Tag: opioids

Why Government Health Care is Bad: Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $572 Million to fight opioids in Oklahoma

There are many more lawsuits ahead for Johnson & Johnson, one particular in Ohio coming in October that will likely end the same way as the one in Oklahoma did which granted $572 million in damages to help the state pay for its opioid crises. Of course, Johnson & Johnson will appeal and will try to settle out of court as many cases as they can. But what cannot be appealed or staved off in any way is the cause of the opioid crises itself, which is essentially the entire medical industry from the local doctor and pharmacy to the multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical companies that thrive of death and pain. Now that there is a roadmap to prosecute a company like Johnson & Johnson for their role and marketing dangerous pain killers to the public, then neglecting to mention the terrible side effects just so they could sell mass quantities of the drugs, many more states will start to get similar judgements and if the high courts grant payment and reject the appeals, then many of these big companies are done for. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing.

This is the big problem when government and corporations get together against the public good and don’t allow capitalist competition to rule the day. People must understand that the argument over health care isn’t to make people better, it’s to fight over who will get paid off of people’s pain. When there is profit in pain, this is the kind of effect everyone can expect. The solution of course to medical insurance is to have less people sick, for our medical system to repair people, not to prolong their death just so that they can be prescribed medicine to ease their pain. At the heart of the opioid crises is a problem that is the foundation of our entire civilization, are we going to go forward and evolve or will we just decline into dust and be one silly little page in history. The crux of the debate is upon us and it is the result of this latest drug company lawsuit.

Unfortunately, while many of us crave personal freedom about what television shows we want to watch, what cars we drive, who we marry, what schools we go to, what we like to eat on a Friday night, we surrender our lives to doctors almost entirely. We assume they know best because we were taught in school that they did, and we take their advice on everything, how to live our lives, whether or not we can work or be on disability, or what drugs we will put into our bodies which could change everything about us. As a matter of fact, every mass shooter recently had one thing in common besides broken homes, they all were on anti-depressant medicine—which of course taken with marijuana and alcohol can have devastating effects on sanity. But doctors enjoy the free vacations to Hawaii and other exotic places because their name appears as drug dealers from the local Walgreens and they get rewarded for writing the prescriptions. And so long as the trust in doctors is there and they desire to profit off the sick, we will always have this problem.

Personally, I avoid any kind of drug, even when I’m sick. The desire to alleviate pain is to attempt to shut out part of living. If something is painful it needs to be fixed and if you just numb the pain, you will never fix the problem. The purpose of pain is to solve it, not to suppress it. Instead of an insurance industry that pays for all these drugs to suppress pain, our focus should be to get people healthy to the point where they don’t have pain because they aren’t sick. But the massive imprint of the big pharms that drive up the cost of insurance and medical care in general is far too great and the only way to get out from under them is to essentially put them out of business in the way that Oklahoma and Ohio are striving to do. The amount of money at stake in the medical industry is staggering, to the point where $572 million is really just a small fee to pay. Johnson & Johnson would rather not pay it, but that alone isn’t enough to alter their operations. And there are far too many politicians who, like the doctors that prescribe the medicine, profit off of people’s pain.

For all the same reasons that there are political factions who are against President Trump’s attempts to make friends with North Korea or Iran, and to fight China with trade wars, that is because those factions represent those who profit off the suffering caused by the conflict. You don’t have to look very hard to see that dear reader. It’s as obvious as a sunrise in a cloudless, desert sky. The opioid crises was caused for all the same reasons, because there is profit in pain and death, and short term, small minded people would gladly trade in their immortality for a beach house in Florida for twenty years of their gradually diseased life. There is no Republican health care plan that could be unleashed so long as this is the state of the medical industry, to profit off of pain and to drag out the effects of death to give pharmaceuticals a market longer into the lifespan of the average person. It’s not the quality of life that health insurance is seeking to cover, it’s to maintain dependency so the drug companies can flourish, which is why they support politicians who argue for universal health care.

Human beings are just biological machines, there is nothing about them that cannot be fixed or maintained at a certain healthy level. If they were healthy once, they could be healthy again. But our medical industry is not interested in healthy people who do not need them. They need the sick, and ever dying. It is a short-sighted profit path for the partnership between government and corporations and has nothing to do with capitalism. The entire system plays to the worst of human nature, to remain short sighted, and to avoid pain suppressing problems instead of solving them.

If Trump had not been elected president these fights wouldn’t be happening. It is in the lack of a government health care solution that there are any signs in any courts to even consider taking on big pharma, because the lobby money is lucrative. But Trump has changed politics and politicians are seeing the benefits of the long view as opposed to the short and science is finally starting to put courage in the minds of the sick. More and more people are realizing that they don’t have to listen to their doctor, that maybe if they stay healthy, that they can avoid the doctor all together. And when that happens a real freedom can be realized that most people never thought possible. But to have it they can’t be on drugs and under the influence of a medical system that wants to ride them, not to set them free. When we talk about government health care what we are talking about is prolonging this problem and when we talk about suing big pharma, we are actually seeking to free ourselves from their influence. And that is a great thing that couldn’t come fast enough. Then once it does, we can really get started as a species because if there is anything that is truly holding us all back it’s the nonsense about life and death and sickness and health. We can do better and if big pharma goes down, we can have something much, much better.

Rich Hoffman

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Trump and the Opioid Crises: Going beyond just saying no–there is nothing GOOD about drugs

 

And people wonder why President Trump is my guy.  How could they after that opioid speech that he and his wife gave on October 26, 2017? For them to declare war on the opioid addiction problem in the United States is yet another dream come true for me.  This is something I have been worried about for my entire life—including as a kid.  There’s nothing I care about more than this issue publicly.  Drugs used and abused in any way shape or form is something I have been against and have fought my entire life and I am very happy to see leadership coming out of the White House on this crises.  Boy, you can really see the villains by how they responded to what Trump said.  The people most guilty for the addiction problems in our nation currently are the same people who came out against this speech stating all kinds of garbage—such as—“who’s going to pay for it” and “that the president is looking for a diversion.”  Really?  Most Democrats are really disgusting people, knowing now that their party funded the dossier on President Trump—which John McCain sent an aide to get out of Europe and personally handed it to James Comey which turned out to be completely false and a political hit job against the future president.  Democrats now know that their party participated in real scandals with Uranium One directly involving Russia—not some made up story like what they have done with Trump.  And as Trump was competing his speech about opioids the IRS finally revealed that they had weaponized the tax collection government agency against conservative groups during 2010—which I was personally one of the targets attached to the Liberty Township Tea Party.  Those same Democrats actually had the nerve to come out against Trump’s speech on the opioid crises?  What a bunch of evil scum bags!

I have always been against drugs of any kind.  I have proudly never smoked pot even while all the people around me were falling apart because of it.  I was always the leader of my peer groups and I never ever endorsed the behavior—even during days when I ran around with some very rough people.  Everyone always knew where I stood on drugs—even alcohol.  I never endorsed intoxication of any kind.  I’ve always hated it—especially the drugs at the level of marijuana and up.  I never understood how a magazine, a movie, or a television show could even endorse such behavior indirectly—because drug use is evil.  Plain and simple.   What President Trump is talking about doesn’t take a lot of money compared to providing hurricane relief to our nation, or even building another battleship.  Fighting drug addiction is a common sense issue that everyone should be able to support no matter what the background because it’s that obvious.  Most of the essence of Trump’s speech is to not start addiction to begin with—and that doesn’t cost a thing.

At this stage in my life I’m a major employer, and I take it as serious business to supply jobs to people and help them find a good way to build their lives in a positive way with a job. I take that responsibility very seriously.  But do you know how many people you have to interview to hire say 30 people for multiple shift work?  The answer is very disturbing.  Think about it for a moment before I give you the answer.  Both of my daughters are in that Millennial age bracket just shy of 30 years old and they tell me all the time that all the people they know of a similar age is on some kind of drug.  Schools start the process by prescribing drugs to kids with hyper active minds—to slow them down to the rest of their class.  Doctors prescribe medicine for virtually everything, from a sore toe to back issues.  Most everyone my children know is on some form of depression medicine—which is likely the leading cause of this whole opioid epidemic.  You know how you stop depression?  Read a fu**ing book and build up your mind with positive thoughts—that’s how you prevent depression.  You don’t take some drug that makes you more dependent on some third-party to solve your problem.  So many people these days are on medicine for depression and the politicians are fine with it, because it puts money in their K-Street lobby firms.   Our opioid crises in 2017 is so bad that I think most people between the ages of 40 and 15 are on some kind of drug all the time.  The answer to my original question is that you need to speak to roughly 100 people to hire 30 and in an economy with 4% unemployment you have to work your ass off to do so.  The reason you have to talk to so many people is that most of them won’t pass the drug test and that is a major failure in our society.  It’s pathetic how people view drug use today–and that has been reinforced for them by their politics and entertainment culture—and it’s been devastating.

Even as a kid I would go to parties to meet girls and I’d see all these losers sitting around the living room watching MTV smoking pot.  In an upstairs room would be the music of Pink Floyd where kids were listening to The Dark Side of the Moon album and they were blasted in hazes of pot smoke that would creep out from under the door.  In the kitchen kids would be playing quarters and getting drunk off their asses for no reason at all, but to feel the joy of not having the responsibility to think.  Nice girls that I knew from school would be passed out on the floor with their pants off because people would take turns with their lifeless bodies and nobody back then thought anything bad about it.  On Monday those girls would be back to saying hi to people in the hall as if nothing had ever happened.  Nobody thought the girls were raped because everything had been done under the cover of intoxication—as if being drunk or stoned freed everyone of guilt for such a horrendous act.  I am proud to say that I never participated in any of that.  I was able to observe those types of things with a clear mind and it always disgusted me—and I have been fighting it for years with everyone I know.  No young person in my family, or anyone I have ever known period could mistake my position on opioids.  I don’t do drugs and I avoid them under conditions of even the worst pains—such as surgery.  Drugs do no good for anybody under almost every situation.

The government has made it so easy to get people addicted to drugs.  Most young people now are on some form of medical assistance program because they can’t afford insurance so the government actually solicits membership.   I am actually shocked by how many young people with kids are on these government programs, and every time a child has a problem of even a minor kind the parents rush the kids to the doctor where a drug of some kind is prescribed.  Once kids get used to turning to some drug to make them feel better they are ruined for life and will always seek drugs to solve their problems—whether it’s a drink at the end of a day to knock the edge off or a line of cocaine.  People learn to get hooked on drugs from an early age starting recreationally and that leads directly to addiction.  And it all serves to make people much less than they otherwise would be.  Drugs are terrible for the human race.

I have been personally forgiving of people who have abused drugs in the past but are looking to put all that behind them.  I’m happy to help them become better people if they’ll let me.  I have never abused drugs and for some people who is a problem because they can’t relate to me on a personal level.  And that’s fine.  I have never had a desire to know people so much that I had to surrender my personal ethics to associate with them.  I’ve lost a lot of friends over drugs.  I almost didn’t date my wife because she smoked cigarettes when I first met her, and I made it clear from day one that if she wanted to date me, she’d have to quit smoking.   She was attractive enough and interesting enough to help with that problem, but it was never OK with me.  I pushed for her to quit from the very first date and I’m still like that.  I’ve had a few nieces and nephews who started smoking, then started doing other things like smoking pot and I cut them off the moment I found out about it.  I stopped talking to them because for people to have access to me—which is something most people want because I’m an interesting person—they can’t do drugs and be losers in life.  I feel more strongly about that type of thing than most anything else in my life.  I would rather be alone in life completely than endorse drug use—and everyone who knows me understands that I have very high standards—especially in regard to drug use.

Trump shares many of my thoughts on drugs and he has from the beginning of his presidency.  When he told the story of his brother Fred yet again, and how Trump doesn’t even drink alcohol I can see in the president someone I can relate to.  The best way to fight the opioid epidemic isn’t with more money thrown at the problem.  It is to tell people to stay off the drugs in the first place—even the drugs the doctors prescribe.  Stay away from the pain killers.  Stay away from the depression medicine.  Stay away from the mind numbing stuff they want to give kids in school so that smart kids don’t outpace their classmates with hyper intelligence.  Stay away from the recreational drugs at parties.  Stop going out after work to get sloshed with mind numbing alcohol, just stop it all, and that will go a long way to making America a far better country than it is.  I fully support what Trump wants to do with opioids.  I’m behind it 100000000000%.  And anybody who is against the President in this case I would consider a domestic terrorist.  Because losing minds to drugs is the ultimate attack on the sanctity of the individual.  And I personal find it, and have always found it, to be personally a disgusting thing to observe that deserves a zero tolerance policy.

Rich Hoffman

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