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What does the picture look like in the state YOU live in?  Punish the poor for being poor?  Punish the sick for being sick?  Punish the children for being children?  I can’t write anything intelligent about anything I am presenting in this post except to say the suffering of the poor and sick is getting worse.  The talk of the day when I went into our little town (where our local and state sale’s tax is already 10%) today was this:

Arizona governor seeks to drop 280,000 from state Medicaid rolls

January 21, 2011 | Chris Anderson, Contributing Editor

“The Arizona Legislature on Thursday authorized Gov. Jan Brewer to apply for a federal waiver with the Department of Health and Human Services that seeks to drop 280,000 people from the state’s Medicaid rolls.”

This 280,000 includes not only all single people (except pregnant women), but also includes all children in families at 50% of the federal poverty level.  All mental health services for any of these people would also be dropped along with ALL physician care and medications, leaving people with only one option – going to hospital emergency rooms where they cannot be turned away.

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Second patient removed from Arizona transplant list dies

January 06, 2011 | Chris Anderson, Contributing Editor

“An Arizona patient awaiting a liver transplant who was removed from the waiting list as a result of state Medicaid budget cuts has died – the second such person to die since the cuts were announced on Oct. 1, 2010.”

“State legislators and Governor Jan Brewer have faced criticism for the policy, which cut funding for certain pancreas, lung, bone marrow, heart and liver transplants for adults on Medicaid. The cuts amount to roughly $4 million in savings for the program.”

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So, how does this happen?  Top 100 hospitals thrive even in economic downturn

“Thomson Reuters has released its annual study identifying the 100 top U.S. hospitals based on overall organizational performance. The study reveals that even in tough economic times, top hospitals show a profit while raising the bar on patient care.”

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I found information about the Arizona state budget which includes a pitiful picture of our state’s financial woes that are leading to devastating cutbacks in nearly every program that serves the needs of poverty-stricken families and individuals.

In a nutshell:  Arizona total debt $21,902,499,280 — current budget deficit $1.2b, faced the largest budget shortfall as a % of their total spending of any state in US in early 2009. ‘Redirections’ eliminate the KidsCare program (health insurance for children in poverty); reduce mental health services; eliminate cash assistance for 10,000 families; place a hard cap on day care assistance, eliminate services for more than 10,000 children of low-income working parents

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Arizona’s Mental Health Budget Crunch

January 13, 2011

“To fill a $1 billion hole in its 2011 budget, Arizona slashed this year’s budget for mental health services by $36 million — a 37 percent cut. As a result, advocates say 3,800 people who do not qualify for Medicaid are at risk of losing services such as counseling and employment preparation. In addition, more than 12,000 adults and 2,000 children will no longer receive the name-brand medications they take to keep their illnesses in check. Other services such as supportive housing and transportation to doctor’s appointments also will be eliminated.”

And, if our governor has her way, Medicaid in Arizona will disappear.

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Arizona budget: Mentally ill may lose health benefits

January 15, 2011

“Gov. Jan Brewer’s plan to roll back state Medicaid coverage would leave thousands of Arizona‘s most mentally fragile without health care.

“An estimated 5,200 people diagnosed with a serious mental illness and thousands more who qualify for other behavioral-health services would be among 280,000 childless adults losing health-care coverage under the governor’s plan.

“To mitigate the hit on the seriously mentally ill, Brewer wants to spend $10.3 million to prevent gaps in their psychiatric medication. They would lose coverage for all other medical care, including prescription drugs for physical ailments, as well as case management, transportation and housing they receive through the state’s behavioral-health-care program.”

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And then I found this site —  naccrra – National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies — and post some of the information they present here for you to take a look at.  They state:

“NACCRRA, the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies, is our nation’s leading voice for child care. We work with more than 700 state and local Child Care Resource and Referral agencies nationwide. These agencies help ensure that families in 99 percent of all populated ZIP codes in the United States have access to high-quality, affordable child care. To achieve our mission, we lead projects that increase the quality and availability of child care professionals, undertake research, and advocate child care policies that positively impact the lives of children and families.”

How in today’s economic climate is it possible to even begin to “ensure that families in 99 percent of all populated ZIP codes” in our nation “have access to high-quality, affordable child care?”  Arizona, for one, is heading directly in the opposite direction!

About NACCRRA

Since 1987, NACCRRA has been working to improve the system of early learning for children by:

1. Providing training, resources, and best practices standards to local and state CCR&Rs that support high quality, accountable services
2. Promoting national policies and partnerships that facilitate universal access to high quality child care
3. Collecting, analyzing, and reporting current child care data and research, including childcare supply and demand trends and
4. Offering child care and parenting information and resources to families and connecting families to local CCR&R services

Our programs and services

1. Training and technical assistance to local and state child care resource and referral programs
2. Quality Assurance Program, a national, voluntary certification system for CCR&Rs
3. Child Care Aware®, a national toll-free information line and Web site for families available in English and Spanish
4. Child care policy analysis and advocacy, including an Annual Policy Symposium and Day on the Hill event in Washington, DC

Our products and resources

1. Early Childhood Focus, a Web site featuring daily news clippings about child care and child welfare issues around the country
2. Field studies and trends reports
3. NACCRRAware, an Internet-based child care referral and reporting software program that manages family, child care program, and community data

Leaving Children to Chance: NACCRRA’s Ranking of State Standards and Oversight of Small Family Child Care Homes: 2010 Update

“NACCRRA assessed state policies for small family child care homes, where up to six children are cared for in the home of the provider for compensation. The maximum number of points a state could receive is 140. Seventeen states scored a zero. Of the states that scored points, the average score was 63, which equates to 45 percent – a failing grade in any classroom. Family child care in the United States is characterized by weak state inspection standards, incomplete background checks, weak minimum education requirement for providers, weak training requirements, weak early learning standards and weak basic health and safety standards.”

The Current Economy’s Impact on Child Care

“Over 11 million children under age 5 spend a portion of their day, every week, in the care of someone other than their mother. The average young child of a working mom spends about 36 hours a week in such care. About one-quarter of these children are in multiple child care arrangements strung together by their parents. The quality of care varies greatly and many working families struggle with the cost of care. With the current economic crisis, quality child care settings are even more important to the healthy development of children. In too many cases involving low income families, child care is the only place that children may receive a nutritious meal and snack, given that food is often one of the first places parents sacrifice as their family budget becomes tighter.

“The most recent data shows that over 14.5 million Americans are out of work. Another 9 million are working part-time because they cannot find full-time work. About 7 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007. As parents lose employment, as their hours are cutback, they are taking their children out of organized child care and making due with whatever arrangement they can find (hoping it’s safe, hoping it meets health and safety standards, hoping the arrangement is temporary until times are better).

“Quality child care is the linchpin between working families and safe children. With the current economy, parents are forced to make many difficult decisions about the care of their children. Newspaper stories throughout the country describe parents pulling their children from child care and at very young ages leaving children home alone. In one case of a mall worker, the mother’s hours were reduced, she pulled her daughter from child care and left her in the car where she checked on her every hour. Locking the car doors with an unattended child inside is not safe child care.”

The Impact of the Recession on Child Care:
In the spring of 2009, NACCRRA conducted a survey of its Child Care Resource & Referral (CCR&R) agencies with regard to the impact of the nation’s recession on child care.

To read a brief summary of the survey findings, click here.
To read a copy of NACCRRA’s press release on the survey results, click here.

Effect of State Budget Cuts on Kids:
In January 2010, NACCRRA released a report with Every Child Matters and Voices for America’s Children, “State Budget Cuts: America’s Kids Pay the Price”. To read a copy of the report, click here.

“Congress passed stimulus legislation in February [2010], referred to as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The measure included $2 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). For more information on ARRA and stimulus funding to be sent to the states this year, click here. Child care is critical – not just for families so that parents can work but also for children, particularly at a time where they need more continuity and stability in their lives. The following table lists the most recent newspaper stories throughout the country about the impact of the economy on child care.”

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If we declared this war, fought this war, and won this war – who do you think would be the loser?  I am talking about a war that desperately needs to be started to end all possible malevolent treatment against infants, toddlers, children and teens.  Now, to begin in a realistic fashion I would say that AT LEAST we need to fight this war on behalf of all of our nation’s offspring 0 – 7.

Still too ambitious?  Well, then let’s start and fight and win this war to end all possible maltreatment against our nation’s offspring 0 – 3.  That would be the most critical physiological window for critical stages of development, anyway.  The loser would be the same.

If we guaranteed the basic human rights of infants from conception to age three, that would mean ALL of them would be given optimal chances for the best physiological growth and development possible BECAUSE we would have to guarantee all these little people were loved and responded to appropriately by their earliest caregivers.  That would mean – Yup!  You’ve got it! – safe and secure attachment relationships would build the best body-nervous system-brain-immune system possible.

Who would the biggest losers be?  Considering that Center for Disease Control research is clearly establishing a powerful and undeniable link between infant-childhood malevolent treatment (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and life long troubles of every kind including so-called mental illness and severe adult diseases, eliminating malevolent treatment even 0 – 3 would drop the number of lifelong Trauma Altered Developmental difficulties probably 85%.

Drop health care costs?  Dropping all ‘mental’ and physical disease by radical percentages would affect the well-being of every adult survivor of BENEVOLENT and BENIGN infant-childhoods TO THE POSITIVE!

Who would lose the most if we started a national war against malevolent treatment of little ones 0-3 and won?  Take a look:

25 Shocking Facts About the Pharmaceutical Industry

Published Thursday the 27^th of March, 2008 on the website NOEDB – Nursing Online Education Database — Reprinted here for enlightened education only!

“Researching and snagging an adequate, wallet-friendly health care plan is tough these days, despite its high-profile presence in political debates. A large part of the controversy over expensive health costs stems from criticism of high-priced medications marketed by powerful pharmaceutical companies. From Medicare fraud to CEOs worth billions of dollars, big drug companies are accused of putting profits above patients, spinning false PR campaigns and more. We’ve uncovered 25 of the most shocking facts about the pharmaceutical industry in this list.

1. The price of drugs is increasing faster than anything else a patient pays for: Marcia Angell writes in her book The Truth About Drug Companies that “drugs are the fastest-growing part of the health care bill which itself is rising at an alarming rate.” Dr. Angell argues that patients are spending more on drugs simply because they are being prescribed more drugs than ever before and that “those drugs are more likely to be expensive new ones instead of older, cheaper ones, and that the prices of the most heavily prescribed drugs are routinely jacked up, sometimes several times a year.”
2. Your health care provider may have an ulterior motive behind your prescription: In 2007, the St. Petersburg Times reported that drug reps often give gifts to convince medical professionals to prescribe the medications that they represent. Dr. James P. Orlowski tries to teach his students that interaction with drug reps is not in the best interests of patients. Even though many doctors may believe solicitation from drug reps is unethical or at the very least impractical, gifts like free meals, pens, posters, books, and free samples are offered to physicians in an effort to influence their prescription practices.
3. Pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than research: According to ScienceDaily, a “new study by two York University researchers estimates the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spends almost twice as much on promotion as it does on research and development.” Despite pharmaceutical companies’ claims that Americans pay such high prices for prescription medications because they’re really paying for research and development costs, the industry spent $33.5 billion on promotion costs in 2004. The study also “supports the position that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry is marketing-driven and challenges the perception of a research-driven, life-saving, pharmaceutical industry” that values the lives of its patients, rather than their spending habits.
4. Brand name meds often have a 1,000% mark-up price: Many Americans are aware that brand name prescriptions cost more than generic meds, and that part of the reason for the higher prices is because they’ve been hiked up by the pharmaceutical companies themselves and aren’t necessarily a direct result of expensive new ingredients. This study, however, reveals that some meds can have a mark-up of 1,000%. For example, according to the study, consumers pay approximately $215 for 100 tablets of the allergy medicine Claritin, while the cost of the generic active ingredient in Claritin only costs 71 cents.
5. Popular meds are referred to as “blockbuster” drugs: The new presence of blockbuster drugs is a testament to how the pharmaceutical company’s marketing tactics and price hikes are getting out of control. According to TheAtlantic.com, “the industry usually considers a drug to be a blockbuster if it reaches a billion dollars a year in sales.” The drug Prilosec, for example, was marketed as a miracle pill that allowed people to “eat the burritos and curries that their gastrointestinal systems had placed off-limits.” Prilosec is the first drug to make the industry $5 billion in one year, and the next year, in 2000, Prilosec reached $6 billion. Consumers called it “purple Jesus,” making it easy for the drug company to capitalize on patients addict-like behavior.
6. Vioxx advertising reaches new heights: To give consumers more perspective on how prescription drug advertising has reached new heights, the AARP Bulletin reports that pharmaceutical giant “Merck spent more advertising Vioxx, according to NIHCM, than the $125 million spent promoting Pepsi or the $146 million spent on Budweiser beer ads. It even came close to the $169 million spent promoting GM’s Saturn, the nation’s most advertised car.” While “drug prices are rising at more than twice the rate of inflation,” industry analysts and insiders debate over whether or not rising prices is the fault of the pharmaceutical company or the consumers.
7. Drug reps often have no medical or science education: Is it safe for physicians to assume that the professionals they meet with to discuss new medications and prescription recommendations for their patients actually have backgrounds in medicine or science? According to ABC News, it’s not. A former drug rep for the pharmaceutical company Eli Lily, Shahram Ahari testified before Congress, saying that “pharmaceutical companies hire former cheerleaders and ex-models to wine and dine doctors, exaggerate the drug’s benefits and underplay their side-effects.” He also explained that he was taught “how to exceed spending limits for important clients…[by] using friendships and personal gifts” and to “exploit sexual tension.”
8. Pharmaceutical companies are helping, hurting the AIDS epidemics: Pharmaceutical companies have been feeling the pressure from the UN as well as governments and activists from underdeveloped countries to supply tests and medicine for AIDS patients at reduced prices. According to the Center for International Development at Harvard University, the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. agreed to slash prices on its two AIDS drugs in Brazil” in 2001, but supposedly “in part to stop that country from importing a generic version.” Unpatented AIDS drugs are circulating in countries like South Africa, which makes pharmaceutical companies nervous because “patents are the basis for high drug prices,” and the presence of generic drugs “weakens the drug companies’ efforts to maintain a worldwide environment that respects intellectual property.” The debate surrounding intellectual property and the private sector vs. patient rights and affordable health care is magnified on a much larger, more global scale in this situation.
9. Doctors can choose to reveal or keep private their prescription records: Drug reps often research doctors’ prescription records before meeting with them and attempting to convince them to recommend certain drugs. By understanding a physician’s history with a given drug, the drug rep is more likely to influence caregivers and sell more medicines. The New York Times reports, however, that not all doctors are falling prey to these background checks. In 2006, the American Medical Association decided to give doctors a choice to keep their “records off limits to drug sales representatives” and make prescription recommendations based on unbiased judgment.
10. Good PR trumps patient care: When Merck & Co. found out that one of their products, Vioxx, can increase the risk of heart attacks in its patients, it allegedly “played down” the evidence. Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Dr. Eric Topol accused Merck of “scientific misconduct,” and two days later, Dr. Topol was kicked off the board of governors at the Cleveland Clinic.
11. Toxins found in drugs exported from China: A top story in the spring of 2007 centered around Zheng Xiaoyu, a Chinese drug czar who was sentenced to death “after admitting that he took bribes while running the country’s Food & Drug Administration between 1998 and 2005,” when he served as commissioner. According to The New York Times, “every year, thousands of people [in China] are sickened or killed because of rampant counterfeiting and tainted food and drugs.”
12. Abbott Laboratories charged Medi-Cal nearly $10 for saline solution : This list has already mentioned some of the extreme mark-ups for prescription medications, but Abbott Laboratories’ fraudulent behavior towards California‘s state Medicaid program actually ended up in court. The state attorney general “sued 39 drug companies…accusing them of bilking the state of hundreds of millions of dollars by overcharging for medicines,” reports The New York Times. An example of the outrageous mark-ups include the $9.73 price tag for saline solution, which cost other health care providers 95 cents.
13. Guilty of Medicare fraud: Pharmaceutical companies are also being tried in federal courts as an answer to their exploitation of Medicare. AstraZeneca Inc. had to pay $280 million in civil penalties and $63 million in criminal penalties to the federal government after the company “paid kickbacks to health care providers and coached them to cheat Medicare to promote a prostate cancer drug.”
14. Some generic brands are becoming more popular: Those wanting to really “stick it” to the big man and who hope to see pharmaceutical companies stumble as the result of more competition and fewer consumers will enjoy this 2007 report from The New York Times, which finds that “annual inflation in drug costs is at the lowest rate in the three decades since the Labor Department began using its current method of tracking prescription prices.” Patients are starting to use generic medications and buy prescriptions from discount stores like Wal-Mart to alleviate the financial burden of brand name drugs.
15. Combined wealth of top 5 pharmaceutical companies outweighs GNP of sub-Saharan Africa.: Corporate Watch shows the public just how much wealth big pharmaceutical companies have, even on a global scale. Their report references The Guardian, which found that “the combined worth of the world’s top five drug companies is twice the combined GNP of all sub-Saharan Africa and their influence on the rules of world trade is many times stronger because they can bring their wealth to bear directly on the levers of western power.”
16. Dr. Robert Jarvik isn’t a licensed doctor: Many Americans watched as Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor of the artificial heart, gently coaxed them to take the Pfizer-marketed drug Lipitor in order to lower their cholesterol. The ads were eventually pulled, however, when “it turn[ed] out Jarvik isn’t a licensed heart doctor.” U.S. Representative John Dingell remarked, “It seems that Pfizer’s No. 1 priority is to sell lots of Lipitor, by whatever means necessary, including misleading the American people.”
17. Ernesto Bertarelli makes Forbes’ billionaires list: Just as Americans are questioning the record profits and salaries of booming oil companies when they’re forced to accept rising prices at the pump, people may wonder about Ernesto Bertarelli’s billionaire status. Bertarelli is the CEO of the pharmaceutical company Serono, and Forbes reports that his net worth in 2002 reached $8.4 billion. That was enough to place him as the 31st richest person in the world.
18. Pfizer is fifth-best wealth creator: Corporate Watch reports that Fortune named pharmaceutical giant Pfizer as the “fifth-best wealth-creator” in America, and Corporate Watch considers it the “largest and richest pharmaceutical enterprise in the world.”
19. Americans pay more for prescription meds than anyone else in the world: The Media Matters website analyzes a 60 Minutes interview between correspondent Bob Simon and then Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona. During the segment, Carmona maintains that Americans pay more for brand name prescriptions than anyone else in the world because of the hefty price associated with “the research and development of drugs.” See point number 3 on this list, which points out that drug companies pay more on advertising and marketing than they do on research and development.
20. Pharmaceutical advertisements actually work: The public wag their fingers at pharmaceutical companies’ advertising budgets only if they admit that sometimes, those commercials actually work. The Miami Herald points out that while “more than four in ten [Americans] have an unfavorable view” of pharmaceutical companies, “prescription-drug advertising has driven a third of Americans to talk to a medical professional about specific drugs, and many of these people got a prescription from their health care provider as a result.”
21. Americans spent $200 billion on prescription drugs in 2002: Marcia Angell reveals in her book The Truth About the Drug Companies that Americans spent $200 billion on prescription drugs in 2002. That’s the amount medical expertsestimated it will cost to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and the amount China is pouring into an energy renewal program.
22. Academics help pharmaceutical companies conduct research: A new trend in the R&D sector of the pharmaceutical industry features research-based partnerships between academic centers and drug companies. Marcia Angell explains the collaboration by writing that these companies “now ring the major academic research institutions and often carry out the initial phases of drug development, hoping for lucrative deals with big drug companies that can market the new drugs. Usually both academic researchers and their institutions own equity in the biotechnology companies they are involved with,” and everyone can “cash in on the public investment in research.” As academic centers play a more significant role in the success of the drug companies, they are more likely to take on the “entrepreneur” spirit and make profits from patents, royalties and stocks, which can mark up the prices for everyday consumers.
23. “New” Drugs aren’t really new: When a new drug hits the market, is it really new? Euractiv.com reports on a recent study which found “that two-thirds of the prescription drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration between 1989 and 2000 were identical to existing drugs or modified versions of them. Only about one-third of the drugs approved by the FDA during the time period were based on new “molecular entities” that treat diseases in novel ways.” Many of these newer drugs cost more because the drug companies have to extend their patents, which can “enable a brand company to delay generic competitors and maintain a high price for an aging product.”
24. Some drug companies are taking advantage of underdeveloped countries to perform clinical trials: Wired.com reports that India is becoming a more attractive place for drug companies to run clinical trials and test out new drugs. The article explains, “more and more drug companies are conducting clinical trials in developing countries where government oversight is more lax and research can be done for a fraction of the cost.” Controversy is starting to build over the trend, however, as one expert explains. Sean Philpott, managing editor of The American Journal of Bioethics, reveals to Wired.com that such practices may be unfair, as “individuals who participate in Indian clinical trials usually won’t be educated. Offering $100 [as payment for their participation] may be undue enticement; they may not even realize that they are being coerced.”
25. Pharmaceutical Companies donated millions to Hurricane Katrina relief programs: Americans are used to bashing pharmaceutical companies, just as they criticize health insurance companies, rising gas prices and monopolies. It may come as a shock, then, to discover the philanthropic efforts undertaken by big drug companies. Medical News Today writes that companies like Abbott, Eli Lilly, Merck, Pfizer and others have donated millions of dollars in cash and supplies to the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

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Hum….  I wonder how much cashola they’d give to fight this war to end malevolent treatment against the future consumers of their products — who if course might be too happy, calm and healthy to NEED those drugs once the war was won!

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