by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Oct 15, 2016 | Medicare Drug Plans
Pick a plan man!
We have a sister website called MedicareDrugPlans.com, where you can find basic information about, well, Medicare drug plans, and read reviews of the plans written by people who have used them, and rate your own plan if you have one. We’ve updated our data to include the plans that will be available in 2017.
Why? It’s that time again to pick a Medicare Part D plan. Doors opened today, October 15, and will close on December 7. If you’re one of 57 million Americans, most of them over 65, who are enrolled in Medicare then you either have a plan or are newly eligible for one. There are many plans (although fewer than there once were) and picking one can be highly aggravating. While online pharmacies, drug prices, and personal drug importation are PharmacyChecker.com’s forte, each year since we started PharmacyCheckerBlog, I’ve tried to write something educational, practical, even funny, about the plans and how to pick one at enrollment time. This year I went nuts. Still, if you read through this post carefully, it will teach you about Part D Medicare drug plans: the good, the bad, and the ugly and give you resources to learn even more. First a very little history… (more…)
Tagged with: Medicare, Medicare Part D, Part D
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Oct 13, 2016 | Advocacy, Internet Censorship, Policy
Americans Can’t Afford It.
Last week, an article was published by Jeremy Malcolm, senior global policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, under the appropriate title, “How Big Pharma’s Shadow Regulation Censors the Internet.” Basically, Jeremy explains that due to drug company money and political influence in the United States, there are activities going on both in plain view and behind the scenes that are meant to curtail and even end access by Americans to lower cost medications being sold on the Internet.
I’ve been writing about this – albeit in less Internet policy, theoretical terms – for years and testified before and warned Congress in 2013 on this issue. About a month ago, I published an article on Circle ID, a source of news and opinion about Internet policy and governance, describing the actions of drug companies to dominate the Internet. My hope was to reach people just like Jeremy Malcolm at organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). EFF is a non-governmental organization, founded in 1990 to defend civil liberties in the digital world. They champion “user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development.” Read about its awesome work and history here. (more…)
Tagged with: Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies, Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies, Electronic Frontier Foundation, jeremy malcolm, LegitScript, NABP, shadow regulation, voluntary agreements
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Oct 6, 2016 | Advocacy
If you would like the presidential debate this Sunday to cover the topic of personal drug importation, then vote here. It’s already known that both Clinton and Trump support expressly legalizing personal drug importation – but it would be better to hear them talk about it before tens of millions of people!
The Campaign for Personal Prescription Importation, PharmacyChecker.com, RxRights, Prescription Justice, and TodaysSeniorsNetwork came together in a joint effort to nudge the candidates to address the issue of importation during the debate. Our coalition is asking Americans to vote to include the following question in the debate: “What would you do to ensure access to affordable medications through importation?” We are also encouraging consumers to pipe up on social media and get their stories out there to Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz, the debate’s moderators.
For more information on this advocacy effort, see the news release.
Tagged with: anderson cooper, clinton, cppi, debate, prescription justice, RxRights, trump
