Verizon practices socialism: USA subsidizes prescription drugs for them:$2.8 Billion

drpepper · Apr 4, 2010

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=10265189

Verizon and other companies currently receive a government subsidy to keep prescription drug benefits for retirees. They've been able to deduct all of their expenses, but that ends in 2013 under the recently passed legislation.
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Amazing when the REST of the story is told.

Socialist hypocrites.

waltky · Dec 29, 2011

Prescription drug abuse a growing problem...

US Sees Growing Problem With Prescription Drug Abuse
December 28, 2011 - U.S. health officials say drug abuse is a major cause of death in the United States and that prescription drugs are a big part of the problem. Painkillers and mood-altering medications have left many people addicted, with serious results.

At the Malibu Beach Recovery Center, outside Los Angeles, residents learn yoga and other coping skills to deal with anxiety, stress and chronic pain. Yoga teacher Shannon Scott was once hooked herself on the anti-anxiety pill Xanax and the painkiller Vicodin. Vicodin was a stimulant for me. So I also used Vicodin as something to get my engine going and carry me through the days, and my Xanax would balance me out and bring me down and relax me. But one was to calm me down and the other was to give me the energy to move forward, said Scott.

Drug poisoning

U.S. health officials say that poisoning was a major cause of death in 2008, and that nearly 9 of 10 poisonings were caused by drugs. The so-called opioid painkillers - morphine, hydrocodone and oxycodone - were involved in more than 40 percent of drug poisonings in 2008. The number has more than tripled in a decade. That's not news to Mary Ann Gunn, a retired drug court judge who now appears on a TV program called Last Shot With Judge Gunn, which shows the real-life effect of drugs on users and their families. In 1999, the big problem was methamphetamine. And it was a cancer, if you will, throughout our country. And we have addressed that and are continuing to address it. And more and more over the years we began to see people being addicted to prescription drugs. Specialized drug courts work with the addicts to get them into counseling and rehabilitation.

Powerful painkillers

Pharmacologist James Adams of the University of Southern California says the expanding list of powerful painkillers is snaring many patients, who are usually unaware of the dangers. I'm not talking about heroine abusers on the streets of LA [Los Angeles]. I'm talking about somebody's grandmother in Fresno dying from oxycodone, dying from hydrocodone, dying from morphine, said Adams. The recent U.S. government data shows the rate of fatal drug poisonings was highest among people 45 to 54 years old. At the Malibu Beach Recovery Center, the addicted get off drugs, but it's not easy. The regimen includes healthy food and counseling. Joan Borsten, who heads the center, said it's hard because the drugs change the body's chemistry. In the case of pain pills, the body has stopped producing its natural defenses to pain, and they just have to have more and more and more and more, and finally there's nothing else to take, said Adams.

Healthy regimen

He said that 90 million people have chronic pain, much of it from arthritis caused by obesity and aging. And it's a real tough problem for a doctor because here you've got a patient with chronic pain, probably howling pain, reporting pain at 7 out of 10 or something like that, and these patients know exactly how to get what they want," said Adams. "And if that doctor doesn't give it to them, they just go to the next doctor. He said the solution is using alternative ways to manage pain - losing weight, exercising and receiving physical therapy - and giving powerful drugs only to those who need them. Another solution: a registry of patients being used in California and many other states that lets doctors and pharmacists know what potentially dangerous drugs their patients already are taking.

Source
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Clint Torres · Jan 5, 2012

Verizon is under the investment Carlyle Group. Anyone in the know, knows the political power of the investment mogules. It goes way back farther than 2001. A lot of the info on them has ben filterd on the internet. But i you remember them from the mid 90s, you know what I'm talking about.

waltky · Jun 6, 2013

Can ya hear me now?...

Report: Gov't scooping up Verizon phone records
Jun 6,`13, WASHINGTON (AP) -- The National Security Agency currently is collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top secret court order, Britain's Guardian newspaper said Wednesday.

The order was granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and was good until July 19, the newspaper said. The order requires Verizon, one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies, on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries. The newspaper said the document, a copy of which it had obtained, shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens were being collected indiscriminately and in bulk, regardless of whether they were suspected of any wrongdoing.

The Associated Press could not authenticate the order because documents from the court are classified. Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden said Wednesday the company had no comment. The White House declined comment and referred questions to the NSA. The NSA had no immediate comment. Under the terms of the order, the phone numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered, The Guardian said.

The broad, unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is unusual. FISA court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets. NSA warrantless wiretapping during the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks was very controversial. The FISA court order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compelled Verizon to produce to the NSA electronic copies of "all call detail records or telephony metadata created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls," The Guardian said. The law on which the order explicitly relies is the "business records" provision of the USA Patriot Act.

http://ap.stripes.com/dynamic/stori...ORDS?SITE=DCSAS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
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Verizon practices socialism: USA subsidizes prescription drugs for them:$2.8 Billion

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Verizon practices socialism: USA subsidizes prescription drugs for them:$2.8 Billion

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