Johnny Got His Pills

The military-pharmaceutical complex is making a killing or, more specifically, making a fortune off the folks we’ve asked to do the killing — and off the rest of us. They dope our unruly kids, they dope the young men and women fighting in and returning home from the war, and they dope the rest of us right here at home for being sick of wars overseas and fearful of war on the middle and lower classes and dreading the reckonings to come and being ashamed of our own sad national shadow.

‘Curb dangerous chemical cosh drugs for dementia victims’

In an unprecedented move, a coalition of 45 public and private bodies and charities has pledged to transform the way patients are treated and drive down the use of anti-psychotic drugs. Experts have argued that the ‘chemical cosh’, recommended for short-term use to calm down people who are agitated, has been widely over-prescribed for dementia sufferers in an attempt to keep them quiet, particularly in care homes.

Grassley: Are high prescription rates a sign of fraud?

A Miami doctor wrote nearly 97,000 prescriptions in 18 months for mental health drugs. An Ohio physician wrote more than 100,000 prescriptions in two years. A Texas doctor wrote more than 14,000 prescriptions for the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. These alarmingly high prescriptions numbers for mental health drugs covered by Medicare and Medicaid have prompted Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to call for an investigation, the Associated Press reports.

Top prescribers under Senate’s microscope

Minnesota doctors are again under the microscope of an influential U.S. senator from Iowa — this time because of concerns that expensive medications are being overprescribed at great cost to the publicly funded Medicaid and Medicare programs. U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, notified federal authorities Wednesday that he found potential examples of overprescribing after requesting lists from states, including Minnesota, of doctors who issued the most prescriptions for antipsychotic and narcotic medications in 2008 and 2009.

Top 50 Psychiatrists Paid by Pharmaceutical Companies

by John M Grohol, PsyD – Who were the top 50 psychiatrists in the U.S. paid by the top seven pharmaceutical companies? This past week, ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest, recently decided to answer that question by compiling a list of 384 physicians and health care providers who earned more than $100,000 total from one or more of the seven companies that have disclosed payments in 2009 and early 2010. We combed that list and found the top 50 psychiatry earners for the past two years (2009-2010).

CCHR International

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