the Trump administration’s approval of work requirement waivers in Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, New Hampshire and Wisconsin…. [Article dated 5 August, 2021]
6. Accepting government funds for healthcare makes our citizens vulnerable to future restrictions of their freedom and overreaching government health mandates. Our Constitution was written to protect God-given rights to Life, Liberty, and Property. Amendment D for Medicaid expansion steals from all of them. South Dakota is the home of the Crazy Horse memorial, celebrating a fiercely independent Native American who refused to take any of the white man’s handouts. Should history repeat itself, conceivably, our hunting grounds could follow. There is nothing more important than maintaining our constitutional freedoms, and the government has shown us how they use fear and emergency use authorization to infringe on our liberty. Mandates are unconstitutional. In the words of Dr. Peter Attia, MD in a blog post entitled “Why I’m For COVID Vaccines, But Against Vaccine Mandates“:
“If this were really about science, why would we not allow previous infection, which confers all the benefits of vaccination if not more, the same rights? …If we are being honest with ourselves, are the mandates truly for the protection of the vaccinated, or do they exist to punish the unvaccinated?”
By the end of 2020 we knew that
“compared with children ages 5 to 17, people ages 75 to 84 are 3,200 times more at risk of dying from COVID-19. For children, the risk of disease is not zero, but the mortality risk is comparable to that from seasonal influenza, and hospitalizations occur in about only 0.008 percent of diagnosed infections"
Please read about the problems Dr. John PA Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, experienced when trying to publish his Dec 2020 paper urging sanity over vaccines with only modest effectiveness. He believes that the inexplicable delays on his paper being published contributed to public health authority overconfidence in blanket vaccine administration, and excess death count in 2021 being higher than in 2020 “in most developed countries”.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, declared she knew from the beginning the vaccines were not going to protect against infection and that she thought “we overplayed the vaccines,"
Birx in her new book also confessed she manipulated data and altered CDC guidance without authorization.
In a COVID hearing in the European Parliament on 10 October 2022, Janine Small, a Pfizer director admitted to Dutch MEP Rob Roos that the vaccine had never been tested on stopping the transmission of the virus.
People lost their jobs, family, and friends for not taking a vaccine that could neither prevent infection or transmission
and should have only been offered to our most vulnerable under emergency use authorization, according to prominent researchers at the time
In August, 2022, the CDC finally admitted that natural immunity is effective than vaccination, and called for treating the vaccinated and the unvaccinated the same. This comes less than a year after declaring Covid “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” which led to people who refused vaccination being ostracized from society.
We need more Outrage.
I am wondering why in the conservative state of South Dakota that we don’t have more kickback against the idea of Medicaid expansion. Of course there is an enormous amount of dollars invested in media advertising which favors expansion. Now you have a better idea of some funding sources. Could billionaire banker T. Denny Sanford of the Sanford Health system also be bankrolling promotion/advertisement for Medicaid expansion? I’ve noticed recently that he is funding the Center for Empathy and Technology within the T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion at the University of California San Diego. They’ve published a fascinating study on antisocial tendencies, lack of compassion, and lack of empathic concern displayed by conservatives. Meanwhile, “A higher proportion of women, liberal-leaning participants, and those reporting higher social desirability were at or above the median of compassion and empathy“. It is amazing to me that this “research” passed peer-review. This is also clearly the type of junk science stoking anti-conservative bias, which fuels politically-motivated violence like the kind which recently ended in tragedy in North Dakota.
South Dakota Senator Thune tells us that he is putting patients first, and that “We need to focus on solutions that will help make health care more affordable for all Americans, rather than expand the government’s role in providing health care.“ We should be ensuring his voting record reflects this sentiment, rather than reflecting his funding record (as one of the top recipients of Big Pharma cash). This goes for all of our representatives. They should be spearheading or at least cosponsoring initiatives which address fraud like the Prescription Pricing for the People Act, the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency Act, and the Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act, which would cap year-over-year price increases, and reform Medicare Part D, saving taxpayers billions of dollars. Any politician who supports Pharmaceutical and Big Medical funding is at risk of not prioritizing Health Outcomes for their citizens. Gov Kristi Noem originally said she was not in favor of Medicaid expansion, and would prefer a state initiative that “can be innovative in health care for our tribes” Let’s hold her to that sentiment!
#MedicalFreedom ranks as one of the most critical issues going forward - we have to be sure to vote for candidates who will fight for it!! Follow https://standforhealthfreedom.com/ to find out which politicians, from both sides of the aisle, they endorse.
I don’t know how, after being informed about all the fraud and corruption driving the increase in underinsured, that someone could conclude that the best solution is to make Medicaid bigger. I find it all an absolute outrage. And how gullible was I at one time to believe and even repeat the falsehood that American capitalism is at fault for the inability of an average American to be adequately insured in such a crooked Pharmacare system. Politicians accepting insane amounts of Big Medical funds would have us believe that throwing more money at the same corrupt system is the only solution. Why in the world are we considering giving any more of our ever dwindling finances toward the expansion of Medicaid instead of demanding that the government clean up the existing fraud and corruption rampant in the system?
I hope more people join me in VOTING NO on Amendment D.
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