Hello all, I’m a self employed blue collar liberal from rural Maryland.

The AARP has been engulfed with the right wing attitude especially with the inception of the 2000 selection of G W Bush as president.

The influence of the political right with the AARP is noticeable to the many elders with the sense to know what the AARP stood for before the 2ooo election. So wonder why so many elders are no longer members.   

While engaged in a heated discussion with a rightwing poster, we both crossed the line in words.  I received a warning from the Community Host that stated we both were to refrain from posting to each other.  The penalty would be suspension.  My warning stated we both received the same warning.  I posted to the other poster and he responded to me.  I got kicked off and the other poster is still on the thread.  How fair is that?

At the time of receiving the warning I had five(5) Posts deleted in the past year.  The other Poster had at least 3 times that amount, to at least 6 to 8 different Posters.  What criteria is being used to determine suspension?  Another example of  right wing fair and balanced.

Health Care for each and every one of us !

Yes, indeed, we do need it.  And we also need it for other reasons that maybe we haven’t even thought of yet.  We need it to assist our country in becoming better educated, also. 

Children and their future children will always need to have sufficient health care in order to become educated. 

Can you imagine any powerful country that is educated that does not have proper health care given by right to each and every citizen no matter if they are poor or wealthy?  It just cannot happen and will not happen.  If we fail to give our people (as a country) the ability to think straight and prosper in all ways, we are a doomed country.  Doomed to failure in every possible way.  I know none of us want to see that happen.

Over the past several days, there have been several senior citizen posters banned from access to the member forums on the largest organization for senior citizens.  These senior posters now join a growing group who have been stopped or “banned” from posting their comments.  In far too many instances the banned posters are AARP Members who pay their dues. 

The primary problem occurs with the “liberal” posters have their commentary villified, demeaned or their personal identities assaulted by bilious slams and slurs from the right wing posters, most of whom are not members of the AARP. 

 Usually, the situation begins with a “liberal” poster (actually anyone whose attitude toward today’s issues are to the left of Gengis Khan), puts up some comment about the war in Iraq, the health care system in the United States, the Social Security system, Katrina,,, well you get the idea!!  The “conservative” flame thrower will post a demeaning statement about the idiocy of the post, the personal intelligence, or more likely about how all “libruls” are traitors to the country and the post shows that the liberals are trying to destroy the country.  The AARP outsource monitors take no action against the “conservative” posters who initiate the vicious commentary, but will censor the “librul” poster who responds.  After a few of these situations, the AARP outsourced moderators will “bann” the “librul” poster for violating the Terms of Service.

It should be clearly understood that the AARP itself does not operate the board, it has relegated that responsibility to its “for profit” subsidiary, AARP Services.   This organization in turn has outsourced the operation of the AARP Forum to a company that has placed individuals who appear, to have a strong oriention against non-right wing posters. 

Over the past several months, actually more than 12 months, posters who have a left leaning bent, a centrist orientation, or even a moderate Republican attitude are censored for the most flimsy reasons.  They usually claim that the poster has violated the terms of service, but they interpret the TOS as they wish and usually their stated infraction is not written anywhere on the TOS.

A few months ago, in the summer of 2006, a purge of several non-right wing posters caused this group to break away and to establish our current organization and forum.  We are proud to show a reasonable growth, considering that we do not advertise our presence and our forums, blogs and other functions within the SCC organization are all PEER moderated and managed. 

As a result of the most recent Friday Massacre of three viable, intelligent and concerned posters by the AARP Forum moderators, the members of our SCC organization who still post over on the board have taken it upon themselves to initiate a 72 hour boycott of the forum to express their displeasure with the capricious and arbitrary actions by the outsourced moderators on the AARP Forum.  We are also encouraging those non-right winger people “libruls” to join us in this boycott.  The boycott will run from Monday April 9, at 10:00am through Thursday morning April 12 at 10:00am.

Anyone reading this blog is invited to join in our boycott of the forum.  We will support our fellow senior citizens who continue to post their opinions and comments on the AARP Forum and hope that at some point, the AARP executives will take a look at the way their MEMBERS are abused by an outside company whose employees seem to take great delight in aggravating the old folks.  But from past experience, we seriously doubt the AARP will take any appropriate actions.

Note from Harvey-there will also be a PDF White Paper of this post found on the SCC main menu.

DEBUNKING THE LIES ABOUT THE VA RX PROGRAM 

Since Medicare Part D was proposed we have been hearing that: yes the VA does get good prices by negotiating with pharma, but they have a very restrictive formulary which uses old drugs and that the veterans dislike the program.  That is all bunk. In fact the VA has a much bigger formulary than does Part D and it is completely up to date on the drugs it includes in the formulary (except it excludes the “me too” drugs that offer nothing new and just are higher cost and their satisfaction ratings with customers are considerably higher than is the private sector insurers. From all I can see Medicare Part D would do well to emulate the successes of the VA program both for the Medicare beneficiaries good health and the American tax payer’s good (maybe to the tune of 1/3 trillion dollars over 10 years).  The following material debunks the myths put out by pharma and its friends.  The material is gathered from a presentation by the VA to the Kaiser Family Foundation in January of this year.  The material used can be found at:

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast/uploaded_files/Valentino.pdf 

There will be several posts to debunk the myths from pharma and its friends: 

MYTH # 1:  From the Deseret News (and widely quoted by others): “The vaunted VANF covers some 1,300 drugs, just 30 percent of the 4,300 drugs available on Medicare’s market-priced formulary.” 

FACT:   VA dispenses 4,778 specific drug products which represent the 1,294 chemical compounds listed on the VA National Formulary (VANF)

FACT:   In 2006, VA dispensed prescriptions for an additional 1,416 drugs not listed on the VANF, for a total of 6,194 drugs  

FACT:   Comparing the number of chemical compounds to the number of individual drugs is not a valid comparison (in fact it is a gross misrepresentation and an intentional lie)                                           

VA    PART D# of chemical compounds   1,294    ~1,300# of individual drugs              4,778  ~4,300 

FACT:   VA offers 478 or 11 percent more specific drugs than Medicare Part D formularies  

MYTH # 2:  VA’s formulary is “among the most restrictive in the marketplace”

FACT:   In a 1999-2000 Congressionally mandated study, entitled “Description and Analysis of the VA National Formulary”, the

Institute of

Medicine (Part of the National Academies) concluded that: …the VA National Formulary is not overly restrictive. In some respects it is more, but in many respects less restrictive than other public or private formularies.  The Committee has identified deficiencies in the implementation and management of the National Formulary and recommended changes.…If VA did not have a formulary process like it does, today we would be recommending that you build one just like it…-Comments of the IOM Committee Chairman at the VA study exit conference  

MYTH #3:  A widely cited report supported by the Center for Medical Progress at the Manhattan Institute, implied that veterans live 2 months less than all

U.S. males because VA uses older drugs FACT:   VA uses both “older” as well as “new” drugs FACT:   The paper contains methodological flaws and numerous errors of fact and analysis. References to, or conclusions drawn from, the paper should be carefully scrutinized 

FACT:   For example….. Do Veterans live shorter lives?  After the errors in the material is corrected:  NO!! They actually live longer lives… 

MYTH # 4:    The VA prescription benefit program is substandard compared to other systems 

FACT:   Veterans get better pharmaceutical care than private or public/municipal hospitals - Arch Intern Med 2006; 2511-2517 

FACT:   Veterans get better diabetes pharmaceutical care than patients with private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid. Better care is associated with better outcomes - Medical Care 2004:42:102-109 

FACT: VA continues to exceed HEDIS in the vast majority of common measures, including drug-related measures. 

Comparisons to private, Medicare and Medicaid health plans show better measures for the VA:

·             LDL Cholesterol < 100 after AMI, PTCA, CABG

·             LDL Cholesterol < 130 after AMI, PTCA, CABG

·             Beta blocker on discharge after AMI 

·             Diabetes: Poor control HbA1c > 9%

·             Diabetes: Cholesterol (LDL-C) controlled (<100)

·             Diabetes: Cholesterol (LDL-C) controlled (<130)

·             Hypertension: BP <= 140/90 most recent visit 

MYTH # 5:  VA relies on mail order pharmacies to fill prescriptions and does not use community pharmacists  FACT:   VA employs 5,800 pharmacists and 3,800 pharmacy technicians and is regarded by many professional pharmacy organizations as THE benchmark for excellence in ambulatory (community) pharmacy practice  FACT:   VA operates 230 outpatient pharmacies and pharmacists are involved in all aspects of pharmacy practice from distribution to pharmacist-run drug therapy management clinics 

FACT:   VA provides post graduate residency training to 350 Doctors of Pharmacy each year…..many, many more than any other single organization in the U.S.  

FACT:   By using automated dispensing technologies for prescription refilling, VA pharmacists have more time to teach patients how to most effectively use their medications and to monitor the effectiveness of those medications 

FACT:   3% to 8% of the nation’s prescriptions are filled erroneously; in VA accuracy is >99.997%; primarily due to the use of VA’s automated dispensing technology (mail order)

• Business Week, July 17, 2006
• Rand  

MYTH # 6:  In regard to drugs, newer is always better 

FACT:   newer is not always better.      Many “new” drugs are actually “me too” drugs 

FACT:   Newer is not always safer

• 23 safety-related market withdrawals from 1980-2005 
• Most recent include cholesterol, diabetes and musculoskeletal drugs
•  Another 375+ drugs currently carry Black Box safety warnings
• What is the rationale for exposing patients to drugs with unknown risks, when there is little or no clinical advantage?

FACT:   Newer is not always better….and it’s not always safer….but it is almost always more costly  

MYTH # 7:  From Real Clear Politics: “New drugs as a matter of VA policy are not considered for the VA formulary for three years, regardless of improved effectiveness or reduced side effects”  

FACT:   A three year moratorium has never been a VA policy or practice 

FACT:   VA reviews all new molecular entities for consideration for national formulary listing in a timely fashion 

FACT:   Recent examples include:

• Chantix-FDA approved in May 2006, added to the VANF once it was available on the market
• Lucentis-FDA approved in May 2006, added to the VANF in November 2006
• Every new HIV drug product has been added to the VANF  

MYTH # 8:  Nearly 1 million patients have “defected” from the VA plan to Part D FACT:   Each year for the past 8 years, the number of patients electing to use the VA prescription drug program has increased and there is no sign this trend is changing 

YEAR       # Pharmacy Users
1999:              2,695,241
2000:              2,982,676
2001:              3,422,751
2002:              3,781,286
2003:              4,017,776
2004:              4,189,939
2005:              4,303,025
2006:              4,386,081  

MYTH # 9:  If a drug is not listed on the VANF, it is not available to veterans FACT:   Prescribing guidance (evidence-based Criteria for Use) for non-formulary drugs is developed to ensure access to medically necessary drugs not listed on VANF. For illustration, in 2006 VA dispensed prescriptions for the following non-formulary drugs: 

DRUG	Number of 30-day RXs	Cost
Flomax®	752,924	$ 23 million
Lipitor®	711,138	$ 34 million
Zetia®	369,783	$ 15 million
Protonix®	366,375	$ 13 million
Ambien®	193,418	$ 9 million
Crestor®	144,341	$ 3 million

MYTH # 10:  Patients and prescribers who participate in a health plan that limits drug choice to some degree through a well-managed formulary process, will have an overwhelmingly negative reaction to that limitation 

FACT:   Two independent studies of prescriber perceptions of the VA National Formulary conducted by the RAND Corporation contradict this fallacy

• Am J Manag Care 2001;7:241-251
• Am J Manag Care 2004;10:209-216  

FACT:   For the seventh straight year, VA received significantly higher marks than the private sector from the independent American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI)

• Score of 84 for inpatient services (100 point scale)
  • Up 1 point from previous yearo        10 points higher than the private sector
  • 13 points higher than other federal health care programs
• Score of 82 for outpatient care
  •  Up 2 points from previous year
  • 8 points higher than the private sector
  • 9 points higher than other federal health care programs
• Score of 94 for veteran “loyalty”
  •  Up 1 point from previous year
• Score of 91 for customer service
  • Up 1 point from previous year  

Report produced by the National

Quality

Research

Center at the University of Michigan Business School and the Federal Consulting