ow has Big Pharma responded to the dire and uncertain circumstances facing American’s health and pocketbooks? By jacking up prescription drug prices and likely jabbing patients not just in the arm but also the wallet for a prospective coronavirus vaccine. As the online news and politics site Politico reported:  “Drug makers raised the price of hundreds of medicines during the coronavirus pandemic, even in the face of Trump administration vows to crack down on surging…

To paraphrase the late, great writer and activist Maya Angelou, nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are showing the public in the middle of this pandemic just truly what they are. It is hard to believe, still, the shabby way they are treating the aged, sick, and injured. Just consider this sampling of recent news reports: “Care” facilities — including centers dealing with veterans — have been too willing to subject residents to risky …

Big Pharma focuses relentlessly on always making a buck, no matter the cost to the rest of us, and even a viral pandemic that infects 2.8 million Americans and kills roughly 130,000 of us won’t interrupt the corporate rapaciousness. That’s the reality that federal prosecutors have reminded the public about with an announced $678 million settlement with Novartis over the drug maker’s doctor prescribing- and kickbacks-scheme.  And it is what Gilead has shown with …

With the novel coronavirus crushing the economy and helping to fuel joblessness, individuals’ isolation, and increasing hopelessness and despair among the already troubled, the opioid drug abuse and overdose crisis again is worsening — and fast. As the Washington Post reported of what had been one of the nation’s leading public health nightmares before the Covid-19 pandemic: “In Roanoke County, Va., police have responded to twice as many fatal overdoses in recent months as in…

The national outage over authorities’ excessive use of force, especially against black men, may take law enforcement, first responders, politicians, and critics into a murky and nightmarish area — call it the unfounded medicalization of official control. Two fatal flash point cases — involving African Americans George Floyd in Minneapolis and Elijah McCain (shown, right) in a Denver suburb — already have raised disturbing questions about “excited delirium,”  a mental health description or diagnosis manufactured …

The nation shudders into the second half of 2020, months deep into an unchecked Covid-19 pandemic that has infected 2.8 million Americans and killed roughly 130,000 of us. America has become the coronavirus’s outbreak epicenter, its would-be travelers shunned by leading nations around the world as too risky to allow without quarantines or outright bans. Five states set new infection records, and 40 of the 50 states report worrisome spikes in detected…