Rocky Mountain Voice

Tag: Health Policy

Prescription Drug Prices Post Sharpest Decline in More Than 60 Years
The Washington Post, Approved, National

Prescription Drug Prices Post Sharpest Decline in More Than 60 Years

By Steve Thompson, Federica Cocco and Christopher Rowland | The Washington Post While overall medical costs continued to rise, prescription drug prices fell by 3.1 percent in the year ending in July, the steepest annual decline since 1963. Prescription drug prices recorded the biggest year-over-year drop in more than 60 years in July, a startling reduction experts chalked up to an array of factors, including more generics and discount GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. While overall costs for medical services continued to rise, prices for medicinal drugs fell 2.7 percent over the 12 months ending in July, the largest annual drop on record, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Wednesday. Prescription drugs, part of the medicinal drug category, fell by 3.1 perce...
Who Funds the Experts? Pharma Ties Emerge in Vaccine Schedule Debate
Just The News, Approved, National

Who Funds the Experts? Pharma Ties Emerge in Vaccine Schedule Debate

By Ashe Short | Just the News The groups that most Americans treat as neutral medical authorities on what to put in their kids' bloodstreams — the AMA and the AAP — both draw millions in revenue from the companies that manufacture the vaccines they are promoting. Shortly after President Donald Trump signed an executive order reducing the number of vaccines required for young children, the American Medical Association (AMA) issued a press release claiming Trump’s order puts children’s health at risk. “Vaccines are among the most thoroughly studied, effective tools we have to protect children from serious vaccine-preventable diseases,” AMA President Willie Underwood, III, said in the statement. “Decisions about how and when vaccines are used should be driven by ri...
Doctors Win Key Court Victory Against California Restrictions on Medical Speech
Medical Musings, Approved, National

Doctors Win Key Court Victory Against California Restrictions on Medical Speech

By Pierre Kory, MD, MPA | Medical Musings In Kory v. Bonta, a federal judge just barred California’s Attorney General and its medical boards from coming after me and my colleagues for the expert opinions we share with patients. Last night I received a call from my amazing lawyer, Rick Jaffe, who also represented Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski back in the day during the FDA’s decades-long persecution of him, which I wrote about previously. Anyway, he called me with some big news: a federal judge had just signed an order that, four years ago, I thought I would never get. In the case Kory v. Bastard, err, I mean Bonta, senior United States District Judge William B. Shubb granted our renewed motion for a preliminary injunction and ordered not only California’s Attorney Gen...
The cost of asking Americans to simply “Trust us”
American Thinker, Approved, Commentary, National

The cost of asking Americans to simply “Trust us”

By Brian C. Joondeph | Commentary, American Thinker Public confidence collapsed not because Americans asked too many questions, but because too many went unanswered. Science has never required blind faith. Quite the opposite. Science advances by asking difficult questions, testing uncomfortable hypotheses, challenging accepted wisdom, and enabling independent investigators to examine the evidence. Authority alone has never been enough. That is why every scientific paper includes a Materials and Methods section. The goal isn’t merely to announce conclusions. It is to provide enough information for others to reproduce the work, validate the findings, or identify errors. That’s how science earns trust. COVID changed that. Too often, Americans were simply tol...
Colorado Health Care Costs Keep Climbing Despite Growing State Subsidies
Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado Health Care Costs Keep Climbing Despite Growing State Subsidies

By: Nash Herman | Commentary, Complete Colorado In economics, it is well understood that the larger a business becomes, the more cheaply it can produce goods or services due to lower relative fixed costs, more technical know-how, and increased specialization.  Why then is Colorado’s largest industry in terms of employment–health care–only becoming more expensive?  Subsidies inflate costs Let’s back up. In 1990, Colorado’s largest industry by employment was retail, which also dominated most of the rest of the country’s employment as well, along with manufacturing.  Along the way retail and manufactured goods became cheaper for consumers, as expected, relative to inflation.  READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT COMPLETE COLORADO ...
Children’s Hospital Colorado insurance data tells one story—its testimony another.
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Children’s Hospital Colorado insurance data tells one story—its testimony another.

By Kelly Notarfrancesco | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Hundreds of children were provided puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones by Children’s Hospital Colorado’s TRUE Center for Gender Diversity annually in 2024 and 2025 — in numbers that may be more than 35 times higher than those previously reported in 2024 by medical watchdog group Do No Harm. Do No Harm (DNH) analyzed five years of insurance data and demonstrated an average of 22 minor patients per year had received either puberty blockers or hormone therapy at Children’s from 2019-2023. DNH’s analysis led it to place Children’s on its “Dirty Dozen” list of the 12 worst-offending children’s hospitals promoting sex change treatments for minors.  The stark difference between Children’s self-reported number...
Colorado Families Warn Medicaid Caregiver Caps Will Hurt Disabled Children
Colorado Public Radio, Approved, State

Colorado Families Warn Medicaid Caregiver Caps Will Hurt Disabled Children

By: John Daley | CPR News With the budget in crisis, state lawmakers capped the number of hours a week a person providing care to someone else, often a family member, can be reimbursed. A series of phased in cuts started taking effect this month and impacted families expressed deep apprehension about what the coming months will bring. “Disproportionate, unfair, insensitive,” were among the words Kelly Lyons had for the change. The deadline comes with the state Medicaid program under intense scrutiny, as a new commission, set up by the legislature starts its work and a new governor will be elected in November and take office next January. She lives in Castle Rock and cares for a 16-year-old daughter, Kendall, who she said was diagnosed with an an...
Rand Paul Releases Records Alleging Years of NIH Biosafety Failures
Just The News, Approved, National

Rand Paul Releases Records Alleging Years of NIH Biosafety Failures

By Amanda Head | Just The News New documents released by Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., reveal that two National Institutes of Health scientists were charged with conspiring to smuggle monkeypox virus samples into the United States after returning from the Congo. The documents released by Congress revealed a decade of warnings and workarounds in the handling of dangerous pathogens.  In January, NIH Rocky Mountain Laboratories virologists Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport from the Republic of the Congo, where a monkeypox outbreak was active.  On arrival, they declared that a large black case contained only “diagnostics and testing equipment.” Federal investigators later ...
From insider to critic: Ex-White House official questions public health orthodoxy
All Better, Approved, Commentary, National

From insider to critic: Ex-White House official questions public health orthodoxy

By Katy Talento | AllBetter Substack I kept Robert F. Kennedy Jr. out of the West Wing. Now I owe him an apology. It was 2017. We had hauled the CEOs of a bunch of pharmaceutical companies into the Oval Office so that President Trump could berate them about their drug prices. (Always a good time.) Somehow, the word “vaccine” came up in the conversation. When that happens in the president’s presence, then, now, last month, and probably next week, like clockwork, he always starts telling the same story. A woman who worked for him at the Trump Organization back in the day. Her two-year-old son, who was “perfect, beautiful, magnificent, flawless.” Then he got a shot and he was “just gone. Gone. Never the same. Beautiful boy. Then, just gone.” The CEOs all shrank back and tu...
Pro Life Groups Push DOJ To To Back State Authority On Abortion Drugs
The Federalist, Approved, National

Pro Life Groups Push DOJ To To Back State Authority On Abortion Drugs

By Maisey Jefferson | The Federalist Dozens of pro-life groups sent a letter to U.S. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Monday urging him to protect women and babies from deadly chemical abortion and “reverse the DOJ’s harmful stance of siding with the abortion drug industry.” The 78 signees, led by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, noted that “pro-life states cannot meaningfully enforce their laws when FDA is siding with mail-order abortionists and DOJ is siding with abortion drug manufacturers.” Under the Biden administration, the FDA removed common-sense restrictions around mifepristone, such as requiring an in-person doctor’s visit before obtaining a prescription. The administration also ultimately leveraged the Covid-19 pan...