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What You Can Do Now - Sign Up to Be a Water Sampler on May 8The Water Sampling Program, coordinated by Nahant Marsh and Partners of Scott County Watersheds, will be on Tuesday, May 8th. The training is from 8 to 11:30 am, and then teams will spend the afternoon going to 4 or 5 sites and collecting samples.
If you are interested, contact Brian Ritter at Nahant Marsh or call 563-336-3372.
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Get your books for the next three PACG Book Club discussions now!All discussions are the third Tuesday of the month at 6:00 pm at Fresh Deli (421 W River Drive) in Davenport. Email Alta Price with questions.
April 17 - Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine.
May 15 - The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin
June 19 - Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen
What You Can Do Now - Call Your Members of Congress to Lower Prescription Drug PricesThe escalating costs of prescription drugs are a major driver in the increasing cost of health care, including insurance premiums. The pharmaceutical industry has developed effective methods for blocking or delaying the introduction of lower cost generic alternative medications which contribute to this problem.
The good news is that bills have been introduced in this congress to help alleviate the problem and encourage the timely approval and production of generic drugs. This “CREATES Act” has bi-partisan support in both houses. Senate Bill 974 is co-sponsored by Senators Grassley, Durbin, Leahy and 17 others. HR 2212 has 15 co-sponsors so far. Now is the time to contact Senators Grassley and Durbin and thank them for their support of this legislation and encourage them to work for its passage. It is also crucial to contact Senators Ernst and Duckworth and ask them to co-sponsor and support the Senate bill -- and to ask Representatives Bustos and Loebsack to co-sponsor and support the House bill. Senators Grassley and Leahy have published an excellent description of the issue and the major provisions of the CREATES Act. You can read about the CREATES Act here. Don’t delay. Contact your Senators and Representative today! Grassley, Leahy: It’s time to empower generic drug makers to bring down pricesU.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy in STAT News
In Vermont, Iowa, and every other state across the country, people are fed up with the high cost of prescription drugs. Prices continue to skyrocket as companies making brand-name drugs restrict competition by refusing to share samples of their drugs with companies aiming to make generic versions or refusing to negotiate a shared safety protocol. This is an abuse of government regulations that are intended to protect patients and ensure drug safety. These practices punish patients and worsen illnesses. Families, businesses, government programs, and other payers in the health care system must bear the added, unnecessary costs that accrue when a generic is shut out. Lawmakers across the political spectrum, including President Trump, agree that Congress needs to act to rein in spiraling prescription drug prices. We can start by cracking down on abuses by companies making brand-name drugs that engage in tactics to artificially delay the development of generic alternatives. These stifle competition and keep prices artificially high. It is no wonder that hardworking Americans feel like the system is rigged against them by corporations that are seizing any opportunity unfairly restrict competition and reap monopoly profits long after patents expire. Some — not all — companies that make brand-name drugs limit release of their products to prevent access to samples as a way to delay the development of generic versions. These tactics block more-affordable FDA-approved generics that save patients — and taxpayers — money at the pharmacy counter. When a generic manufacturer is not able to buy drug samples, it is impossible to do the careful testing that’s needed to ask the Food and Drug Administration to approve the medication. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has rightly called these tactics “unfair and exploitative” and “in direct conflict to our broader public health goals.” Cancer patient David Mitchell testified before Congress about one company’s efforts to deny a generic company’s access to samples of Revlimid, a lifesaving cancer treatment. Access to samples of the drug has been at issue since 2009. If it were not for this ongoing abuse of the FDA’s safety programs, a generic alternative could be available to David and other patients as early as next year. Because there is no generic alternative, the cost of Revlimid has remained artificially high and has actually risen fourteen times since this abuse began, from $9,853 in 2010 to its current price of $18,546 for a 28-count bottle. This is just one example out of more than 150 complaints that the FDA has received from generic manufacturers. To end these anti-competitive tactics, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers — including Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Ted Cruz (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.), and Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), and Dick Durbin (Ill.), have joined us to introduce the Creating and Restoring Equal Access to Equivalent Samples (CREATES) Act. This bill is supported by a broad and politically diverse coalition of 68 organizations representing hospitals, physicians, patients, employers, and unions. AARP, Families USA, Freedom Works, and Heritage, to name just a few, have endorsed this common-sense legislation. The public also agrees: Recent polls show that 84 percent of Americans support the CREATES Act. Our bipartisan bill targets anti-competitive behavior that keeps prices artificially high, such as when companies withhold drug samples from generic manufacturers or refuse to negotiate a shared safety protocol. Both steps undermine the FDA approval process and block potential generic competitors from creating less-expensive alternatives. Companies making brand-name drugs that stand in the way of the CREATES Act wrongly claim the legislation will lead to frivolous lawsuits. This is a red herring. Our bill is narrowly tailored and would only allow eligible product developers seeking to develop a medicine to sue, only after receiving FDA authorization. Trial lawyers will have no standing to sue under our plan. Another baseless argument we have heard is that counterfeit product developers who do not intend to develop a drug will take advantage of the CREATES Act in order to seeks damages from a brand-name company. Wrong again. Under the CREATES Act, court challenges are only allowed based on continued delays after the FDA has certified the safety and the brand has refused to release samples. The significant costs to submit protocols to the FDA also discourages this behavior. These arguments do not hold up against the clear and limited remedies available under the CREATES Act. Conservatives who support the CREATES Act appreciate that it lowers drug costs by quickly bringing parties to the negotiation table under the threat of litigation instead of a drawn-out regulatory action. The act is not a drastic measure, but allows the generic development process to proceed as intended by Congress under the Hatch-Waxman Act. Companies making brand-name pharmaceuticals need only to negotiate in good faith and provide the samples for testing on market terms to avoid a lawsuit. This bill offers Congress an opportunity to take meaningful action to lower the cost of prescription drugs. It would save $3.8 billion in federal spending over the next 10 years and many billions more in costs to consumers. The CREATES Act is a sensible, efficient, market-based way for generic drug manufacturers to address the delays in developing generics without jeopardizing patient safety or creating lengthy battles in the courts. There is no question that pharmaceutical companies should be compensated for their important work developing lifesaving treatments. But they should not be allowed to use predatory practices to cling to their patents and delay the development of generics at the expense of their customers. Congress has a straightforward and fully bipartisan chance to actually do something to wind down the upward spiral of drug prices. Enough talk. It’s time for real action. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley represents the state of Iowa. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy represents the state of Vermont. Unfortunately, this bill passed and went to the governor to sign.
If you live in Iowa, call your member of the Iowa State House of Representatives and ask them to vote against SF481. This so-called “anti-sanctuary cities” bill (Iowa has NO sanctuary cities) turns local law enforcement into ICE agents. It promotes hate and bigotry and is opposed by law enforcement across the state. But Iowa Republican leaders are following Donald Trump’s lead in pushing anti-immigrant and racist legislation. Tell your Representative that Iowans welcome immigrants, including people of color. Vote no on SF481. Call even if your Representative is a Democrat, as some Democrats have voted in favor of this bill in committee. Find contact information for Iowa State Representatives here. You can read more about the bill at Bleeding Heartland. What You Can Do Now - Get Active on an IssueGet together with other activists to make a difference on an issue. Join one of our active Issue Forums, or start your own Issue Forum. Email one of the facilitators below to get involved.
Civil Rights - DACA or Immigration - contact Margie Mejia-Caraballo Civil Rights - Restorative Justice or Juvenile Justice Reform - contact Jane Duax Environmental - contact Shirley Johnson Health Care Reform - contact Frank Samuelson Want to start your own Issue Forum? - contact Alta Price PACG also needs people to work on the following committees:
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine is our March 2018 book.The PACG Book Club met for the first time on Tuesday, Feb 27th at 6 pm at Fresh Deli to discuss The Little Book of Restorative Justice by Howard Zehr. We had an interesting group that included a few experts in restorative justice as well as many who had never heard of the concept. It was a productive conversation.
We agreed to meet on the third Tuesday of the month in the future, since the Sierra Club book club meets on the fourth Tuesday. So our next discussion will be Tuesday, March 20, 6 - 7:30 pm. We will meet at Fresh Deli in the Davenport Freight House (421 W River Dr, Davenport IA). We had three professors from St. Ambrose at our discussion, including a professor of English literature, Emily Kingery. Emily suggested a book she teaches in class that will be perfect for Women's History month. It is Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine. You can read more about the book at the link to the title. I am going to include a few quotes from reviews. (Note: Since the book includes visual art, you may want to get the paperback rather than get it on your e-reader.) "Marrying prose, poetry, and the visual image, Citizen investigates the ways in which racism pervades daily American social and cultural life, rendering certain of its citizens politically invisible. Rankine's formally inventive book challenges our notion that citizenship is only a legal designation that the state determines by expanding that definition to include a larger understanding of civic belonging and identity, built out of cross-racial empathy, communal responsibility, and a deeply shared commitment to equality."—National Book Award Judges' Citation "So groundbreaking is Rankine's work that it's almost impossible to describe; suffice it to say that this is a poem that reads like an essay (or the other way around)—a piece of writing that invents a new form for itself, incorporating pictures, slogans, social commentary and the most piercing and affecting revelations to evoke the intersection of inner and outer life."—Los Angeles Times For book discussion questions click here. Alta Price |
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