Podcasts about kaiser health news

Part 1:We talk with Bob Sanders, who is planning a ride in support of the people of. He is a 70-year-old Jewish former reporter turned activist is cycling across the country this summer in a 4000-mile Ride Against War on Gaza (RAW GAZA).Bob Sanders, also a founder of Not In My Name, NH " a group of Jews opposed to Israeli policy on Palestine.We discuss the many Jews that disapprove of the Israeli policy in Gaza. We also talk about how any criticism of Israel is being weaponized by the administration as 'antisemitism'.Part 2:We talk with Sam Whitehead, a correspondent for Kaiser Health News. Bob covers the South from his base just outside Atlanta. He previously worked as a health care reporter for public radio station WABE, where he chronicled the covid-19 pandemic as host of the award-winning podcast Did You Wash Your Hands? Before that, he was a general assignment reporter and fill-in radio host at Georgia Public Broadcasting. He also co-founded a long-running nightly news program on WRFI Community Radio in Ithaca, New York. He is a graduate of Emory University.We discuss how changes are being made to Medicaid, by the imposition of a work requirement for recipients. Its should be noted that most recipients are elderly or disabled, and are living in nursing homes. This change does not increase the number of people who get jobs. Instead, the number people who are covered is reduced. No savings are evident, because of the additional administrative costs. Music: David RovicsWNHNFM.ORG   production

Dr. Gary Null provides a commentary on "Universal  Healthcare"       Universal Healthcare is the Solution to a Broken Medical System Gary Null, PhD Progressive Radio Network, March 3, 2025 For over 50 years, there has been no concerted or successful effort to bring down medical costs in the American healthcare system. Nor are the federal health agencies making disease prevention a priority. Regardless whether the political left or right sponsors proposals for reform, such measures are repeatedly defeated by both parties in Congress. As a result, the nation's healthcare system remains one of the most expensive and least efficient in the developed world. For the past 30 years, medical bills contributing to personal debt regularly rank among the top three causes of personal bankruptcy. This is a reality that reflects not only the financial strain on ordinary Americans but the systemic failure of the healthcare system itself. The urgent question is: If President Trump and his administration are truly seeking to reduce the nation's $36 trillion deficit, why is there no serious effort to reform the most bloated and corrupt sector of the economy? A key obstacle is the widespread misinformation campaign that falsely claims universal health care would cost an additional $2 trillion annually and further balloon the national debt. However, a more honest assessment reveals the opposite. If the US adopted a universal single-payer system, the nation could actually save up to $20 trillion over the next 10 years rather than add to the deficit. Even with the most ambitious efforts by people like Elon Musk to rein in federal spending or optimize government efficiency, the estimated savings would only amount to $500 billion. This is only a fraction of what could be achieved through comprehensive healthcare reform alone. Healthcare is the largest single expenditure of the federal budget. A careful examination of where the $5 trillion spent annually on healthcare actually goes reveals massive systemic fraud and inefficiency. Aside from emergency medicine, which accounts for only 10-12 percent of total healthcare expenditures, the bulk of this spending does not deliver better health outcomes nor reduce trends in physical and mental illness. Applying Ockham's Razor, the principle that the simplest solution is often the best, the obvious conclusion is that America's astronomical healthcare costs are the direct result of price gouging on an unimaginable scale. For example, in most small businesses, profit margins range between 1.6 and 2.5 percent, such as in grocery retail. Yet the pharmaceutical industrial complex routinely operates on markup rates as high as 150,000 percent for many prescription drugs. The chart below highlights the astronomical gap between the retail price of some top-selling patented pharmaceutical medications and their generic equivalents. Drug Condition Patent Price (per unit) Generic Price Estimated Manufacture Cost Markup Source Insulin (Humalog) Diabetes $300 $30 $3 10,000% Rand (2021) EpiPen Allergic reactions $600 $30 $10 6,000% BMJ (2022) Daraprim Toxoplasmosis $750/pill $2 $0.50 150,000% JAMA (2019) Harvoni Hepatitis C $94,500 (12 weeks) $30,000 $200 47,000% WHO Report (2018) Lipitor Cholesterol $150 $10 $0.50 29,900% Health Affairs (2020) Xarelto Blood Thinner $450 $25 $1.50 30,000% NEJM (2020) Abilify Schizophrenia $800 (30 tablets) $15 $2 39,900% AJMC (2019) Revlimid Cancer $16,000/mo $450 $150 10,500% Kaiser Health News (2021) Humira Arthritis $2,984/dose $400 $50 5,868% Rand (2021) Sovaldi Hepatitis C $1,000/pill $10 $2 49,900% JAMA (2021) Xolair Asthma $2,400/dose $300 $50 4,800% NEJM (2020) Gleevec Leukemia $10,000/mo $350 $200 4,900% Harvard Public Health Review (2020) OxyContin Pain Relief $600 (30 tablets) $15 $0.50 119,900% BMJ (2022) Remdesivir Covid-19 $3,120 (5 doses) N/A $10 31,100% The Lancet (2020) The corruption extends far beyond price gouging. Many pharmaceutical companies convince federal health agencies to fund their basic research and drug development with taxpayer dollars. Yet when these companies bring successful products to market, the profits are kept entirely by the corporations or shared with the agencies or groups of government scientists. On the other hand, the public, who funded the research, receives no financial return. This amounts to a systemic betrayal of the public trust on a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Another significant contributor to rising healthcare costs is the widespread practice of defensive medicine that is driven by the constant threat of litigation. Over the past 40 years, defensive medicine has become a cottage industry. Physicians order excessive diagnostic tests and unnecessary treatments simply to protect themselves from lawsuits. Study after study has shown that these over-performed procedures not only inflate costs but lead to iatrogenesis or medical injury and death caused by the medical  system and practices itself. The solution is simple: adopting no-fault healthcare coverage for everyone where patients receive care without needing to sue and thereby freeing doctors from the burden of excessive malpractice insurance. A single-payer universal healthcare system could fundamentally transform the entire industry by capping profits at every level — from drug manufacturers to hospitals to medical equipment suppliers. The Department of Health and Human Services would have the authority to set profit margins for medical procedures. This would ensure that healthcare is determined by outcomes, not profits. Additionally, the growing influence of private equity firms and vulture capitalists buying up hospitals and medical clinics across America must be reined in. These equity firms prioritize profit extraction over improving the quality of care. They often slash staff, raise prices, and dictate medical procedures based on what will yield the highest returns. Another vital reform would be to provide free medical education for doctors and nurses in exchange for five years of service under the universal system. Medical professionals would earn a realistic salary cap to prevent them from being lured into equity partnerships or charging exorbitant rates. The biggest single expense in the current system, however, is the private health insurance industry, which consumes 33 percent of the $5 trillion healthcare budget. Health insurance CEOs consistently rank among the highest-paid executives in the country. Their companies, who are nothing more than bean counters, decide what procedures and drugs will be covered, partially covered, or denied altogether. This entire industry is designed to place profits above patients' lives. If the US dismantled its existing insurance-based system and replaced it with a fully reformed national healthcare model, the country could save $2.7 trillion annually while simultaneously improving health outcomes. Over the course of 10 years, those savings would amount to $27 trillion. This could wipe out nearly the entire national debt in a short time. This solution has been available for decades but has been systematically blocked by corporate lobbying and bipartisan corruption in Washington. The path forward is clear but only if American citizens demand a system where healthcare is valued as a public service and not a commodity. The national healthcare crisis is not just a fiscal issue. It is a crucial moral failure of the highest order. With the right reforms, the nation could simultaneously restore its financial health and deliver the kind of healthcare system its citizens have long deserved. American Healthcare: Corrupt, Broken and Lethal Richard Gale and Gary Null Progressive Radio Network, March 3, 2025 For a nation that prides itself on being the world's wealthiest, most innovative and technologically advanced, the US' healthcare system is nothing less than a disaster and disgrace. Not only are Americans the least healthy among the most developed nations, but the US' health system ranks dead last among high-income countries. Despite rising costs and our unshakeable faith in American medical exceptionalism, average life expectancy in the US has remained lower than other OECD nations for many years and continues to decline. The United Nations recognizes healthcare as a human right. In 2018, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the American healthcare system as "politically and morally wrong." During the pandemic it is estimated that two to three years was lost on average life expectancy. On the other hand, before the Covid-19 pandemic, countries with universal healthcare coverage found their average life expectancy stable or slowly increasing. The fundamental problem in the U.S. is that politics have been far too beholden to the pharmaceutical, HMO and private insurance industries. Neither party has made any concerted effort to reign in the corruption of corporate campaign funding and do what is sensible, financially feasible and morally correct to improve Americans' quality of health and well-being.   The fact that our healthcare system is horribly broken is proof that moneyed interests have become so powerful to keep single-payer debate out of the media spotlight and censored. Poll after poll shows that the American public favors the expansion of public health coverage. Other incremental proposals, including Medicare and Medicaid buy-in plans, are also widely preferred to the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare mess we are currently stuck with.   It is not difficult to understand how the dismal state of American medicine is the result of a system that has been sold out to the free-market and the bottom line interests of drug makers and an inflated private insurance industry. How advanced and ethically sound can a healthcare system be if tens of millions of people have no access to medical care because it is financially out of their reach?  The figures speak for themselves. The U.S. is burdened with a $41 trillion Medicare liability. The number of uninsured has declined during the past several years but still lingers around 25 million. An additional 30-35 million are underinsured. There are currently 65 million Medicare enrollees and 89 million Medicaid recipients. This is an extremely unhealthy snapshot of the country's ability to provide affordable healthcare and it is certainly unsustainable. The system is a public economic failure, benefiting no one except the large and increasingly consolidated insurance and pharmaceutical firms at the top that supervise the racket.   Our political parties have wrestled with single-payer or universal healthcare for decades. Obama ran his first 2008 presidential campaign on a single-payer platform. Since 1985, his campaign health adviser, the late Dr. Quentin Young from the University of Illinois Medical School, was one of the nation's leading voices calling for universal health coverage.  During a private conversation with Dr. Young shortly before his passing in 2016, he conveyed his sense of betrayal at the hands of the Obama administration. Dr. Young was in his 80s when he joined the Obama campaign team to help lead the young Senator to victory on a promise that America would finally catch up with other nations. The doctor sounded defeated. He shared how he was manipulated, and that Obama held no sincere intention to make universal healthcare a part of his administration's agenda. During the closed-door negotiations, which spawned the weak and compromised Affordable Care Act, Dr. Young was neither consulted nor invited to participate. In fact, he told us that he never heard from Obama again after his White House victory.   Past efforts to even raise the issue have been viciously attacked. A huge army of private interests is determined to keep the public enslaved to private insurers and high medical costs. The failure of our healthcare is in no small measure due to it being a fully for-profit operation. Last year, private health insurance accounted for 65 percent of coverage. Consider that there are over 900 private insurance companies in the US. National Health Expenditures (NHE) grew to $4.5 trillion in 2022, which was 17.3 percent of GDP. Older corporate rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans argue that a single-payer or socialized medical program is unaffordable. However, not only is single-payer affordable, it will end bankruptcies due to unpayable medical debt. In addition, universal healthcare, structured on a preventative model, will reduce disease rates at the outset.    Corporate Democrats argue that Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a positive step inching the country towards complete public coverage. However, aside from providing coverage to the poorest of Americans, Obamacare turned into another financial anchor around the necks of millions more. According to the health policy research group KFF, the average annual health insurance premium for single coverage is $8,400 and almost $24,000 for a family. In addition, patient out-of-pocket costs continue to increase, a 6.6% increase to $471 billion in 2022. Rather than healthcare spending falling, it has exploded, and the Trump and Biden administrations made matters worse.    Clearly, a universal healthcare program will require flipping the script on the entire private insurance industry, which employed over half a million people last year.  Obviously, the most volatile debate concerning a national universal healthcare system concerns cost. Although there is already a socialized healthcare system in place -- every federal legislator, bureaucrat, government employee and veteran benefits from it -- fiscal Republican conservatives and groups such as the Koch Brothers network are single-mindedly dedicated to preventing the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid. A Koch-funded Mercatus analysis made the outrageous claim that a single-payer system would increase federal health spending by $32 trillion in ten years. However, analyses and reviews by the Congressional Budget Office in the early 1990s concluded that such a system would only increase spending at the start; enormous savings would quickly offset it as the years pass. In one analysis, "the savings in administrative costs [10 percent of health spending] would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage."    Defenders of those advocating for funding a National Health Program argue this can primarily be accomplished by raising taxes to levels comparable to other developed nations. This was a platform Senator Bernie Sanders and some of the younger progressive Democrats in the House campaigned on. The strategy was to tax the highest multimillion-dollar earners 60-70 percent. Despite the outrage of its critics, including old rank-and-file multi-millionaire Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, this is still far less than in the past. During the Korean War, the top tax rate was 91 percent; it declined to 70 percent in the late 1960s. Throughout most of the 1970s, those in the lowest income bracket were taxed at 14 percent. We are not advocating for this strategy because it ignores where the funding is going, and the corruption in the system that is contributing to exorbitant waste.    But Democratic supporters of the ACA who oppose a universal healthcare plan ignore the additional taxes Obama levied to pay for the program. These included surtaxes on investment income, Medicare taxes from those earning over $200,000, taxes on tanning services, an excise tax on medical equipment, and a 40 percent tax on health coverage for costs over the designated cap that applied to flexible savings and health savings accounts. The entire ACA was reckless, sloppy and unnecessarily complicated from the start.    The fact that Obamacare further strengthened the distinctions between two parallel systems -- federal and private -- with entirely different economic structures created a labyrinth of red tape, rules, and wasteful bureaucracy. Since the ACA went into effect, over 150 new boards, agencies and programs have had to be established to monitor its 2,700 pages of gibberish. A federal single-payer system would easily eliminate this bureaucracy and waste.    A medical New Deal to establish universal healthcare coverage is a decisive step in the correct direction. But we must look at the crisis holistically and in a systematic way. Simply shuffling private insurance into a federal Medicare-for-all or buy-in program, funded by taxing the wealthiest of citizens, would only temporarily reduce costs. It will neither curtail nor slash escalating disease rates e. Any effective healthcare reform must also tackle the underlying reasons for Americans' poor state of health. We cannot shy away from examining the social illnesses infecting our entire free-market capitalist culture and its addiction to deregulation. A viable healthcare model would have to structurally transform how the medical economy operates. Finally, a successful medical New Deal must honestly evaluate the best and most reliable scientific evidence in order to effectively redirect public health spending.    For example, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former Obama healthcare adviser, observed that AIDS-HIV measures consume the most public health spending, even though the disease "ranked 75th on the list of diseases by personal health expenditures." On the other hand, according to the American Medical Association, a large percentage of the nation's $3.4 trillion healthcare spending goes towards treating preventable diseases, notably diabetes, common forms of heart disease, and back and neck pain conditions. In 2016, these three conditions were the most costly and accounted for approximately $277 billion in spending. Last year, the CDC announced the autism rate is now 1 in 36 children compared to 1 in 44 two years ago. A retracted study by Mark Blaxill, an autism activist at the Holland Center and a friend of the authors, estimates that ASD costs will reach $589 billion annually by 2030. There are no signs that this alarming trend will reverse and decline; and yet, our entire federal health system has failed to conscientiously investigate the underlying causes of this epidemic. All explanations that might interfere with the pharmaceutical industry's unchecked growth, such as over-vaccination, are ignored and viciously discredited without any sound scientific evidence. Therefore, a proper medical New Deal will require a systemic overhaul and reform of our federal health agencies, especially the HHS, CDC and FDA. Only the Robert Kennedy Jr presidential campaign is even addressing the crisis and has an inexpensive and comprehensive plan to deal with it. For any medical revolution to succeed in advancing universal healthcare, the plan must prioritize spending in a manner that serves public health and not private interests. It will also require reshuffling private corporate interests and their lobbyists to the sidelines, away from any strategic planning, in order to break up the private interests' control over federal agencies and its revolving door policies. Aside from those who benefit from this medical corruption, the overwhelming majority of Americans would agree with this criticism. However, there is a complete lack of national trust that our legislators, including the so-called progressives, would be willing to undertake such actions.    In addition, America's healthcare system ignores the single most critical initiative to reduce costs - that is, preventative efforts and programs instead of deregulation and closing loopholes designed to protect the drug and insurance industries' bottom line. Prevention can begin with banning toxic chemicals that are proven health hazards associated with current disease epidemics, and it can begin by removing a 1,000-plus toxins already banned in Europe. This should be a no-brainer for any legislator who cares for public health. For example, Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, notes that "the policy approach in the US and Europe is dramatically different" when it comes to chemical allowances in cosmetic products. Whereas the EU has banned 1,328 toxic substances from the cosmetic industry alone, the US has banned only 11. The US continues to allow carcinogenic formaldehyde, petroleum, forever chemicals, many parabens (an estrogen mimicker and endocrine hormone destroyer), the highly allergenic p-phenylenediamine or PBD, triclosan, which has been associated with the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria, avobenzone, and many others to be used in cosmetics, sunscreens, shampoo and hair dyes.   Next, the food Americans consume can be reevaluated for its health benefits. There should be no hesitation to tax the unhealthiest foods, such as commercial junk food, sodas and candy relying on high fructose corn syrup, products that contain ingredients proven to be toxic, and meat products laden with dangerous chemicals including growth hormones and antibiotics. The scientific evidence that the average American diet is contributing to rising disease trends is indisputable. We could also implement additional taxes on the public advertising of these demonstrably unhealthy products. All such tax revenue would accrue to a national universal health program to offset medical expenditures associated with the very illnesses linked to these products. Although such tax measures would help pay for a new medical New Deal, it may be combined with programs to educate the public about healthy nutrition if it is to produce a reduction in the most common preventable diseases. In fact, comprehensive nutrition courses in medical schools should be mandatory because the average physician receives no education in this crucial subject.  In addition, preventative health education should be mandatory throughout public school systems.   Private insurers force hospitals, clinics and private physicians into financial corners, and this is contributing to prodigious waste in money and resources. Annually, healthcare spending towards medical liability insurance costs tens of billions of dollars. In particular, this economic burden has taxed small clinics and physicians. It is well past the time that physician liability insurance is replaced with no-fault options. Today's doctors are spending an inordinate amount of money to protect themselves. Legions of liability and trial lawyers seek big paydays for themselves stemming from physician error. This has created a culture of fear among doctors and hospitals, resulting in the overly cautious practice of defensive medicine, driving up costs and insurance premiums just to avoid lawsuits. Doctors are forced to order unnecessary tests and prescribe more medications and medical procedures just to cover their backsides. No-fault insurance is a common-sense plan that enables physicians to pursue their profession in a manner that will reduce iatrogenic injuries and costs. Individual cases requiring additional medical intervention and loss of income would still be compensated. This would generate huge savings.    No other nation suffers from the scourge of excessive drug price gouging like the US. After many years of haggling to lower prices and increase access to generic drugs, only a minute amount of progress has been made in recent years. A 60 Minutes feature about the Affordable Care Act reported an "orgy of lobbying and backroom deals in which just about everyone with a stake in the $3-trillion-a-year health industry came out ahead—except the taxpayers.” For example, Life Extension magazine reported that an antiviral cream (acyclovir), which had lost its patent protection, "was being sold to pharmacies for 7,500% over the active ingredient cost. The active ingredient (acyclovir) costs only 8 pennies, yet pharmacies are paying a generic maker $600 for this drug and selling it to consumers for around $700." Other examples include the antibiotic Doxycycline. The price per pill averages 7 cents to $3.36 but has a 5,300 percent markup when it reaches the consumer. The antidepressant Clomipramine is marked up 3,780 percent, and the anti-hypertensive drug Captopril's mark-up is 2,850 percent. And these are generic drugs!    Medication costs need to be dramatically cut to allow drug manufacturers a reasonable but not obscene profit margin. By capping profits approximately 100 percent above all costs, we would save our system hundreds of billions of dollars. Such a measure would also extirpate the growing corporate misdemeanors of pricing fraud, which forces patients to pay out-of-pocket in order to make up for the costs insurers are unwilling to pay.    Finally, we can acknowledge that our healthcare is fundamentally a despotic rationing system based upon high insurance costs vis-a-vis a toss of the dice to determine where a person sits on the economic ladder. For the past three decades it has contributed to inequality. The present insurance-based economic metrics cast millions of Americans out of coverage because private insurance costs are beyond their means. Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University political economist, has called our system "brutal" because it "rations [people] out of the system." He defined rationing as "withholding something from someone that is beneficial." Discriminatory healthcare rationing now affects upwards to 60 million people who have been either priced out of the system or under insured. They make too much to qualify for Medicare under Obamacare, yet earn far too little to afford private insurance costs and premiums. In the final analysis, the entire system is discriminatory and predatory.    However, we must be realistic. Almost every member of Congress has benefited from Big Pharma and private insurance lobbyists. The only way to begin to bring our healthcare program up to the level of a truly developed nation is to remove the drug industry's rampant and unnecessary profiteering from the equation.     How did Fauci memory-hole a cure for AIDS and get away with it?   By Helen Buyniski   Over 700,000 Americans have died of AIDS since 1981, with the disease claiming some 42.3 million victims worldwide. While an HIV diagnosis is no longer considered a certain death sentence, the disease looms large in the public imagination and in public health funding, with contemporary treatments running into thousands of dollars per patient annually.   But was there a cure for AIDS all this time - an affordable and safe treatment that was ruthlessly suppressed and attacked by the US public health bureaucracy and its agents? Could this have saved millions of lives and billions of dollars spent on AZT, ddI and failed HIV vaccine trials? What could possibly justify the decision to disappear a safe and effective approach down the memory hole?   The inventor of the cure, Gary Null, already had several decades of experience creating healing protocols for physicians to help patients not responding well to conventional treatments by the time AIDS was officially defined in 1981. Null, a registered dietitian and board-certified nutritionist with a PhD in human nutrition and public health science, was a senior research fellow and Director of Anti-Aging Medicine at the Institute of Applied Biology for 36 years and has published over 950 papers, conducting groundbreaking experiments in reversing biological aging as confirmed with DNA methylation testing. Additionally, Null is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker, bestselling author, and investigative journalist whose work exposing crimes against humanity over the last 50 years has highlighted abuses by Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, the financial industry, and the permanent government stay-behind networks that have come to be known as the Deep State.   Null was contacted in 1974 by Dr. Stephen Caiazza, a physician working with a subculture of gay men in New York living the so-called “fast track” lifestyle, an extreme manifestation of the gay liberation movement that began with the Stonewall riots. Defined by rampant sexual promiscuity and copious use of illegal and prescription drugs, including heavy antibiotic use for a cornucopia of sexually-transmitted diseases, the fast-track never included more than about two percent of gay men, though these dominated many of the bathhouses and clubs that defined gay nightlife in the era. These patients had become seriously ill as a result of their indulgence, generally arriving at the clinic with multiple STDs including cytomegalovirus and several types of herpes and hepatitis, along with candida overgrowth, nutritional deficiencies, gut issues, and recurring pneumonia. Every week for the next 10 years, Null would counsel two or three of these men - a total of 800 patients - on how to detoxify their bodies and de-stress their lives, tracking their progress with Caiazza and the other providers at weekly feedback meetings that he credits with allowing the team to quickly evaluate which treatments were most effective. He observed that it only took about two years on the “fast track” for a healthy young person to begin seeing muscle loss and the recurrent, lingering opportunistic infections that would later come to be associated with AIDS - while those willing to commit to a healthier lifestyle could regain their health in about a year.    It was with this background that Null established the Tri-State Healing Center in Manhattan in 1980, staffing the facility with what would eventually run to 22 certified health professionals to offer safe, natural, and effective low- and no-cost treatments to thousands of patients with HIV and AIDS-defining conditions. Null and his staff used variations of the protocols he had perfected with Caiazza's patients, a multifactorial patient-tailored approach that included high-dose vitamin C drips, intravenous ozone therapy, juicing and nutritional improvements and supplementation, aspects of homeopathy and naturopathy with some Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic practices. Additional services offered on-site included acupuncture and holistic dentistry, while peer support groups were also held at the facility so that patients could find community and a positive environment, healing their minds and spirits while they healed their bodies.   “Instead of trying to kill the virus with antiretroviral pharmaceuticals designed to stop viral replication before it kills patients, we focused on what benefits could be gained by building up the patients' natural immunity and restoring biochemical integrity so the body could fight for itself,” Null wrote in a 2014 article describing the philosophy behind the Center's approach, which was wholly at odds with the pharmaceutical model.1   Patients were comprehensively tested every week, with any “recovery” defined solely by the labs, which documented AIDS patient after patient - 1,200 of them - returning to good health and reversing their debilitating conditions. Null claims to have never lost an AIDS patient in the Center's care, even as the death toll for the disease - and its pharmaceutical standard of care AZT - reached an all-time high in the early 1990s. Eight patients who had opted for a more intensive course of treatment - visiting the Center six days a week rather than one - actually sero-deconverted, with repeated subsequent testing showing no trace of HIV in their bodies.   As an experienced clinical researcher himself, Null recognized that any claims made by the Center would be massively scrutinized, challenging as they did the prevailing scientific consensus that AIDS was an incurable, terminal illness. He freely gave his protocols to any medical practitioner who asked, understanding that his own work could be considered scientifically valid only if others could replicate it under the same conditions. After weeks of daily observational visits to the Center, Dr. Robert Cathcart took the protocols back to San Francisco, where he excitedly reported that patients were no longer dying in his care.    Null's own colleague at the Institute of Applied Biology, senior research fellow Elana Avram, set up IV drip rooms at the Institute and used his intensive protocols to sero-deconvert 10 patients over a two-year period. While the experiment had been conducted in secret, as the Institute had been funded by Big Pharma since its inception half a century earlier, Avram had hoped she would be able to publish a journal article to further publicize Null's protocols and potentially help AIDS patients, who were still dying at incredibly high rates thanks to Burroughs Wellcome's noxious but profitable AZT. But as she would later explain in a 2019 letter to Null, their groundbreaking research never made it into print - despite meticulous documentation of their successes - because the Institute's director and board feared their pharmaceutical benefactors would withdraw the funding on which they depended, given that Null's protocols did not involve any patentable or otherwise profitable drugs. When Avram approached them about publication, the board vetoed the idea, arguing that it would “draw negative attention because [the work] was contrary to standard drug treatments.” With no real point in continuing experiments along those lines without institutional support and no hope of obtaining funding from elsewhere, the department she had created specifically for these experiments shut down after a two-year followup with her test subjects - all of whom remained alive and healthy - was completed.2   While the Center was receiving regular visits by this time from medical professionals and, increasingly, black celebrities like Stokely Carmichael and Isaac Hayes, who would occasionally perform for the patients, the news was spreading by word of mouth alone - not a single media outlet had dared to document the clinic that was curing AIDS patients for free. Instead, they gave airtime to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, who had for years been spreading baseless, hysteria-fueling claims about HIV and AIDS to any news outlet that would put him on. His claim that children could contract the virus from “ordinary household conduct” with an infected relative proved so outrageous he had to walk it back,3 and he never really stopped insisting the deadly plague associated with gays and drug users was about to explode like a nuclear bomb among the law-abiding heterosexual population. Fauci by this time controlled all government science funding through NIAID, and his zero-tolerance approach to dissent on the HIV/AIDS front had already seen prominent scientists like virologist Peter Duesberg stripped of the resources they needed for their work because they had dared to question his commandment: There is no cause of AIDS but HIV, and AZT is its treatment. Even the AIDS activist groups, which by then had been coopted by Big Pharma and essentially reduced to astroturfing for the toxic failed chemotherapy drug AZT backed by the institutional might of Fauci's NIAID,4 didn't seem to want to hear that there was a cure. Unconcerned with the irrationality of denouncing the man touting his free AIDS cure as an  “AIDS denier,” they warned journalists that platforming Null or anyone else rejecting the mainstream medical line would be met with organized demands for their firing.    Determined to breach the institutional iron curtain and get his message to the masses, Null and his team staged a press conference in New York, inviting scientists and doctors from around the world to share their research on alternative approaches to HIV and AIDS in 1993. To emphasize the sound scientific basis of the Center's protocols and encourage guests to adopt them into their own practices, Null printed out thousands of abstracts in support of each nutrient and treatment being used. However, despite over 7,000 invitations sent three times to major media, government figures, scientists, and activists, almost none of the intended audience members showed up. Over 100 AIDS patients and their doctors, whose charts exhaustively documented their improvements using natural and nontoxic modalities over the preceding 12 months, gave filmed testimonials, declaring that the feared disease was no longer a death sentence, but the conference had effectively been silenced. Bill Tatum, publisher of the Amsterdam News, suggested Null and his patients would find a more welcoming audience in his home neighborhood of Harlem - specifically, its iconic Apollo Theatre. For three nights, the theater was packed to capacity. Hit especially hard by the epidemic and distrustful of a medical system that had only recently stopped being openly racist (the Tuskegee syphilis experiment only ended in 1972), black Americans, at least, did not seem to care what Anthony Fauci would do if he found out they were investigating alternatives to AZT and death.    PBS journalist Tony Brown, having obtained a copy of the video of patient testimonials from the failed press conference, was among a handful of black journalists who began visiting the Center to investigate the legitimacy of Null's claims. Satisfied they had something significant to offer his audience, Brown invited eight patients - along with Null himself - onto his program over the course of several episodes to discuss the work. It was the first time these protocols had received any attention in the media, despite Null having released nearly two dozen articles and multiple documentaries on the subject by that time. A typical patient on one program, Al, a recovered IV drug user who was diagnosed with AIDS at age 32, described how he “panicked,” saw a doctor and started taking AZT despite his misgivings - only to be forced to discontinue the drug after just a few weeks due to his condition deteriorating rapidly. Researching alternatives brought him to Null, and after six months of “detoxing [his] lifestyle,” he observed his initial symptoms - swollen lymph nodes and weight loss - begin to reverse, culminating with sero-deconversion. On Bill McCreary's Channel 5 program, a married couple diagnosed with HIV described how they watched their T-cell counts increase as they cut out sugar, caffeine, smoking, and drinking and began eating a healthy diet. They also saw the virus leave their bodies.   For HIV-positive viewers surrounded by fear and negativity, watching healthy-looking, cheerful “AIDS patients” detail their recovery while Null backed up their claims with charts must have been balm for the soul. But the TV programs were also a form of outreach to the medical community, with patients' charts always on hand to convince skeptics the cure was scientifically valid. Null brought patients' charts to every program, urging them to keep an open mind: “Other physicians and public health officials should know that there's good science in the alternative perspective. It may not be a therapy that they're familiar with, because they're just not trained in it, but if the results are positive, and you can document them…” He challenged doubters to send in charts from their own sero-deconverted patients on AZT, and volunteered to debate proponents of the orthodox treatment paradigm - though the NIH and WHO both refused to participate in such a debate on Tony Brown's Journal, following Fauci's directive prohibiting engagement with forbidden ideas.    Aside from those few TV programs and Null's own films, suppression of Null's AIDS cure beyond word of mouth was total. The 2021 documentary The Cost of Denial, produced by the Society for Independent Journalists, tells the story of the Tri-State Healing Center and the medical paradigm that sought to destroy it, lamenting the loss of the lives that might have been saved in a more enlightened society. Nurse practitioner Luanne Pennesi, who treated many of the AIDS patients at the Center, speculated in the film that the refusal by the scientific establishment and AIDS activists to accept their successes was financially motivated. “It was as if they didn't want this information to get out. Understand that our healthcare system as we know it is a corporation, it's a corporate model, and it's about generating revenue. My concern was that maybe they couldn't generate enough revenue from these natural approaches.”5   Funding was certainly the main disciplinary tool Fauci's NIAID used to keep the scientific community in line. Despite the massive community interest in the work being done at the Center, no foundation or institution would defy Fauci and risk getting itself blacklisted, leaving Null to continue funding the operation out of his pocket with the profits from book sales. After 15 years, he left the Center in 1995, convinced the mainstream model had so thoroughly been institutionalized that there was no chance of overthrowing it. He has continued to counsel patients and advocate for a reappraisal of the HIV=AIDS hypothesis and its pharmaceutical treatments, highlighting the deeply flawed science underpinning the model of the disease espoused by the scientific establishment in 39 articles, six documentaries and a 700-page textbook on AIDS, but the Center's achievements have been effectively memory-holed by Fauci's multi-billion-dollar propaganda apparatus.     FRUIT OF THE POISONOUS TREE   To understand just how much of a threat Null's work was to the HIV/AIDS establishment, it is instructive to revisit the 1984 paper, published by Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute, that established HIV as the sole cause of AIDS. The CDC's official recognition of AIDS in 1981 had done little to quell the mounting public panic over the mysterious illness afflicting gay men in the US, as the agency had effectively admitted it had no idea what was causing them to sicken and die. As years passed with no progress determining the causative agent of the plague, activist groups like Gay Men's Health Crisis disrupted public events and threatened further mass civil disobedience as they excoriated the NIH for its sluggish allocation of government science funding to uncovering the cause of the “gay cancer.”6 When Gallo published his paper declaring that the retrovirus we now know as HIV was the sole “probable” cause of AIDS, its simple, single-factor hypothesis was the answer to the scientific establishment's prayers. This was particularly true for Fauci, as the NIAID chief was able to claim the hot new disease as his agency's own domain in what has been described as a “dramatic confrontation” with his rival Sam Broder at the National Cancer Institute. After all, Fauci pointed out, Gallo's findings - presented by Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler as if they were gospel truth before any other scientists had had a chance to inspect them, never mind conduct a full peer review - clearly classified AIDS as an infectious disease, and not a cancer like the Kaposi's sarcoma which was at the time its most visible manifestation. Money and media attention began pouring in, even as funding for the investigation of other potential causes of AIDS dried up. Having already patented a diagnostic test for “his” retrovirus before introducing it to the world, Gallo was poised for a financial windfall, while Fauci was busily leveraging the discovery into full bureaucratic empire of the US scientific apparatus.   While it would serve as the sole basis for all US government-backed AIDS research to follow - quickly turning Gallo into the most-cited scientist in the world during the 1980s,7 Gallo's “discovery” of HIV was deeply problematic. The sample that yielded the momentous discovery actually belonged to Prof. Luc Montagnier of the French Institut Pasteur, a fact Gallo finally admitted in 1991, four years after a lawsuit from the French government challenged his patent on the HIV antibody test, forcing the US government to negotiate a hasty profit-sharing agreement between Gallo's and Montagnier's labs. That lawsuit triggered a cascade of official investigations into scientific misconduct by Gallo, and evidence submitted during one of these probes, unearthed in 2008 by journalist Janine Roberts, revealed a much deeper problem with the seminal “discovery.” While Gallo's co-author, Mikulas Popovic, had concluded after numerous experiments with the French samples that the virus they contained was not the cause of AIDS, Gallo had drastically altered the paper's conclusion, scribbling his notes in the margins, and submitted it for publication to the journal Science without informing his co-author.   After Roberts shared her discovery with contacts in the scientific community, 37 scientific experts wrote to the journal demanding that Gallo's career-defining HIV paper be retracted from Science for lacking scientific integrity.8 Their call, backed by an endorsement from the 2,600-member scientific organization Rethinking AIDS, was ignored by the publication and by the rest of mainstream science despite - or perhaps because of - its profound implications.   That 2008 letter, addressed to Science editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts and copied to American Association for the Advancement of Science CEO Alan Leshner, is worth reproducing here in its entirety, as it utterly dismantles Gallo's hypothesis - and with them the entire HIV is the sole cause of AIDS dogma upon which the contemporary medical model of the disease rests:   On May 4, 1984 your journal published four papers by a group led by Dr. Robert Gallo. We are writing to express our serious concerns with regard to the integrity and veracity of the lead paper among these four of which Dr. Mikulas Popovic is the lead author.[1] The other three are also of concern because they rely upon the conclusions of the lead paper .[2][3][4]  In the early 1990s, several highly critical reports on the research underlying these papers were produced as a result of governmental inquiries working under the supervision of scientists nominated by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. The Office of Research Integrity of the US Department of Health and Human Services concluded that the lead paper was “fraught with false and erroneous statements,” and that the “ORI believes that the careless and unacceptable keeping of research records...reflects irresponsible laboratory management that has permanently impaired the ability to retrace the important steps taken.”[5] Further, a Congressional Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations led by US Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan produced a staff report on the papers which contains scathing criticisms of their integrity.[6]  Despite the publically available record of challenges to their veracity, these papers have remained uncorrected and continue to be part of the scientific record.  What prompts our communication today is the recent revelation of an astonishing number of previously unreported deletions and unjustified alterations made by Gallo to the lead paper. There are several documents originating from Gallo's laboratory that, while available for some time, have only recently been fully analyzed. These include a draft of the lead paper typewritten by Popovic which contains handwritten changes made to it by Gallo.[7] This draft was the key evidence used in the above described inquiries to establish that Gallo had concealed his laboratory's use of a cell culture sample (known as LAV) which it received from the Institut Pasteur.  These earlier inquiries verified that the typed manuscript draft was produced by Popovic who had carried out the recorded experiment while his laboratory chief, Gallo, was in Europe and that, upon his return, Gallo changed the document by hand a few days before it was submitted to Science on March 30, 1984. According to the ORI investigation, “Dr. Gallo systematically rewrote the manuscript for what would become a renowned LTCB [Gallo's laboratory at the National Cancer Institute] paper.”[5]  This document provided the important evidence that established the basis for awarding Dr. Luc Montagnier and Dr. Francoise Barré-Sinoussi the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of the AIDS virus by proving it was their samples of LAV that Popovic used in his key experiment. The draft reveals that Popovic had forthrightly admitted using the French samples of LAV renamed as Gallo's virus, HTLV-III, and that Gallo had deleted this admission, concealing their use of LAV.  However, it has not been previously reported that on page three of this same document Gallo had also deleted Popovic's unambiguous statement that, "Despite intensive research efforts, the causative agent of AIDS has not yet been identified,” replacing it in the published paper with a statement that said practically the opposite, namely, “That a retrovirus of the HTLV family might be an etiologic agent of AIDS was suggested by the findings.”  It is clear that the rest of Popovic's typed paper is entirely consistent with his statement that the cause of AIDS had not been found, despite his use of the French LAV. Popovic's final conclusion was that the culture he produced “provides the possibility” for detailed studies. He claimed to have achieved nothing more. At no point in his paper did Popovic attempt to prove that any virus caused AIDS, and it is evident that Gallo concealed these key elements in Popovic's experimental findings.  It is astonishing now to discover these unreported changes to such a seminal document. We can only assume that Gallo's alterations of Popovic's conclusions were not highlighted by earlier inquiries because the focus at the time was on establishing that the sample used by Gallo's lab came from Montagnier and was not independently collected by Gallo. In fact, the only attention paid to the deletions made by Gallo pertains to his effort to hide the identity of the sample. The questions of whether Gallo and Popovic's research proved that LAV or any other virus was the cause of AIDS were clearly not considered.  Related to these questions are other long overlooked documents that merit your attention. One of these is a letter from Dr. Matthew A. Gonda, then Head of the Electron Microscopy Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, which is addressed to Popovic, copied to Gallo and dated just four days prior to Gallo's submission to Science.[8] In this letter, Gonda remarks on samples he had been sent for imaging because “Dr Gallo wanted these micrographs for publication because they contain HTLV.” He states, “I do not believe any of the particles photographed are of HTLV-I, II or III.” According to Gonda, one sample contained cellular debris, while another had no particles near the size of a retrovirus. Despite Gonda's clearly worded statement, Science published on May 4, 1984 papers attributed to Gallo et al with micrographs attributed to Gonda and described unequivocally as HTLV-III.  In another letter by Gallo, dated one day before he submitted his papers to Science, Gallo states, “It's extremely rare to find fresh cells [from AIDS patients] expressing the virus... cell culture seems to be necessary to induce virus,” a statement which raises the possibility he was working with a laboratory artifact. [9]  Included here are copies of these documents and links to the same. The very serious flaws they reveal in the preparation of the lead paper published in your journal in 1984 prompts our request that this paper be withdrawn. It appears that key experimental findings have been concealed. We further request that the three associated papers published on the same date also be withdrawn as they depend on the accuracy of this paper.  For the scientific record to be reliable, it is vital that papers shown to be flawed, or falsified be retracted. Because a very public record now exists showing that the Gallo papers drew unjustified conclusions, their withdrawal from Science is all the more important to maintain integrity. Future researchers must also understand they cannot rely on the 1984 Gallo papers for statements about HIV and AIDS, and all authors of papers that previously relied on this set of four papers should have the opportunity to consider whether their own conclusions are weakened by these revelations.      Gallo's handwritten revision, submitted without his colleague's knowledge despite multiple experiments that failed to support the new conclusion, was the sole foundation for the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. Had Science published the manuscript the way Popovic had typed it, there would be no AIDS “pandemic” - merely small clusters of people with AIDS. Without a viral hypothesis backing the development of expensive and deadly pharmaceuticals, would Fauci have allowed these patients to learn about the cure that existed all along?   Faced with a potential rebellion, Fauci marshaled the full resources under his control to squelch the publication of the investigations into Gallo and restrict any discussion of competing hypotheses in the scientific and mainstream press, which had been running virus-scare stories full-time since 1984. The effect was total, according to biochemist Dr. Kary Mullis, inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedure. In a 2009 interview, Mullis recalled his own shock when he attempted to unearth the experimental basis for the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. Despite his extensive inquiry into the literature, “there wasn't a scientific reference…[that] said ‘here's how come we know that HIV is the probable cause of AIDS.' There was nothing out there like that.”9 This yawning void at the core of HIV/AIDS “science" turned him into a strident critic of AIDS dogma - and those views made him persona non grata where the scientific press was concerned, suddenly unable to publish a single paper despite having won the Nobel Prize for his invention of the PCR test just weeks before.  10   DISSENT BECOMES “DENIAL”   While many of those who dissent from the orthodox HIV=AIDS view believe HIV plays a role in the development of AIDS, they point to lifestyle and other co-factors as being equally if not more important. Individuals who test positive for HIV can live for decades in perfect health - so long as they don't take AZT or the other toxic antivirals fast-tracked by Fauci's NIAID - but those who developed full-blown AIDS generally engaged in highly risky behaviors like extreme promiscuity and prodigious drug abuse, contracting STDs they took large quantities of antibiotics to treat, further running down their immune systems. While AIDS was largely portrayed as a “gay disease,” it was only the “fast track” gays, hooking up with dozens of partners nightly in sex marathons fueled by “poppers” (nitrate inhalants notorious for their own devastating effects on the immune system), who became sick. Kaposi's sarcoma, one of the original AIDS-defining conditions, was widespread among poppers-using gay men, but never appeared among IV drug users or hemophiliacs, the other two main risk groups during the early years of the epidemic. Even Robert Gallo himself, at a 1994 conference on poppers held by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, would admit that the previously-rare form of skin cancer surging among gay men was not primarily caused by HIV - and that it was immune stimulation, rather than suppression, that was likely responsible.11 Similarly, IV drug users are often riddled with opportunistic infections as their habit depresses the immune system and their focus on maintaining their addiction means that healthier habits - like good nutrition and even basic hygiene - fall by the wayside.    Supporting the call for revising the HIV=AIDS hypothesis to include co-factors is the fact that the mass heterosexual outbreaks long predicted by Fauci and his ilk in seemingly every country on Earth have failed to materialize, except - supposedly - in Africa, where the diagnostic standard for AIDS differs dramatically from those of the West. Given the prohibitively high cost of HIV testing for poor African nations, the WHO in 1985 crafted a diagnostic loophole that became known as the “Bangui definition,” allowing medical professionals to diagnose AIDS in the absence of a test using just clinical symptoms: high fever, persistent cough, at least 30 days of diarrhea, and the loss of 10% of one's body weight within two months. Often suffering from malnutrition and without access to clean drinking water, many of the inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa fit the bill, especially when the WHO added tuberculosis to the list of AIDS-defining illnesses in 1993 - a move which may be responsible for as many as one half of African “AIDS” cases, according to journalist Christine Johnson. The WHO's former Chief of Global HIV Surveillance, James Chin, acknowledged their manipulation of statistics, but stressed that it was the entire AIDS industry - not just his organization - perpetrating the fraud. “There's the saying that, if you knew what sausages are made of, most people would hesitate to sort of eat them, because they wouldn't like what's in it. And if you knew how HIV/AIDS numbers are cooked, or made up, you would use them with extreme caution,” Chin told an interviewer in 2009.12   With infected numbers stubbornly remaining constant in the US despite Fauci's fearmongering projections of the looming heterosexually-transmitted plague, the CDC in 1993 broadened its definition of AIDS to include asymptomatic (that is, healthy) HIV-positive people with low T-cell counts - an absurd criteria given that an individual's T-cell count can fluctuate by hundreds within a single day. As a result, the number of “AIDS cases” in the US immediately doubled. Supervised by Fauci, the NIAID had been quietly piling on diseases into the “AIDS-related” category for years, bloating the list from just two conditions - pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma - to 30 so fast it raised eyebrows among some of science's leading lights. Deeming the entire process “bizarre” and unprecedented, Kary Mullis wondered aloud why no one had called the AIDS establishment out: “There's something wrong here. And it's got to be financial.”13   Indeed, an early CDC public relations campaign was exposed by the Wall Street Journal in 1987 as having deliberately mischaracterized AIDS as a threat to the entire population so as to garner increased public and private funding for what was very much a niche issue, with the risk to average heterosexuals from a single act of sex “smaller than the risk of ever getting hit by lightning.” Ironically, the ads, which sought to humanize AIDS patients in an era when few Americans knew anyone with the disease and more than half the adult population thought infected people should be forced to carry cards warning of their status, could be seen as a reaction to the fear tactics deployed by Fauci early on.14   It's hard to tell where fraud ends and incompetence begins with Gallo's HIV antibody test. Much like Covid-19 would become a “pandemic of testing,” with murder victims and motorcycle crashes lumped into “Covid deaths” thanks to over-sensitized PCR tests that yielded as many as 90% false positives,15 HIV testing is fraught with false positives - and unlike with Covid-19, most people who hear they are HIV-positive still believe they are receiving a death sentence. Due to the difficulty of isolating HIV itself from human samples, the most common diagnostic tests, ELISA and the Western Blot, are designed to detect not the virus but antibodies to it, upending the traditional medical understanding that the presence of antibodies indicates only exposure - and often that the body has actually vanquished the pathogen. Patients are known to test positive for HIV antibodies in the absence of the virus due to at least 70 other conditions, including hepatitis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, syphilis, recent vaccination or even pregnancy. (https://www.chcfl.org/diseases-that-can-cause-a-false-positive-hiv-test/) Positive results are often followed up with a PCR “viral load” test, even though the inventor of the PCR technique Kary Mullis famously condemned its misuse as a tool for diagnosing infection. Packaging inserts for all three tests warn the user that they cannot be reliably used to diagnose HIV.16 The ELISA HIV antibody test explicitly states: “At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence and absence of HIV antibody in human blood.”17   That the public remains largely unaware of these and other massive holes in the supposedly airtight HIV=AIDS=DEATH paradigm is a testament to Fauci's multi-layered control of the press. Like the writers of the Great Barrington Declaration and other Covid-19 dissidents, scientists who question HIV/AIDS dogma have been brutally punished for their heresy, no matter how prestigious their prior standing in the field and no matter how much evidence they have for their own claims. In 1987, the year the FDA's approval of AZT made AIDS the most profitable epidemic yet (a dubious designation Covid-19 has since surpassed), Fauci made it clearer than ever that scientific inquiry and debate - the basis of the scientific method - would no longer be welcome in the American public health sector, eliminating retrovirologist Peter Duesberg, then one of the most prominent opponents of the HIV=AIDS hypothesis, from the scientific conversation with a professional disemboweling that would make a cartel hitman blush. Duesberg had just eviscerated Gallo's 1984 HIV paper with an article of his own in the journal Cancer Research, pointing out that retroviruses had never before been found to cause a single disease in humans - let alone 30 AIDS-defining diseases. Rather than allow Gallo or any of the other scientists in his camp to respond to the challenge, Fauci waged a scorched-earth campaign against Duesberg, who had until then been one of the most highly regarded researchers in his field. Every research grant he requested was denied; every media appearance was canceled or preempted. The University of California at Berkeley, unable to fully fire him due to tenure, took away his lab, his graduate students, and the rest of his funding. The few colleagues who dared speak up for him in public were also attacked, while enemies and opportunists were encouraged to slander Duesberg at the conferences he was barred from attending and in the journals that would no longer publish his replies. When Duesberg was summoned to the White House later that year by then-President Ronald Reagan to debate Fauci on the origins of AIDS, Fauci convinced the president to cancel, allegedly pulling rank on the Commander-in-Chief with an accusation that the “White House was interfering in scientific matters that belonged to the NIH and the Office of Science and Technology Assessment.” After seven years of this treatment, Duesberg was contacted by NIH official Stephen O'Brien and offered an escape from professional purgatory. He could have “everything back,” he was told, and shown a manuscript of a scientific paper - apparently commissioned by the editor of the journal Nature - “HIV Causes AIDS: Koch's Postulates Fulfilled” with his own name listed alongside O'Brien's as an author.18 His refusal to take the bribe effectively guaranteed the epithet “AIDS denier” will appear on his tombstone. The character assassination of Duesberg became a template that would be deployed to great effectiveness wherever Fauci encountered dissent - never debate, only demonize, deplatform and destroy.    Even Luc Montagnier, the real discoverer of HIV, soon found himself on the wrong side of the Fauci machine. With his 1990 declaration that “the HIV virus [by itself] is harmless and passive, a benign virus,” Montagnier began distancing himself from Gallo's fraud, effectively placing a target on his own back. In a 1995 interview, he elaborated: “four factors that have come together to account for the sudden epidemic [of AIDS]: HIV presence, immune hyper-activation, increased sexually transmitted disease incidence, sexual behavior changes and other behavioral changes” such as drug use, poor nutrition and stress - all of which he said had to occur “essentially simultaneously” for HIV to be transmitted, creating the modern epidemic. Like the professionals at the Tri-State Healing Center, Montagnier advocated for the use of antioxidants like vitamin C and N-acetyl cysteine, naming oxidative stress as a critical factor in the progression from HIV to AIDS.19 When Montagnier died in 2022, Fauci's media mouthpieces sneered that the scientist (who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2008 for his discovery of HIV, despite his flagging faith in that discovery's significance) “started espousing views devoid of a scientific basis” in the late 2000s, leading him to be “shunned by the scientific community.”20 In a particularly egregious jab, the Washington Post's obit sings the praises of Robert Gallo, implying it was the American scientist who really should have won the Nobel for HIV, while dismissing as “

Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal is the author of the 2017 book, An American Sickness: how healthcare became big business and how you can take it back. The Washington Post describes the book as: “An authoritative account of the distorted financial incentives that drive medical care in the United States . . . Every lawmaker and administration official should pick up a copy of [it].” Dr. Rosenthal was for 22 years a reporter, correspondent, and senior writer for The New York Times before becoming the editor in chief of Kaiser Health News, an independent journalism newsroom focusing on health and health policy. She holds an MD from Harvard Medical School, trained in internal medicine, and has worked as an ER physician. For over a decade she has been responsible for a popular segment on National Public Radio called, “the Medical Bill of the Month.”Click here for, "Where the frauds are legal: welcome to the weird world of medical billing," by Elisabeth Rosenthal from The New York Times, Dec. 7, 2019.

Overcoming the Fear of Death   Guest Kelvin Chin     Our guest today is Kelvin Chin, a meditation star, who is with us for the fifth time. Kelvin Chin is an Author, a Meditation Teacher, and a Life After Life Expert. His first book was Overcoming the Fear of Death: Through Each of the 4 Main Belief Systems. His second book is Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations on Living Life. His third book is After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives. Kelvin is the Executive Director & Founder of the “Turning Within” Meditation and Overcoming the Fear of Death Foundations, and he is an internationally-recognized meditation teacher who has been featured in Business Insider, Newsweek, and Kaiser Health News. He has taught meditation at West Point and in the U.S. Army, including on the DMZ in Korea. Kelvin Chin has taught meditation to thousands of people in more than 60 countries, and he is a graduate of Dartmouth, Yale, and Boston College School of Law. His website is https://www.turningwithin.org/ Learn more about Roberta here: http://robertagrimes.com https://seekreality.com

With zero-dollar premiums, caps on out-of-pocket costs, and perks that range from meal delivery to gym memberships – even loaded debit cards – membership in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans is surging in enrollment and popularity among seniors.  In fact, earlier this year, enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans surpassed enrollment in traditional Medicare, with more than 50 percent of eligible seniors now choosing this privatized version of coverage.  However, aggressive marketing campaigns and a lack of transparency in coverage often hide the downsides of Medicare Advantage, which include limited networks and strict prior authorization policies that make it harder for millions of seniors to quickly get the care they need. As we explore in this episode, these downsides also impact care providers, like hospitals, as well as the taxpayers who are footing the bill.Our guest, Tricia Neuman, is the executive director of KFF's Program on Medicare Policy and has been with the organization for almost 30 years. She looks back on the creation of MA, discusses the program's unexpected rapid growth, examines its impact on the health care system, and shares what she thinks comes next for seniors' coverage.Topics discussed include:Evolution of Medicare Advantage – popularity and benefitsFlooding the airwaves – impact of overzealous marketingWhat's in it for insurers? – how insurers game the system Impact on patients– from narrow networks to excessive prior authorizations Problems for providers – limitations on care from denials and delays Taxpayers pay the price – MA now spends more per beneficiary than Traditional MedicareWhat's next – the future of Medicare Advantage More:KFF is an independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism. Its stated mission is to serve as a nonpartisan source of information for policymakers, the media, the health policy community, and the public.KFF has four major program areas: KFF Policy; KFF Polling; KFF Health News (formerly known as Kaiser Health News, or KHN); and KFF Social Impact Media, which conducts specialized public health information campaigns.

Kelvin Chin Talks About Memories of His Past Lives Kelvin Chin is an Author, Meditation Teacher, and Life After Life Expert, and he is with is for the fourth time to discuss his third book, called After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives. That book describes in detail how his past-life memories that reach back 6,000 years have resurfaced over the past 45 years, and what they have taught him about himself, and about how our minds continue from lifetime to lifetime. Kelvin is Executive Director & Founder of the “Turning Within” Meditation and Overcoming the Fear of Death Foundations, and he is an internationally recognized meditation teacher, featured in Business Insider, Newsweek, and Kaiser Health News. He has taught meditation at West Point and in the U.S. Army, including on the DMZ in Korea. Kelvin has been meditating for 52 years, and he has taught meditation to thousands of people in more than 60 countries. He's a graduate of Dartmouth, Yale, and Boston College School of Law. You can reach Kelvin Chin at www.TurningWithin.org. Learn more about Roberta here: http://robertagrimes.com https://seekreality.com

This week on Moral Matters, we're sharing another episode from Searching for Medicine's Soul. In this episode, Dr. Rothstein talks with Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, a senior contributing editor at Kaiser Health News, former New York Times reporter and New York Times best selling author of American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back. Drs. Rothstein and Rosenthal talk about the failures of the American healthcare system and the untenable costs and burdens it foists on both doctors and patients. We are grateful to the Searching for Medicine's Soul podcast for letting us share this episode with you. For more information about Searching for Medicine's Soul:https://searchingformedicinessoul.podbean.com/ Dr. Rosenthal's book: https://www.anamericansickness.com/ Support the podcast: https://www.fixmoralinjury.org/get-started Twitter - @fixmoralinjury Instagram - @moralinjury Facebook - @moralinjuryofhc LinkedIn - Moral Injury of Healthcare

For this week's episode of Off-Kilter, Rebecca sat down with Jen Burdick, supervising attorney of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) unit at Community Legal Services (CLS), Rebecca's legal aid alma mater. They had a far ranging conversation about how “eligibility doesn't equal access” and other lessons Jen has learned throughout her years as a public benefits lawyer; the human consequences of a decade-plus of defunding the Social Security Administration, from years-long backlogs in disability cases to overpayments that wreak havoc in beneficiaries' lives; how Jen combines her client representation with policy advocacy and why the perspective of direct service providers like legal aid lawyers is so valuable to shaping public policy and legislative reform; how outdated policies like outdated asset limits lead to inhumane surveillance of poor people's finances; the toxicity of the collective limiting belief that poor families aren't to be trusted with their own money, and how that shows up in the SSI program, through “dedicated accounts” that restrict how families are able to spend their benefits; and lots more.   Links from this episode: Follow Jen and CLS on Twitter/X: @jen_burdick @clsphila and learn more about CLS's work at clsphila.org Here's the Kaiser Health News story on needless SSI overpayments and how they wreak havoc in low-income beneficiaries' lives For more on the disinvestment in SSA's administrative budget, check out this Off-Kilter episode And for more on how eligibility doesn't equal access in public assistance programs, here's the prior Off-Kilter episode that Jen was featured in

Kelvin Chin Talks About After the Afterlife Kelvin Chin is Executive Director and Founder of the “Turning Within” Meditation and Overcoming the Fear of Death Foundations. He is an internationally-recognized meditation teacher, featured in Business Insider, Newsweek, and Kaiser Health News. Kelvin has been meditating for 52 years, and he has taught meditation to thousands of people in more than 60 countries. He is a graduate of Dartmouth, Yale, and Boston College School of Law. His most recent book, which Roberta found fascinating, is called After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives, and it describes how Kelvin's deep meditation has helped him to resurrect past life memories that reach back 6,000 years, and what those past lives have taught him about himself, and about how our minds continue from lifetime to lifetime. This is his third Seek Reality visit. Learn more about Roberta here: http://robertagrimes.com https://seekreality.com/

AI has impacted healthcare and where the technology might take us; Brad O'Neil, President and Managing Director of the ICHRA Shop, explains how an Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement (ICHRA) works and what it offers to employers and employees; the FDA reopens the comment period on its paper about the use of AI in drug development; and a Kaiser Health News article examines new federal rules for Medicare Advantage plans that take effect in January. The Data Economics Company Webpage The ICHRA Shop Webpage Endpoints News Article: Agency reopens AI discussion paper for comments amid two-day workshop Kaiser Health News Article: Feds Rein In Use of Predictive Software That Limits Care for Medicare Advantage Patients  

In this episode, Dr. Stephanie Weyrauch is back with a great interview with COL Zack Solomon, PT, DPT, OCS, CSCS, to discuss the importance of resiliency in life and in leadership. Colonel Solomon shares his 25-year career journey, starting with his master's program at the US Army Baylor program and his time at Walter Reed and Fort Riley. He also describes his experience as a brigade physical therapist in Iraq during the surge in 2006 and 2007. Additionally, Colonel Solomon discusses his role as a brigade medical officer in a basic training brigade and his time at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Tune in to gain valuable insights on resilience from Colonel Solomon's military experience.   ·      "The views, thoughts, and opinions presented herein are those of the speaker and do not necessarily represent the views of the DoD or the U.S. Army.”   Show notes:  [00:01:12] Resilience in the military. [00:07:58] Overcoming acute events. [00:11:36] Building resilience in the Army. [00:15:17] Recovering from spinal cord injury. [00:19:16] Building trust and confidence. [00:23:16] General Shelton's incredible recovery. [00:27:06] Setting desired end state. [00:32:03] Resilience in leadership. [00:36:00] Autonomy in physical therapy. [00:42:44] Promoting resilience and reducing burnout. [00:45:15] Providing constructive feedback. [00:48:30] Modeling behaviors as healthcare providers.   More About COL Soloman: COL Zack Solomon earned a Master of Physical Therapy degree from U.S. Army-Baylor University and a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from Baylor University. COL Solomon also graduated from the U.S. Army War College with a Master's degree in Strategic Studies.  COL Solomon most recently served as the Branch Chief, Army Medical Specialist Corps, Human Resources Command, Fort Knox, Kentucky. COL Solomon's previous assignments include Commander, California Medical Detachment, Presidio of Monterey, California; Chief of Physical Therapy, Dunham Army Health Clinic, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; Chief of Physical Therapy at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital, Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Assistant Program Manager, Army Institute of Public Health, U.S. Army Public Health Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland; Brigade Medical Operations Officer, 434th Field Artillery Brigade, Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Chief Physical Therapy and Chiropractic Clinics, U.S. Army Health Clinic, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii; Brigade Physical Therapist, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom; Assistant Chief, Physical Therapy Clinic, Irwin Army Community Hospital, Fort Riley, Kansas; Physical Therapist, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington D.C.  He is a board-certified orthopedic clinical specialist from the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties and a certified strength and conditioning specialist from the National Strength and Conditioning Association.   More About Dr. Weyrauch: Dr. Stephanie Weyrauch is a self-employed physical therapist at Movement X in Billings, MT. She earned her Doctorate in Physical Therapy and Master of Science in Clinical Investigation from Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Weyrauch is a highly sought-after speaker and consultant specializing in burnout, generational issues, and injury prevention programs within the workplace. Her clinical expertise has been featured in various media outlets, including NPR, Kaiser Health News, Glamour, Life Hacker, and NBC News. Dr. Weyrauch serves as Chair of the American Physical Therapy Association Nominating Committee and has served on multiple national task forces for the organization. She has performed scientific research through grants from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation at institutions including Stanford University and Washington University in St. Louis. Her research examining movement patterns and outcomes in people with and without low back pain has led to numerous local, regional, and national presentations and a peer-reviewed publication in Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, a top journal in rehabilitation.   Follow Dr. Karen Litzy on Social Media: Karen's Twitter Karen's Instagram Karen's LinkedIn   Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: YouTube Website Apple Podcast Spotify SoundCloud Stitcher iHeart Radio      

EPISODE 1673: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Nick Mott, author of THIS IS WILDFIRE, about how to protect ourselves, our homes and our communities in the age of heat Nick Mott is producer at Threshold, a podcast and radio show. He's also worked as a reporter at Montana Public Radio, where his coverage has earned him accolades from the Associated Press. Through his audio reporting, he's found himself trapping grizzly bears, chasing sled dogs, and tracking lynx via snowmobile - with microphone in hand. His work in audio, photo, and writing has appeared in NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered, Outside, PRI's The World, the Mountain West News Bureau, The Washington Post, Kaiser Health News, Alpinist, and more. He's also producer at MTPR's in-house podcast, Richest Hill. He holds an MA in environmental journalism from CU Boulder. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kelvin Chin is Executive Director and Founder of the “Turning Within” Meditation and Overcoming the Fear of Death Foundations. He is an internationally-recognized meditation teacher, featured in Business Insider, Newsweek, and Kaiser Health News. Kelvin has been meditating for 52 years, and he has taught meditation to thousands of people in more than 60 countries. […] The post Kelvin Chin Talks About After the Afterlife appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.

America's Heroes Group Roundtable We are Globally Connected with Kaiser Health News Saturday August 5, 2023August is National Wellness Month Host: Cliff KelleyCo-Host: Sean Claiborne Executive Producer: Glenda Smith Digital Media Producer:  Ivan Ortega Scout's Honor Productions Saturday's Topics: 5:07-5:30pm Panelist: Colleen DeGuzman - is a Peggy Girshman fellow based in Austin Texas and a Reporter for the Austin American-Statesman

RSV immunizations for infants are on the way, but still have a large hurdle to clear. Ronda Miller-Ernest, a pediatric nurse practitioner with more than 30 years of experience, joins us to discuss the dangers of RSV, her personal experience, and why it's important that future immunizations are available through the Vaccine for Children Program. Plus, Terry and Bob dive into the healthcare news of the week, including an article from Kaiser Health News about the weird denials by insurance. CDC Webpage: ACIP Work Groups Submit Your Comments! Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices NBC News Article: FDA approves world's first RSV vaccine, a shot for adults ages 60 and up Kaiser Health News: Denials of Health Insurance Claims Are Rising — And Getting Weirder UHC Prior Authorization Update: UnitedHealth backs off contentious prior authorization plan Need help? The successful patient is one who can get what they need when they need it. We all know insurance slows us down, so why not take matters into your own hands? Our Navigator is an online tool that allows you to search a massive network of health-related resources using your zip code so you get local results. Get proactive and become a more successful patient right now at the Patients Rising Helpline. Have a question or comment about the show, or want to suggest a show topic or share your story as a patient correspondent? Drop us a line: podcast@patientsrising.org The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the guest(s)/ author(s) and do not reflect the official policy or position of Patients Rising, nor do the views and opinions stated on this show reflect the opinions of a guest's current or previous employers.  

Show Notes: John Driscoll is the President of Walgreens Boots Alliance and the co-host of the second largest healthcare podcast on YouTube, CareTalk. In this episode, host Will Bachman welcomed John to the show. John has extensive experience in the healthcare industry, having played a leading role in creating successful companies like MedCo, Surescripts, Oxford Health Plans, and Care Centrix. John discusses topics such as monkeypox, mask mandates, baby formula shortages, Silicon Valley Bank's failure, and healthcare related topics. He also shares his  opinions on a variety of healthcare issues.  The Future of Pharmacies  John started his career in health care after being influenced by his mother, a nurse. After college, he developed housing programs for homeless and mentally ill people. He then became a management consultant, before moving to Asheville Health Plan. He has worked in multiple parts of the health industry spectrum, gaining experience in Medicare and Medicaid.  He has found his career to be full of big and challenging problems, but is motivated to improve the world and create successful businesses. His main initiatives involve investing in Village MD, Summit, and Espadin Shield Specialty Pharmacy to show how an integrated pharmacy and clinical model can improve outcomes at lower cost. Walgreens is also working with health plans and has 9000 stores and 90,000 clinicians to provide access and convenience, trust, and traffic. Their goal is to become essential in healthcare by leveraging their expertise in retail and pharmacy services. He discusses how pharmacies can become better partners to health plans by taking advantage of their advantages in brand marketing, trust, convenience, and patient specificity. He shares  a specific example of how a large regional health plan achieved a return rate of three times greater on colorectal screenings than before they partnered with the pharmacy. The pharmacy was also able to increase the rate of colorectal screenings up to 51% in underserved areas due to the support of non-clinical personnel in their stores. Additionally, the pharmacy is partnering with health plans to reduce admissions to nursing homes by 20% through nurse visits, follow-ups, and care navigation. The system leads to better patient and contact information.  Overall, the pharmacy is providing an invaluable service in helping health plans lower costs while improving outcomes. He explains how his company invests in bespoke automation machines to allow pharmacists to spend more face-to-face time with patients, and how pharmacists could be more involved and take on more responsibility in the treatment of patients and how this would expand access to more care in an overburdened health system. Pharmaceutical Healthcare,  the Pandemic, and Value-based Care John reflects on  health regulations and restrictions and also the risk taking and flexibility that came into place under the COVID pandemic. He confirms how important it is to prepare for pandemics in terms of vaccine supplies, communication, and pre-deploying and integrating national and state employees in operations. He also notes the critical role of pharmacies in crisis situations. He tackles the issue of employee burnout and the current pharmacist shortage and the steps Walgreens is taking to solve the problem across states. On value-based care, he explains how it is the future, especially in the U.S. where healthcare is more expensive than any country in the world, how this is unacceptable, and how this should be approached to address health issues earlier to avoid hospitalization.  The CareTalk Podcast  John talks about the inspiration and intention of his podcast, what the content is and what has surprised him throughout the conversations. Guests that have been on his podcast include Andy Slavitt, Zeke Emanuel, Tony Cosgrove, and Amy Abernathy. When asked what he learned from his guests,  John shares that he was surprised to find out that even though healthcare is very complicated and people are in silos, there is still room for novel and provocative opinions that can be explained. He also found out that everybody knows that drug costs are too high, but there are practical ways to bring them down without destroying the biotechnology industry that is creating new drugs to cure aging and extend lifespans.  The podcast explores various issues surrounding health care and how to best address them. Toby Cosgrove from the Cleveland Clinic brought up the importance of creating heart-centered care in a large inner city hospital. It was noted that there are a lot of people working on solutions to healthcare problems, such as telehealth and AI to solve labor shortages. He also touches on the potential for AI and Chat GPT to be used in health care. While it is still early days, he mentions that there have been some companies experimenting with using these tools. Health Care and AI John talks about the impact of artificial intelligence on healthcare. He believes that AI has the potential to reduce administrative costs and waste in healthcare by simplifying billing and reconciliation processes. He also believes that AI can help in drug discovery, clinical pathways, and personalized care.  He is looking forward to having guests on CareTalk with whom he can discuss the economy, healthcare costs, and the pandemic's effect on inflation. He wants to discuss  the current chaotic economic landscape that is impacting healthcare, and the labor industry in particular. He mentions the growth of traveling nurses who are paid by private equity firms and how hospitals have had the worst six months financially in US history. He sources his information from HealthTech Nerds,  the Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Health Affairs, and Jim and Science,  the MIT Tech Review, Science and Cell, all as good sources of information. He suggests Kaiser Family Foundation and Kaiser Health News as exceptional sources, as well as government sources such as CMS for basic data. Timestamps 03:20 Walgreens Boots Alliance's Healthcare Initiatives 06:35 Partnering with Health Plans to Improve Outcomes and Lower Costs 09:52 Improving Patient Care Through Pharmacist Interaction 10:48 Automated Fulfillment Centers and Patient Care at Walgreens 28:45 Healthcare Innovations  31:54 Exploring Solutions to Healthcare Challenges 32:15 The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Healthcare  36:49 Exploring the Impact of the Changing Labor Industry on Healthcare  Links: https://www.caretalkpodcast.com/ https://www.walgreens.com/ Unleashed is produced by Umbrex, which has a mission of connecting independent management consultants with one another, creating opportunities for members to meet, build relationships, and share lessons learned. Learn more at www.umbrex.com.

Getting a mental health diagnosis is a powerful thing. It can make you feel less alone, but it can also impact or alter your sense of identity. In this episode of Hold On, a live national call-in about our mental health, Anna talks to Dr. Craig Rodriguez-Seijas, Assistant Professor of Psychology in Clinical Science at the University of Michigan, about his work studying bias in mental health diagnostics, particularly among LGBTQ+ individuals, and takes listener calls about how a diagnosis has shaped their sense of identity, for better or worse. Plus, Aneri Pattani, Senior Correspondent at Kaiser Health News, explains what investments the Biden administration is making toward mental health, and how soon we might see progress.

In March, the actions of a local church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina received national attention for all the right reasons. The congregation at Trinity Moravian Church partnered with an organization called R-I-P Medical Debt to cancel 3,000 local residents' medical debt, to the tune of $3.3 million dollars. They bought that debt for just a little over $15,000 dollars.  Rev. John Jackman, the pastor of Trinity Moravian Church held a symbolic “debt burning” ceremony to mark the occasion, with confetti and hymns.  In 2016, John Oliver, a comedian and host of the HBO series Last Week Tonight, purchased $15 million dollars in medical debt from 9,000 people, that he bought for “less than half a cent on a dollar.” And some state officials, like Governor Ned Lamont of Connecticut, are currently proposing using federal pandemic aid to cancel billions of dollars in medical debt. Yes, these are happy stories of people working together to help their community members, neighbors, and even strangers.  But this is also a crisis. Millions of Americans carry the burden of outstanding medical debt – An investigation in 2022 by Kaiser Health News and the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that 100 million people across the nation have some type of health care debt. Kaiser estimated that in 2019 –  the total medical debt in the country was around $195 BILLION dollars. For more on this we spoke with Emily Stewart, Executive Director at Community Catalyst, a national nonprofit focused on health justice.

The settlement of opioid lawsuits means that states are seeing an influx of money. Purdue, Walgreens, and Johnson & Johnson are just a few of the companies pumping over $50 billion into state and municipal budgets for addiction treatment and prevention.But what that treatment and prevention looks like is up to interpretation. Conversations about how to spend the money are turning contentious. In Pennsylvania, advocates are pushing back against some of that money going to law enforcement. In New York and San Francisco, groups pushing to fund safe injection sites are running into roadblocks.And there's another issue. Many states aren't being transparent about how the funds are being spent.Aneri Pattani of Kaiser Health News shares her reporting on where those settlement funds are going. We discuss how states are spending that money, and what goes into making those decisions. Want to support 1A? Give to your local public radio station and subscribe to this podcast. Have questions? Find out how to connect with us by visiting our website.

Quint Studer is joined by special guest Laura McClelland to discuss the impact of compassion on healthcare organizations and how managers can demonstrate compassion to their workforce. Laura currently serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Health Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). When Laura McClelland's father was diagnosed with stage IV melanoma, she began spending considerable time with him at California Pacific Medical Center while he received treatment. As someone studying management and interested in workplace dynamics, she was struck by the level of compassion with which staff treated patients, family members, and one another. She could see clearly the impact this had on both the workplace culture and patient outcomes. Following that experience, Laura began her journey to understand the benefits of compassion in the workplace and build a business case for why compassion matters to healthcare organizations.  From her latest research, Laura shares insights on:·      The relation between compassion and improved patient outcomes in healthcare organizations·      The immunological benefits of compassion for patients·      The impact of a compassionate work environment on employee burnout, emotional exhaustion, teamwork, and performance productivity·      The direct financial implications of compassionate workplaces Laura says that leaders can use this research to begin modelling compassion in their own organizations and create an environment where it is both expected and appropriate. ###Dr. Laura McClelland is an Associate Professor and the Director of the HSOR PhD program at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Department of Health Administration. She received her Ph.D. in Organization & Management from Emory University and B.S. degrees in both Management and Economics from Villanova University. Before entering academia, she was a management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers and IBM. She is a highly regarded expert in health care management, leadership, workplace compassion, employee well-being, and patient experience. Her research is published in top health services and social science journals and cited in popular press outlets such as CNN and Kaiser Health News. She has served on the National Academy of Medicine Scientific Advisory Panel on the Evidence for Patient and Family-Centered Care, and has received multiple national and international awards for teaching excellence.  

A federal judge has struck down a provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring private insurers to provide preventive care—screenings and the like—at no cost to patients.  But preventive care is a good investment for insurance companies and for national health. It's something Americans already don't get enough of — but is anyone willing to step in and save it? Guest: Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent Kaiser Health News, host of the “What the Health” podcast If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you'll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Make an impact this Earth Month by helping Macy's on their mission to bring more parks to more people across the country. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A federal judge has struck down a provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring private insurers to provide preventive care—screenings and the like—at no cost to patients.  But preventive care is a good investment for insurance companies and for national health. It's something Americans already don't get enough of — but is anyone willing to step in and save it? Guest: Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent Kaiser Health News, host of the “What the Health” podcast If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you'll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Make an impact this Earth Month by helping Macy's on their mission to bring more parks to more people across the country. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A federal judge has struck down a provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring private insurers to provide preventive care—screenings and the like—at no cost to patients.  But preventive care is a good investment for insurance companies and for national health. It's something Americans already don't get enough of — but is anyone willing to step in and save it? Guest: Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent Kaiser Health News, host of the “What the Health” podcast If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you'll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Make an impact this Earth Month by helping Macy's on their mission to bring more parks to more people across the country. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Saturday a 10-year partnership with nonprofit drug company Civica Rx to manufacture the state's own supply of insulin. Part of the state's new CalRx program, the move is only the first step in California's ambitious plan to produce more affordable generic prescription drugs — like overdose reversal medication naloxone — and make them available on the national market. We'll talk about CalRx and how it could help address the nation's drug affordability crisis. Guests: Angela Hart, senior correspondent covering health care politics and policy in California and the West, Kaiser Health News and California Healthline Kevin Wren, patient advocate and volunteer, California #insulin4all Robin Feldman, professor of law and Director of the Center for Innovation, UC Law; author of “Drugs, Money, and Secret Handshakes: The Unstoppable Growth of Prescription Drug Prices”

Governor Newsom visits the flooded farm community of Pajaro in Monterey County and talks about how all the weather has been wearing people down. On the positive side, mandatory water restrictions were lifted for nearly 7 million people in Southern California. Snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada sent water gushing into Valley communities last week. With a break in the storms, communities in the eastern San Joaquin Valley are assessing the damage. Reporter: Esther Quintanilla, KQED It's been a rough winter for California's mountain communities as storm after storm has struck the state. Truckee Mayor Lindsay Romack is telling her blizzard-stressed constituents to be kind to hard-working snow plow drivers and advising outsiders to stay away until conditions improve. A recently released study funded by the California Health Care Foundation finds Black patients have to work harder to deal with possible bias when seeking medical care. Reporter: Stephanie O'Neill, Kaiser Health News

A federal judge in Texas heard a case that could force the FDA to revoke its approval of mifepristone. The drug is one part of a two-pill regimen for medication abortions which account for more than half of all abortions in the U.S. and has been relied on heavily since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Geoff Bennett discussed the case with Sarah Varney of Kaiser Health News. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

The nation's uninsured rate reached an all-time low during the pandemic, largely because Congress temporarily blocked states from kicking people off Medicaid even if they were no longer eligible. But starting at the end of March, as many as 15 million of the program's 84 million enrollees could eventually lose coverage. Kaiser Health News correspondent Rachana Pradhan joins John Yang to discuss. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

It's a rare bi-partisan point of agreement: the price of insulin is too high—and it's still rising. With the stakes literally life-or-death for millions of Americans, what can be done? Guest: Bram Sable-Smith, Midwest correspondent for Kaiser Health News. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you'll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Make an impact this Women's History Month by helping Macy's on their mission to fund girls in STEM. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a rare bi-partisan point of agreement: the price of insulin is too high—and it's still rising. With the stakes literally life-or-death for millions of Americans, what can be done? Guest: Bram Sable-Smith, Midwest correspondent for Kaiser Health News. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you'll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Make an impact this Women's History Month by helping Macy's on their mission to fund girls in STEM. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than seven million Americans rely on insulin and prices for the life-saving drug have sky-rocketed. With pressure mounting on pharmaceutical companies to address the cost of diabetes care, Eli Lilly announced it's cutting prices for its most popular insulin products by 70% and capping out-of-pocket costs at $35 a month. Bram Sable-Smith of Kaiser Health News joined Geoff Bennett to discuss. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

It's a rare bi-partisan point of agreement: the price of insulin is too high—and it's still rising. With the stakes literally life-or-death for millions of Americans, what can be done? Guest: Bram Sable-Smith, Midwest correspondent for Kaiser Health News. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you'll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Make an impact this Women's History Month by helping Macy's on their mission to fund girls in STEM. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are Globally Connected with Kaiser Health News Panelist:Cara Anthony - Kaiser Health News Midwest Correspondent and a Multimedia Reporter nominated in 2018 for an Emmy Award

With abortion banned or severely restricted in 18 U.S. States, abortion pills have become the new battleground for the anti-abortion movement. In a story co-produced with the PBS NewsHour, Kaiser Health News correspondent Sarah Varney reports on a new lawsuit brought by a conservative Christian group that could end access to the medication nationwide. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

The national COVID-19 public health emergency will be ending in May, but that doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. Hundreds of people are still dying from COVID in the U.S. every day and many more are getting sick. So then why is the emergency ending? On the show today: Dr. Céline Gounder, an epidemiologist and editor at large for public health at Kaiser Health News, walks us through the state of the pandemic right now, what will change when the public health emergency expires and what it could mean for the American health care system as a whole. In the News Fix, we’ll tell you about a case before the Supreme Court that may drastically change how the internet works. Also, Russia temporarily pulled out of a major nuclear arms treaty. We'll get into what that means for the future of international arms control. Later, one listener shares a perspective on pay transparency, and another tells us why we should discuss menopause more. Plus, this week a chatbot answers the Make Me Smart question. Here’s everything we talked about today: What happens to COVID vaccines and drugs after the health emergency? from The Los Angeles Times “Millions of people are about to get kicked off Medicaid” from Vox “WHO says Covid-19 remains a global health emergency, but pandemic is at a ‘transition point'” from CNN “The End of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency: Details on Health Coverage and Access” from KFF An Etiquette Guide for Long COVID from The Atlantic “Need time off work for period pain? These countries offer ‘menstrual leave.'” from The Washington Post “Justices will consider whether tech giants can be sued for allegedly aiding ISIS terrorism” from SCOTUSblog “Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count” from The New York Times “Putin's Move on Nuclear Treaty May Signal End to Formal Arms Control” from The New York Times What's something you've been wrong about lately? We want to hear your answer to the Make Me Smart question! Leave us a voice message at 508-U-B-SMART, and your submission may be featured in a future episode.

The national COVID-19 public health emergency will be ending in May, but that doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. Hundreds of people are still dying from COVID in the U.S. every day and many more are getting sick. So then why is the emergency ending? On the show today: Dr. Céline Gounder, an epidemiologist and editor at large for public health at Kaiser Health News, walks us through the state of the pandemic right now, what will change when the public health emergency expires and what it could mean for the American health care system as a whole. In the News Fix, we’ll tell you about a case before the Supreme Court that may drastically change how the internet works. Also, Russia temporarily pulled out of a major nuclear arms treaty. We'll get into what that means for the future of international arms control. Later, one listener shares a perspective on pay transparency, and another tells us why we should discuss menopause more. Plus, this week a chatbot answers the Make Me Smart question. Here’s everything we talked about today: What happens to COVID vaccines and drugs after the health emergency? from The Los Angeles Times “Millions of people are about to get kicked off Medicaid” from Vox “WHO says Covid-19 remains a global health emergency, but pandemic is at a ‘transition point'” from CNN “The End of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency: Details on Health Coverage and Access” from KFF An Etiquette Guide for Long COVID from The Atlantic “Need time off work for period pain? These countries offer ‘menstrual leave.'” from The Washington Post “Justices will consider whether tech giants can be sued for allegedly aiding ISIS terrorism” from SCOTUSblog “Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count” from The New York Times “Putin's Move on Nuclear Treaty May Signal End to Formal Arms Control” from The New York Times What's something you've been wrong about lately? We want to hear your answer to the Make Me Smart question! Leave us a voice message at 508-U-B-SMART, and your submission may be featured in a future episode.

Fifty years ago today, the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade gave constitutional protection to the right to seek an abortion. But after a different Supreme Court overturned Roe last year, ending a pregnancy is now a crime in at least 13 states and severely restricted in at least 12 more. Sarah Varney, senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News, joins John Yang to discuss. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Anti-abortion activists descended on the National Mall for the annual March for Life on Friday. It was the first time the march has been held since the overturn of Roe v. Wade rescinded the constitutional right to abortion. In a report co-produced with the PBS NewsHour, Kaiser Health News correspondent Sarah Varney spoke with those gathered in Washington about what this moment means for them. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

We are Globally Connected with Kaiser Health News Panelist:Sarah Jane Tribble - is Kaiser Health News Chief Rural Health Correspondent 

The Wall Street Journal reports that some NFL athletes are reluctant to play after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed during a game and received emergency treatment on live television. The Los Angeles Times has the latest on the extreme winter storms slamming California. The expertise of coroners — who investigate the cause of criminal and unexplained deaths — varies dramatically across the country. In some cases, they’re not required to have ever taken a science course. Kaiser Health News looks at why. The Washington Post details the long-term health benefits of participating in “Dry January,” a monthlong abstention from alcohol, while NPR argues that we’re living in a golden age for drinkers of nonalcoholic beer, wine, and spirits.

The House of Representatives votes on a new speaker today. How it will go is anyone’s guess. The Wall Street Journal explains. Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest in Monday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals and is hospitalized in critical condition. ESPN is tracking his health status. The number of babies being born is expected to increase following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The Atlantic warns that the surge in births will be concentrated in states with poor infant and maternal health outcomes. Studies suggest that practicing optimism can help keep our bodies healthier. Kaiser Health News explains how.

The pandemic isn't past tense. While COVID-19 vaccines have made it possible to gather with friends and hug loved ones again, the world is still living with the virus – and too many people are still dying because of it. More than a million people in the United States have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began, including about 250,000 people in 2022. To reflect on the lives the world has lost, we're revisiting an episode that follows a young doctor through her first year of medical residency during the height of the pandemic.  Kaiser Health News reporter Jenny Gold spent eight months following Dr. Paloma Marin-Nevarez, who graduated from the Stanford University medical school in June 2020, right before the virus began its second major surge. She was one of more than 30,000 new doctors who started residencies in 2020. Just weeks after graduating, Marin-Nevarez began training as an ER doctor at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, one of the areas in California hardest hit by the pandemic.  Marin-Nevarez faces the loneliness and isolation of being a new doctor, working 80 hours a week in the era of masks and social distancing. She also witnesses the inequality of the pandemic, with Latino, Black and Native American people dying of COVID-19 at much higher rates than White people. Marin-Nevarez finds herself surrounded by death and having to counsel families about the loss of loved ones. We view the pandemic through the eyes of a rookie doctor, finding her footing on the front lines of the virus.  This is an update of an episode that originally aired in February 2021.  Support Reveal's journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

We are Globally Connected with Kaiser Health News Panelist: Julie Appleby - Senior Correspondent with Kaiser Health News which is an editorially Independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for Kaiser Health News and host of KHN's "What the Health" podcast, discusses how Democrats and Republicans envision paying for health care costs, and how health care is playing into this year's midterms.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel reports on the people dealing with the major devastation Hurricane Ian has left in its wake. As Russia moves to illegally annex territory in Ukraine, many residents are fleeing, Reuters reports. And the Washington Post details how men in Russia are escaping the country to avoid being drafted to fight Putin’s war. Kaiser Health News explains how a recent Supreme Court ruling is affecting prosecutions of doctors accused of overprescribing opioids. Her death certificate says Queen Elizabeth II died of old age — something rarely listed as a cause of death in America. The Wall Street Journal looks at how the question of how to track deaths actually affects the living. Sports Illustrated has the story of how LeBron James is getting in on the pickleball craze, with a deal to own a pro team.

Every year, more than 300,000 U.S. families have infants who require advanced medical care in neonatal intensive care units. Specialized treatments and round-the-clock care rack up enormous bills for parents as they try to navigate their baby's care. And in the worst case scenarios, some families are left with millions of dollars in medical bills long after their child has passed. We talk to Kaiser Health News correspondent Lauren Weber about her reporting on how steep medical bills have impacted families and what resources are available for parents with infants in the NICU.We also hear from Kingsley Raspe about the bills that piled up from treatments for his daughter, Sterling, and the heartbreak of dealing with insurers after she passed away at eight months old. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

President Biden said "the pandemic is over" in an interview with CBS' 60 minutes on Sunday. But the White House is still asking Congress for an additional 22.4 billion in COVID funding. In the U.S., nearly 3,000 people died from COVID in the past week. The World Health Organization Director-General says the end of the pandemic "is in sight," but that "we are not there yet." Plus, a new spotlight on who gets sick pay in America. And, the murder conviction that helped make podcasts popular, overturned. Guests: Axios' Emily Peck and Kaiser Health News' Julie Rovner. Credits: Axios Today is produced by Niala Boodhoo, Sara Kehaulani Goo, Alexandra Botti, Lydia McMullen-Laird, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura, and Ben O'Brien. Music is composed by Evan Viola. You can reach us at podcasts@axios.com. You can text questions, comments and story ideas to Niala as a text or voice memo to 202-918-4893. Go Deeper: Biden: "The pandemic is over" Work-life policies are increasingly high-stakes economics "Serial" case: Judge vacates Adnan Syed's conviction for 1999 murder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People experiencing a mental health crisis have a new way to reach out for help in the U.S. — calling or texting the numbers 9-8-8. Today, health correspondent Rhitu Chatterjee joins Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber to talk about how the hotline works, the U.S. mental health system and what this alternative to 911 means for people in crisis.Further Reading:- The new 988 mental health hotline is live. Here's what to know- Social Media Posts Criticize the 988 Suicide Hotline for Calling Police. Here's What You Need to KnowBelow is a non-comprehensive list of other hotlines and resources from our colleague Aneri Pattani at Kaiser Health News. Some resources may geographically limit services.- BlackLine is a hotline geared toward the Black, Black LGBTQ+, brown, Native, and Muslim communities- Kiva Centers offers daily online peer support groups- M.H. First Oakland and M.H. First Sacramento operate during select weekend hours in the California cities of Oakland and Sacramento- Peer Support Space hosts virtual peer support groups twice a day Monday through Saturday- Project LETS provides support by text for urgent issues that involve involuntary hospitalization- Samaritans of New York is a hotline based in New York City- Trans Lifeline is a hotline for trans and questioning individuals- Wildflower Alliance has a peer support line and online support groups focused on suicide preventionFollow Short Wave on Twitter @NPRShortWave. You can email us at ShortWave@NPR.org.

When the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline launched in July, some advocates and people who had experiences with the mental health system voiced concerns about 988. Life Kit talks to Aneri Patani, national health correspondent with Kaiser Health News, about how the hotline works, its purpose and the potential risks of calling 988.

Voters headed to the polls on Tuesday for midterm election primaries in five states: Arizona, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas and Washington. Kansas voters rejected a ballot measure that would have stripped abortion rights from the state's constitution. Rescue workers are facing more rain in eastern Kentucky this weekend as the region continues to recover from devastating floods.Meanwhile, China has imposed undefined sanctions on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her immediate family. The move comes after her visit to Taiwan earlier this week. It was the first time a speaker has visited the self-ruled island in 25 years. WNBA star Brittney Griner was sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison on charges of drug smuggling. It's been nearly six months since her arrest at a Moscow airport after cannabis vape cartridges were found in her luggage.Politico's Anita Kumar, Kaiser Health News' Julie Rovner, and NPR's Ron Elving join us for the discussion of domestic headlines. Axios' David Lawler, Politico's Lara Seligman, and Feature Story News' Nina-Maria Potts join us for the global edition of the News Roundup. Want to support 1A? Give to your local public radio station and subscribe to this podcast. Have questions? Find us on Twitter @1A.

Quickly delivering donated organs to patients waiting for a transplant is a matter of life and death. Yet transportation errors are leading to delays in surgeries, putting patients in danger and making some organs unusable. This week, we look at weaknesses in the nation's system for transporting organs and solutions for making it work better.  More than any other organ, donated kidneys are put on commercial flights so they can get to waiting patients. In collaboration with Kaiser Health News, we look at the system for transporting kidneys and how a lack of tracking and accountability can result in waylaid or misplaced kidneys. We then look at the broader issues affecting organ procurement in the U.S. with Jennifer Erickson, who worked at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under the Obama administration. She says one of the system's weaknesses is that not enough organs are recovered from deceased people – not nearly as many as there could be. We end with an audio postcard about honor walks, a new ritual that hospitals are adopting to honor the gift of life that dying people are giving to patients who will receive their organs. We follow the story of one young man who was killed in a car accident. This episode originally was broadcast Feb. 8, 2020.  Support Reveal's journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram