Right-Wing Apology. America's anti-intellectualism & drug pricing thugs exposed. Scotland does it better than us.
Apology from a Right-Wing architect. Why I will keep engaging the Right.Scottish Ph.D. Candidate/Inventor proves Scotland gets it. Anti-intellectualism cancer explained. Pharma board Managers exposed.
Notes
Thugs-In-Ties-Suit: 3 Axis Advisor Prez Antonio Ciaccia on Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBM) report.
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Education activist & author Victoria Young discusses America's new anti-intellectualism movement.
Worthwhile Reads
Why I cannot give up on Right-Wing Americans. We can’t else ‘they’ win. Please watch the entire clip.
JOIN THE RANT: Young Scottish Ph.D. candidate/inventor; a reality every American should have too
Apology & confession from one of the architects of the Right-Wing misogynistic pro-life movement.
Notes
This week’s blog themes naturally coalesced into a reality about us that I hope you will see after reading and listening to the videos. As an exercise, please leave a comment and let me know what you think it is.
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Thugs-In-Ties-Suit: 3 Axis Advisor Prez Antonio Ciaccia on Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBM) report.
Antonio Ciaccia exposes Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) and their drug pricing complicity. My question is, should PBMs even exist?
Antonio Ciaccia speaks
Antonio Ciaccia, President of 3 Axis Advisors led government affairs for the Ohio Pharmacists Association, a trade organization with a strong track record of advocating for drug pricing transparency. Antonio has since spent years studying the pharmacy marketplace, publishing several analyses on the drug pricing code, and pulling the rug out from what he believes is one of the most dysfunctional marketplaces in the world.
Consumers face an unfair disadvantage at their local pharmacy counter, with many paying more than they should for their needed medications due to the business practices of little-known companies in the drug supply chain called Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs). The PBM Accountability Project released a report in early December 2021 based on research conducted in collaboration with data analysis firm, 3 Axis Advisors, which identifies the ways PBMs take advantage of the healthcare system to increase revenues.
If you have health insurance, whether it be through Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance, chances are it’s managed by a PBM. They act as middlemen between drug manufacturers and patients’ health plans, negotiating savings on prescription medicines and determining which drugs will be covered by insurance. However, PBMs fail to pass savings to the patients and insurance companies, while undermining the possibility for competition that would drive value and savings for consumers. This drives up the cost of prescription drugs, leaving you to pay more out of pocket.
“With PBMs essentially centered at the core of the U.S. drug supply chain, it begs for scrutiny of how their business practices may exacerbate drug pricing dysfunction and excess,” said Mr. Ciacias. “As PBMs claim to be the only entity working to control drug prices, we believe that analyses like this report can shed light on the incentives and opportunities PBMs have to inflate costs rather than provide savings to plan sponsors and patients.”
Watch the entire episode here.
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Education activist & author Victoria Young discusses America's new anti-intellectualism movement.
Author, retired veterinarian, & education activist Victoria Young discusses the new American anti-intellectualism among other issues.
Dr. Young wrote the article titled “Anti-intellectualism in Today’s America!“ that immediately sucked me in. Deep into her article, I caught the following snippet.
“We don’t educate people anymore. We train them to get jobs,” said Professor Catherine Liu in discussing the changing mission of universities.
And that said it all. We are creating robots with no ability of critical thinking. The bastions of our economy want the obedient subject that is there to serve with their labor and controlled intellect.
If you ever wonder why the fear of Critical Race Theory (CRT), the necessary anti-intellectual modus operandi is the way we can keep an unfair system from collapsing. To be clear, K-12 does not teach CRT. But there is a slippery slope for those in power that Americans will learn about the true nature of our checkered past from our inception. The masses would demand mitigation for past injustices.
Victoria Young is an involved, informed, and active parent of the No Child Left Behind era. Victoria said that she witnessed one of the biggest farces in public education EVER! Victoria saw with my own eyes the damage her schools suffered at the hands of standardization and privatization. But today she discusses an issue that while superficially not connected to her passion actually is, anti-intellectualism.
Worthwhile Reads (Make great holiday gifts as you help our cause)
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Why I cannot give up on Right-Wing Americans. We can’t else ‘they’ win. Please watch the entire clip.
Many balk at talking to the other side, the Right-Wing. My question is what is the alternative. The only other option is untenable.
A listener of Politics Done Right sent me a clip from a commentator who believes talking to some people like Right-Wing Americans is worthless.
"The biggest waste of time is arguing with a fool and fanatic who doesn't care about truth or reality but only the victory of his or her beliefs or illusions," the commentator said. "Never waste time on discussions that make no sense. There are people who for all the evidence presented to them do not have the ability to understand nor do they want to understand. They just want to argue. Others who are blinded by ego or hatred and resentment, the only thing that they want is to be right even if they aren't. The saying goes; when ignorance screams intelligence moves on."
I have a few comments about his necessary but incomplete commentary. It is the reason I wrote the book "It’s Worth It: How to Talk To Your Right-Wing Relatives, Friends, and Neighbors."
I believe in shoring up and empowering the Progressive and Democratic base. But I know from experience that there are many on the Right looking for a place to land if given the opportunity. And that delta of people is the winning margin for 2022. Please listen to the entire clip and then give me your thoughts.
JOIN THE RANT: Young Scottish Ph.D. candidate/inventor; a reality every American should have too
I met a Scottish Ph.D. Candidate/Inventor in DC, who tested a robot on my daughter's hand to aid in her stroke recovery. She is proof there is a better economic system.
Those who follow my blog and radio programs know that my daughter, Ashley, recently suffered her second stroke. I moved temporarily to DC to take of her during her recovery. She got her first stroke during her third year of medical school, lost half her vision, and had a severe foot drop.
Even with the stroke, Ashley fought hard to graduate on time. All the while, she was fighting the effects of the radiation from the CyberKnife used to neutralize her inoperable arterial venus malformation (AVM). It left her left side virtually paralyzed. She did everything one-handed. I am in complete awe of what she accomplished with virtually no complaining. She would ultimately have to postpone her graduation by six months.
Fate was not kind as she got a second stroke apparently when the AVM collapsed three months before her updated graduation. We wanted the collapse but without the bleed, a hemorrhagic stroke.
Ashley spent ten days in the ICU near death as her brain kept swelling. The excellent neurological team led by Dr. Jeffrey Ching-Kwei Mai was astounding as they brought my daughter back from the brink. My daughter subsequently spent three weeks in inpatient rehab and is now doing outpatient rehab several times a week.
I see the hospital and doctor's bills as I check Ashley's mail. They are north of $300,000. While I paid for all of Ashley's undergrad school, she took out loans for medical school. These are north of $250,000.
There is a particular reason why I point out the above numbers. When Ashley got out of most of the ICU/Hospital fog, as she laid in bed in inpatient rehab, she was extremely depressed to the point of tears. It broke my heart to my core.
"Dad," Ashley said. "This another setback. How can I recover from this? I have all these bills for medical school and may not even be able to become a doctor with my condition. And what about this hospital bill? It will be outrageous."
The first thing I told her was to cease worrying about those issues. Every problem has an answer. She said she is three months away and still wants to be a doctor. I told her then that she should fight for knowing there is more than one way to accomplish tasks. I reminded her that as a political activist working for pay-it-forward college and Medicare For All, her unexpected and unfortunate situation is why everyone should support those policies.
Melissa, the Scottish Ph.D. candidate/inventor, asked my daughter to be one of the test subjects for her invention that helps stroke victims recover finger movement and control. She completed her dissertation with my daughter's test.
Both my daughter and I enjoyed speaking to this 28-year-old researcher from Scotland. She told us her entire story from high school to Ph.D. And her story is one we should wish for every American.
Melissa comes from a large working-class family in Scotland. Not one of them went to college. In her senior year, the Scottish government implemented free college. Remember, Scotland wanted to secede from the UK because they were more progressive and wanted to stay in the European Union.
As I explained in the rant in the video clip, Melissa had no idea she would have liked college. But because she had an opportunity outside of her basal reality -- she did not have to worry about affordability -- Melissa found out she loved it and blossomed into a productive inventor that will give back so much more to society than the initial investment in her.
Melissa wanted to make it clear that Scotland was no England.
"Yes, they have the National Health Service (NHS)," Melissa said. "But we do it right. We cover, medicines too unlike England."
My daughter knew what she wanted to do for a large part of her life. She planned. But fate made her path more difficult. Our policies make Ashley's path to recovery difficult, stressful, and unfair, given that her fork healthwise and financial was not her fault. Melissa did not plan. She had choices. If Melissa had suffered Ashley's fate, her only worry would be recovery, knowing that she could get back on the right path because Scotland governs as a humane society.
I wish most Americans did not buy into the false messaging. They defend those who rob them as they demean many who have just had dire fates.
I wrote three books that each standalone, but as a series is (1) Explanation of our economic system and its flaw, (2) How we can convince those on the Right to join us, (3) What our society should be. I wrote them both to illustrate and subsidize our radio program pushing the progressive movement and policies.
My daughter started a new medium publication detailing her strokes and the ups and down it puts one through. It is very inspiring but also authentic as she lets it all out. I would appreciate it if you would read her articles. And give her a few claps if you like them. Most importantly, she needs 100+ followers on medium to open her up for a few pennies. So if you have the wherewithal to do so, please read, clap, and follow her here.
Apology & confession from one of the architects of the Right-Wing misogynistic pro-life movement.
One of the Right-Wing Evangelical movement founders, Frank Schaeffer, has confessed and is giving an apology.
Frank Schaeffer, former Evangelical pariah and author of "Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in GOD," continues his apology tour. He, his family, and other charlatans have exacted a wound on this country that has cost us much.
In this interview with Joy-Ann Reid, Schaeffer explains how a group of Evangelical Christians distorted the movement. He said that before they deceived their followers, more than 50% of Evangelicals were pro-choice, including the likes of Billy Graham. Ironically, Graham's son has become a stone-cold Evangelical hack.
This statement from Schaeffer says it all.
"We come from a place where we have acted as if this is part of Christian theology," Schaeffer said. "It is not. And the second thing is is that my family, sadly, as I talk about in the book, went out of its way not to stop abortion but to put women back in their place. This was a misogynistic movement. I was part of it, and that's why I've spent the last six years writing an apology and what I hope is the most pro-family, pro-child pro-woman book out there. And I'll tell you something you cannot be pro-family unless you are pro-choice because if women are treated like nothing more than incubating vessels, second-class citizens, and this horrible burden that nature and evolution or god or whoever the creator was, puts on women. If this is not balanced by the right to choose, we cannot have an equal society. Women cannot have careers. Women cannot have lives."
And then he gave the heartfelt apology.
"I am so sorry for the part I played. I am so sorry on behalf of my father for the part we played," Schaeffer said. "We were a misogyny team. We were not pro-life. We were a misogyny team. We were not pro-life, and it is evident."
Schaeffer is a necessary voice in these times. I commend him for making the turn and atoning.
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