Deregulate!

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Pharma's at it again, first they get people hooked on opiates, then the price of antidote is jacked up..

In 1971, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first drug that could reverse a heroin or opioid overdose. More than 40 years later, makers of this drug, called naloxone, are cashing in on the nation’s opioid painkiller and heroin epidemic and price-gouging consumers.

According to a group of researchers, the cost of one package of Evzio — a branded version of the lifesaving injection — has quickly risen from $690, when it hit the market in 2014, to $4,500. Evzio is the first auto-injector formulation, which means anybody, not just first responders or doctors, can easily use it to save their own lives or the lives of others.

That’s not all. The researchers, who studied the rising price of naloxone for a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, found price hikes in other formulations of the drug: An injectable by Hospira has increased in price from $62.29 in 2012 to $142.49 today, while a nasal spray version of naloxone by Amphastar now costs $39.60 — a 95 percent surge since 2014.

Drug overdoses kill more people than car crashes and gun violence in America, and these overdose antidotes have never been more important. But they’re also quickly becoming more unreachable for the people whose deaths they could avert.

A drug company hiked the price of a lifesaving opioid overdose antidote by 500 percent - Vox

You might also marvel at that "Drug overdoses kill more people than car crashes and gun violence in America" When the US has gone through hysteria to get people with visa and green-cards out from 7 Muslim countries which, even according to the conservative Cato institute, haven't killed a single American since the 1970s:

There have been zero fatal terror attacks on U.S. soil since 1975 by immigrants from the seven Muslim-majority countries President Donald Trump targeted with immigration bans on Friday, further highlighting the needlessness and cruelty of the president’s executive order. Between 1975 and 2015, foreign nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen killed exactly zero Americans on U.S. soil, according to an analysis of terror attacks by the Cato Institute.

There Have Been No Fatal Terror Attacks In The U.S. By Immigrants From The 7 Banned Muslim Countries | The Huffington Post

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“When Trump announces he’s going to repeal 75 percent of regulations, my answer would be no, he can’t do that,” says Sid Shapiro, an administrative law professor and vice president of the Center for Progressive Reform. “If he announces that he’s going to undermine 75 percent of the rules, my answer would be yes, you could do that.” Agency heads could easily undermine regulations by rolling back enforcement and settling lawsuits, which would signal to industry that it’s open season on rules. “That can be very effective and very destabilizing and harmful,” Shapiro says.

Donald Trump: Trickle Downer of the Week

[T]he idea that regulations stunt job growth more broadly is not supported by research. Many of the academic studies that have explored the question find that regulations don’t decrease jobs in the overall economy. They sometimes reduce jobs in certain sectors, but they create new jobs in others. A factory that makes lead additives for gasoline might be shut down because regulations have banned lead additives. But new jobs will then be created at a factory that makes catalytic converters, which are emissions-control devices for cars. Some workers, then, benefit from regulation, while others lose. That doesn’t mean that the losses aren’t real and painful for the people who held those jobs, but the overall picture is not one that can be accurately characterized by the phrase “job-killing.”

Donald Trump: Trickle Downer of the Week

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And there are of course instances when regulation actually makes sense, believe it or not..

Unlike other rich countries, the U.S. doesn’t directly regulate the price of drugs. As a result, Americans spend more on prescription medicines than anyone else. The main U.S. government health programs for the poor and the elderly spent almost $195 billion on prescription drugs in 2015. Medicaid, the program for the poor, gets fixed rebates from drugmakers. Yet Medicare, the program for the elderly, spends almost three times as much and is prohibited by an industry-backed law from negotiating with drug companies.

Why Trump Faces Stiff Fight to Slash Drug Prices: QuickTake Q&A - Bloomberg

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Burgers and fries aren't exactly known for their health benefits. But beyond the grease, starch, and empty calories, there's another reason to steer clear of fast food: the chemical-laden containers that it comes in. Grease-proof food packaging—like the papers enveloping fast-food hamburgers and pastries and the boxes cradling fries or pizza—can contain nasty chemicals that migrate over to the food we consume and stick around the environment indefinitely, with potentially worrisome effects to our health. 

One of the substances that was once popular for grease-proofing, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), is a slippery, man-made chemical that is great at resisting water and was once essential to dozens of products including DuPont's nonstick Teflon, Gore-Tex waterproof clothing, fire-fighting products, and microwave popcorn bags.

PFOA refuses to break down, even at high temperatures, making it really hard to get rid of. That started to worry researchers once they uncovered its associations with high cholesterol levels, immune system issues in children, low birth weight, and certain types of cancer. (You can read much more about PFOA's harmful effects in this Intercept investigation and this New York Times Magazine profile.) Because of its link to health problems, PFOA was phased out of production in the United States by 2011 and is now banned for use in food packaging here..

The Nasty Ingredient in Fast-Food Wrappers | Mother Jones

In 2015, the oil and gas industry reported that its facilities in the U.S. collectively emitted 3.3 million metric tons of methane, with a little less than half that coming from facilities on federally managed lands. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with at least 86 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over the short term. If methane is leaking, then so are harmful hydrocarbons, such as benzene, a known carcinogen. Those reasons are enough to get a handle on leaks and venting.

But even for those who don't believe in human-induced climate change—i.e. members of the new administration in Washington and many Republican congressmen—there is another compelling case for reducing methane leaks. The stuff leaking from the pipes and being vented and flared is natural gas, a marketable commodity. That's money oozing into the air. More than $300 million worth of gas is lost annually from federal and tribal lands alone, according to a 2015 Environmental Defense Fund analysis. That adds up to millions in lost royalties for the feds and local communities, too.

Here's What's at Stake If Congress Kills the Methane Rules | Mother Jones

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Does anyone still think the Trump government was here to 'drain the swamp?' 

Seriously..

In his first days as President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai has aggressively moved to roll back consumer protection regulations created during the Obama presidency.

Mr. Pai took a first swipe at net neutrality rules designed to ensure equal access to content on the internet. He stopped nine companies from providing discounted high-speed internet service to low-income individuals. He withdrew an effort to keep prison phone rates down, and he scrapped a proposal to break open the cable box market.

Trump’s F.C.C. Pick Quickly Targets Net Neutrality Rules - The New York Times

You might also want to look here to see what they already did with financial regulation, at who's expense and who benefits..

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Under new rules enacted as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, companies are now required to report how much median employees at their firms make and compare it to what their CEOs make. It’s designed to bring more transparency to pay by both spotlighting the growing gap between lower- and middle-income workers and the wealthy and giving corporate boards more information about soaring executive compensation so they could potentially reign it in. But now that rule appears to be in danger. On Monday, the acting chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Michael Piwowar, called for reconsideration of the rule that went into effect on January 1, hinting that it could be reversed.

Republican targets rule that exposes how much more CEOs make than their workers

Last week, Senate Republicans voted along party lines to get rid of the Dodd-Frank rule that forces huge oil and gas companies to disclose how much they pay foreign governments while they're doing business abroad.

In 2010, as this rule was being written into Dodd-Frank, Tillerson, then the CEO of Exxon, visited Richard Lugar, then the Republican senator from Indiana — one of the rule's architects — in hopes that it would never see the light of day. According to Politico, Tillerson argued that forcing his company's dealings with foreign governments into the light would hurt its competitiveness in the market.

But Lugar was undeterred. By forcing transparency, he hoped that governments in poor, resource-rich countries would also be forced to give their people a fairer shake. Exxon continued to lobby against the rule. It expressed its displeasure to the Securities and Exchange Commission in a comment letter in March 2016, when Tillerson was still CEO.

Republicans get rid of rule for big oil and gas - Business Insider

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This week, the House of Representatives will consider three bills that further advance a deregulatory agenda that jeopardizes worker safety, consumer protections, and our environment. The House has already passed several bills this session that limit agencies’ ability to regulate. The trio of bills on the House floor this week includes the Regulatory Integrity Act of 2017, the OIRA Insight, Reform, and Accountability Act, and the Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome (SCRUB) Act.

The House will also vote on additional Congressional Review Act resolutions to block existing rules, including an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulation that enables OSHA to hold employers accountable for failing to keep accurate records of workplace injuries and illnesses. It is clear that Congress is laser-focused on rolling back regulatory protections and making it as hard as possible for agencies tasked with safeguarding our nation’s workers to do their job.

Congress is laser-focused on rolling back protections for workers, consumers, and the environment | Economic Policy Institute

However..

President Donald Trump hates regulations. He regularly talks about how awful they are and how, as president, he plans to get rid of them. But in his speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, he proposed some regulations that would be onerous and incredibly expensive to American business. Mostly, they come down to one sentence: "Buy American, hire American." It sounds like nationalism, and that's nice. Trump wants to apply it to his $1 trillion infrastructure bill, as well as other big projects like the Dakota Access pipeline, which — again — sounds a lot sweeter than it is. Experts say doing so would make projects exponentially more expensive and hurt American businesses in the long run.

Trump proposes regulations in speech - Business Insider

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The drug pushers from industry

Andi Peterson never thought twice about taking Percocet. After all, the powerful painkiller had been prescribed by a doctor. "I didn't think what I was doing was that wrong. It felt more like a have-fun-once-in-a-while thing. It was not going to lead to this crazy addiction," she told Business Insider. The first time Peterson tried Percocet she was 16. The last time she used any substance was when she was 23, she said. She was finally free from the addiction that had spiraled from painkillers to heroin and cost her custody of her son, tens of thousands of dollars, and a year in prison.

Peterson is the face of what America's drug epidemic looks like today. She is young, white, and middle-class, and she lives not in a city but in a suburb. She has been part of an epidemic ripping through towns and cities that's left a trail of broken families and struggling addicts in recovery — and many others not as lucky as Peterson...

At the same time that these industries were collapsing, pharmaceutical reps and medical professionals began pushing opioid painkillers as an effective and low-risk treatment for pain, based on a now debunked study that suggested fewer than 1% of opioid users become addicted. Medical groups began telling doctors that treating pain was as essential as checking patients' blood pressure. It was a new paradigm in medicine.

Purdue Pharma introduced and aggressively marketed two powerful new painkillers, MS Contin (morphine) and OxyContin (oxycodone), to fill the void. With the explosion in prescriptions, opioids went mainstream. Clinics known as "pill mills," whose purpose was to prescribe legal opioids, sprang up nationwide. By 2011, Americans received 219 million opioid prescriptions each year. While many prescriptions went to patients in need of pain relief, many more went to those suffering less serious ailments.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, doctors prescribed opioids "for everything," Dr. Houman Danesh, the director of Integrative Pain Management at Mount Sinai Hospital, told Business Insider last year. Many primary-care doctors, who prescribe the vast majority of opioids, didn't fully understand the risks of the drugs.

Painkiller prescriptions brought a heroin crisis to the suburbs - Business Insider

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Between her two stints as an admissions officer in the for-profit college industry—once at a beauty school, another at ITT Technical Institute—Tressie McMillan Cottom served as part of the colleges' teams of evangelists. In meetings and calls, she wooed prospective students with the promise of job security. After two years in the industry, McMillan Cotton quit, called up former students to encourage them to enroll in the local community college, and turned her attention to understanding the for-profit industry's growth. She argues in her upcoming book, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy, that it's the colleges—not the students—that reap the benefits.  

The for-profit higher ed industry, with an enrollment of 1.6 million people, down from 2.4 million in 2010, has been at the center of lawsuits and complaints about abusive practices and saddling students with debt without degrees, putting the cost to taxpayers at billions. In the last few years, under the Obama administration, the Department of Education aggressively sought to curb failing programs with the threat of pulling federal funding, leading to the shutdown of major chains like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute. Even with more than 800 vocational programs at risk of losing funding from federal loans, 98 percent of which are for-profit schools, for-profit colleges are positioned to benefit from calls for looser regulations and less government oversight.

This Woman Knows How Bad For-Profit Colleges Are. She Used To Sell Them. | Mother Jones

An organization that was supposed to oversee the embattled for-profit college industry and protect students from fraud lost its recognition Monday, potentially putting hundreds of thousands of students in limbo. The Secretary of Education ruled Monday to terminate his agency’s recognition of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), which critics say allowed billions of dollars in federal financial aid funds to flow to bad actors. The decision comes months after both a senior official at the Department of Education and a bipartisan advisory panel that monitors college accreditors recommended the organization be shut down. ACICS appealed the Department’s decision to the Secretary of Education, arguing that the recognition renewal process was unfair and that stripping ACICS of its recognition would harm students.

Federal government shuts down controversial college watchdog - MarketWatch

Starting in the mid-1990s, for-profit colleges really expanded due to financialization and shareholder investment. These schools now offer bachelor’s degrees and even graduate degrees. The pool of students is only going to grow as the economy continues to grow more precarious.

How to Stop For-Profit Colleges | New Republic

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The number of for-profit schools receiving at least 90% of their revenue from federal education programs would jump from 17 to nearly 200 when the Department of Veteran Affairs’s post-9/11 GI Bill benefits are counted as federal aid, according to data released Wednesday by the Department of Education. For-profit colleges collect an outsize share of GI Bill benefits, a government program that provides veterans with funding to pay for school and housing.

Nearly 200 for-profit colleges get over 90% of their funding from the government - MarketWatch

For the past eight years, the Obama administration has waged a battle against predatory for-profit colleges. On Monday, the Department of Education released a final salvo — a list of hundreds of college programs that load students with more debt than they can afford to repay. The failing-program list included ITT Tech, which filed for bankruptcy under federal pressure late last year, as well as industry leaders like Kaplan University and the University of Phoenix. And there — among a host of local graphic design, fashion, cosmetology and barber schools — is Harvard University.

Programs That Are Predatory: It’s Not Just the For-Profit Colleges - The New York Times

Until June 2016, Taylor Hansen lobbied for the largest trade group of for-profit colleges. At the forefront of its agenda: eliminating a rule known as “gainful employment,” which can take away federal funding from for-profit colleges if their graduates fail to earn enough to repay student loans.
Last week, that goal started to become a reality. The U.S. Department of Education delayed the deadline for colleges to comply with certain provisions of gainful employment, saying it plans to review the rule.

For-Profit Colleges Gain Beachhead in Trump Administration - ProPublica