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How Obamacare Pushes Big Pharma To Overcharge You For Prescriptions

As if our health care “system” wasn’t already complicated enough, here’s example No. 9,572.

I spent the better part of one year trying to ask a prescription drug provider one simple question about my prescription. Even as someone who works in health policy and with advocates on my behalf, I kept getting the run-around.

Unfortunately, as I found out firsthand, big conglomerates — in this case, CVS Health — make profits by keeping the system complicated, bureaucratic, and opaque. But (eventually) I found out there’s a simple solution: returning to good, old-fashioned cash transactions.

Mail Order Madness

The saga started last summer, when my physician prescribed a maintenance medication to prevent a recurrence of kidney stones. My doctor sent a prescription to CVS Caremark, requesting a 90-day mail-order supply of the drug. CVS is the pharmaceutical benefits manager (PBM) that administers my prescription.

When it arrived, I received the following note:

We filled your prescription with a smaller quantity than what your doctor prescribed. Your prescription plan has limits on the amount of your medication it will cover. We filled your prescription according to these limits. [Emphasis original.]

For the better part of 12 months, I communicated with CVS staff, trying to figure out the reasons for this decision. I also asked a representative from the District of Columbia’s Office of Health Care Ombudsman to investigate on my behalf. Every time my physician prescribed a 90-day supply of this medication, CVS Caremark sent me a 30-day supply of the drug, along with the same note described above.

A few weeks ago, I finally spoke with a CVS representative who could tell me the reason. While my prescription plan covered the drug, it did not cover it as a maintenance medication. This explained why CVS Caremark kept lowering the medicine supplied from 90- to 30-day supplies.

The representative informed me I could use an exceptions process, through which my physician could send a form to CareFirst (my insurer) providing clinical justification to use the drug for maintenance purposes. If approved by CareFirst, then CVS Caremark would honor the 90-day prescription, and provide me with a three-month supply of the drug going forward.

This annoyed me, because I had mentioned the exceptions process (which I know about from working in health policy) while speaking to CVS personnel last summer. That individual never provided me the information I had asked for, which could have saved me months of hassle.

I contacted CVS’ corporate office to ask two simple questions: why did the notices I received refer to “your prescription plan” — a wording that seems deliberately vague as to whether my insurer (CareFirst) or the PBM (CVS Caremark) made the coverage decision; and why didn’t those notices also include specific, written instructions on how request an appeal or exception for longer-term coverage of the drug?

CVS’s communications team sent back this response:

CareFirst is the plan sponsor, and CVS Caremark helps support the administration of the plan’s pharmacy benefit. This CareFirst plan relies on an expert third-party vendor, Medispan, to determine which medications are considered maintenance drugs versus acute. Because Medispan lists potassium citrate as a non-maintenance drug, it is subject to the CareFirst plan’s non-maintenance day supply limit of 30 pills. Members have access to an exceptions process, which is administered directly by CareFirst.

This response didn’t answer my questions about notice wordings. In fact, it suggests that a heretofore undisclosed third party (Medispan) made the decision that limited my prescription. Given CVS’s non-answer, a cynic would suggest the obvious yet unstated reason the notice omitted information about filing an appeal or exceptions request: If people knew about an exceptions process, they might use it.

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NYPD Reports Hate Crimes Rise Under Mamdani-More Than Half Committed Against Jews

While New York City Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch recently bragged about a drop in crime in the Big Apple in a press release, the statement buried a rise in hate crimes that are overwhelmingly committed against the city’s Jewish community under radical NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

While Jewish New Yorkers make up only 10% of the city’s population, more than half of the confirmed hate crimes were anti-Jewish with hate crimes against Jewish New Yorkers increasing by 8.5% so far this year.

The NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force (HCTF) investigates allegations of hate crimes and bias-motivated incidents. After an incident is flagged as a possible hate crime, the HCTF investigates and determines, in consultation with the NYPD Legal Bureau, whether it constitutes a hate crime under New York State law. If an incident is deemed a hate crime under the law, it will be categorized as a confirmed hate crime. The NYPD provides data on confirmed hate crimes along with all reported hate crimes regardless of whether they are ultimately confirmed as hate crimes by the HCTF. The disclosure of both sets of numbers enhances transparency and reflects best practices in connection with hate crime reporting.

Year to date, the number of confirmed hate crimes increased 9.4% (360 vs. 329), with 31 more confirmed hate crime incidents compared to last year. In July, there were 33 confirmed hate crimes and 50 incidents reported as hate crimes. More than half of the confirmed hate crimes for the first seven months of the year, or 56.9%, were anti-Jewish hate crimes, despite Jewish New Yorkers making up only 10% of the city’s population. During the first seven months of the year, anti-Jewish hate crimes increased 8.5% (205 vs. 189).

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Zohran Mamdani Won’t Let You Buy His Food Without Government ID

If you want to purchase food from one of communist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s government-run supermarkets, you must… present some form of ID.

And not just any ID… government ID.

But-but-but how will married women eat?

“So, our RFP [Request for Proposals] makes very clear that this is a program for New Yorkers to be able to put food on the table, not a program for people to be able to make a quick buck through reselling,” explains Mamdani. “I’m going [to] pass it over to our EDC head, Jeanny Pak, to add some additional details.”

Pak is the Interim President & CEO of NYC Economic Development Corporation.

“Yes, if you look at our RFP for the operator, we are looking to make sure that we target New Yorkers, whether it be [through] a sort of a library card-esque [system], and also, we manage who’s buying and that it’s focused on everyday New Yorkers,” Pak said. “So, we are mindful of that, and we’re going to make sure that we have all the things in place to ensure that that does not happen.”

Libraries are run by the government; therefore, “library-esque” identification is by definition government identification.

And this is what always happens when leftism meets reality.

Mamdani wants government to take over the means of production, which is the very definition of communism. He’s starting with food because, hey, who doesn’t support cheap food? Food is necessary to life. No one wants anyone to go hungry. It’s a pretty smart first move on his part. Ah, but what about reality…? Such as…

The reality of how this will undercut privately-owned grocery stores. Yeah, well, that’s the plan, dumbass. If people can buy groceries 30 percent cheaper from the government, they are going to buy groceries 30 percent cheaper from the government, and this will (by design) decimate privately-owned grocery stores that operate on profit margins below five percent.

These privately-owned stores will go out of business. Then Mamdani will replace them with more government-run stores, which will push even more privately-owned stores out of business, which means even more government-run stores, and so on and so on and so on, until the government is in charge of feeding the people and if the people defy the government, those people don’t eat.

Then there’s the reality brought up by the reporter’s question, which is what to do about people who will take advantage of a system so easily taken advantage of by purchasing groceries at 30 percent below retail, turning around, and reselling those items?

See, that could ruin Mamdani’s Communist plot, so suddenly a government ID is necessary to avoid fraud, to avoid people taking advantage.

Sound familiar?

Democrats like Mamdani tell us they oppose voter ID because “voting is a human right.” But-but-but isn’t eating even more of a human right?

They tell us government ID is too difficult for some people to obtain, especially poor people. But-but-but don’t the poor need to eat even more than they need to vote?

They tell us voter ID is racist. But-but-but by that standard, Mamdani is starving black people. They tell us married women will be denied government ID. But-but-but… You get the point.

Mamdani proves here that he knows that not requiring an ID invites fraud, and like all Democrats, he wants to invite voter fraud because Democrats benefit from voter fraud.

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Deranged Golden State Valkyries Coach Says “I’m All About Little Girls Deserving to Play” But Men Should be Allowed in the Women’s Basketball League

Golden State Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase broke her silence on biological male transgenders competing in women’s sports, and she suggested that transgender athletes are “deserving” of playing in women’s leagues. 

This comes amid the controversy surrounding Sophie Cunningham recently saying she wants to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

Since Cunningham’s remarks, three coaches, including Cunningham’s own coach, the Indiana Fever’s Stephanie White, have broken their silence, refusing to stand up to the transgender insanity threatening women’s sports.

Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve even protested Cunningham during a game against the Fever on Sunday, where she wore a “Trans Kids Belong” t-shirt in a petty attempt to own critics of men in women’s sports.

When asked about the controversy and the apparent feud between Cunningham and Reeve on Monday, Nakase said she supports “inclusivity,” alleging in her own experiences of exclusion as a 5’2″ Japanese woman. How would she like to play against seven-foot-tall men?

“I think just in terms of how I’m seeing it is, if I could answer, with like for me, sports, sports is about belonging. It’s about inclusivity. It’s about allowing everyone to be their authentic self,” Nakase told reporters.

“You know, I’m big on that just because I have been criticized for my height, for my ethnicity. I’ve been in those ‘you shouldn’t belong here’ many times. And for me, I don’t want that space, especially Golden State, to ever feel like that.”

She then ironically said, “I’m all about women, little girls deserving to play,” before throwing in, “and that includes trans women.”

“So I’m all about inclusivity,” she added.

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The Dumb, Arrogant Liars Who Are Also Journalists

There is a frustrating contradiction when it comes to the way public information is assessed for factual truth.  For decades, prominent news organizations have steadily lost credibility.  Fewer Americans than ever believe what The New York Times, CNN, NPR, or even the AP publishes as the “objective” record of current events.

At the same time, however, alternative, competing descriptions of current events are almost entirely ignored.  No matter how compelling or factually sourced a story might be, it is largely disregarded until mainstream corporate news institutions are willing to recognize its validity.

This annoying state of affairs was highlighted last week after Dr. Anthony Fauci refused to testify before the Senate.  Although the man holds one of Joe Biden’s get-out-of-jail-free autopen pardons, Fauci cowardly asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than a hundred times.

With a general pardon in hand that presumably allows him to get away with past acts of mass murder, he could put himself in legal jeopardy only by not telling the truth while under oath at the hearing.  So long as Fauci avoided newly committing perjury, there was no risk to his liberty.  The fact that he nevertheless remained mum the whole time revealed a particularly guilty conscience: Fauci could not bear the thought of admitting to the world that he told numerous lies in the past.

To be sure, Fauci’s lies are huge and unforgivable.  He lied about COVID arising from inter-species transmission in an outdoor meat market rather than from a bioweapons laboratory re-engineering coronaviruses in Wuhan, China.

He lied about not having partially funded deadly coronavirus research at that lab as part of a workaround to American regulatory prohibitions against such dangerous projects.  He lied about COVID’s lethality, especially with regard to young or healthy bodies.  He lied about the efficacy of simple masks to prevent viral transmission.  He lied about the need to close schools and businesses.  He lied about the need for draconian home confinements.  He lied about the effectiveness of the experimental mRNA injections that he called “vaccines.”  He lied about the proven effectiveness of alternative treatments.  He lied about the effectiveness of natural immunity.

His lies were profound, and because mainstream news institutions refused to question anything he said, his lies were the only bits of information allowed to circulate in the public sphere.  So-called “journalists” not only repeated verbatim exactly what the government’s chief medical bureaucrat claimed to be true but also cheered social media platforms for censoring competing points of view.

“Reporters” working for The New York Times and CNN were enthralled by Fauci’s perceived professional prestige and institutional authority.  Why?  Because they are enamored of their own perceived professional prestige and institutional authority.  They worship glory and accolades; they are slaves to appeals to authority; they care nothing for the pursuit of truth.

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Disturbing Video From Radical Non-Profit Group Shares Efforts to Introctrinate Children and “Catch Kids When They’re Starting Puberty” Along with Efforts to Intentionally Go ‘Into Younger and Younger Grades’

A disturbing video from the radical non-profit organization HiTOPS reveals their goal to indoctrinate young children by focusing on students in grades 5-8, to “catch kids when they’re starting puberty.”

According to its website, HITOPS seeks to foster “strong and healthy young people of all identities by providing inclusive and youth-informed sex education and LGBTQ+ support for young people.”

Moreover, they seek to create a world “where young people are able to flourish because they are at home in their bodies, supported in the development of their sexual and gender identity, and equipped with an understanding of how to have safe, consensual, and healthy relationships.”

In a video shared on X by Gays Against Groomers, the Director of Education for the organization, Stacy Robustelli, shared, “The most critical time to be there is grades 5 through 8 because you want to catch kids when they’re starting puberty because that’s the time in which identity formation is central to their lives.”

“However, early intervention is key. So we actually are designing a kindergarten through grade 2 curriculum this summer.”

“And I will tell you, one of the most rewarding experiences, Nikki, uh, we were in a local school system in an elementary school and, uh, we were in grades 3, 4, and 5. And after we were there, um, 5 students went to the principal’s office and came out.”

“So we are really intentionally going into younger and younger grades.”

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Arizona, Nevada blast federal plan for Colorado River

Arizona and Nevada on Friday opposed a Colorado River usage reduction plan by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which could define the crucial waterway for 40 million people over the next decade.

The Colorado River Final Environmental Impact Statement by the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Department of Interior emphasized the federal government’s preference for negotiations to take place among states, but set in motion plans for the next decade of water conservation. The proposal, which was released Friday, included up to 3 million acre-feet in annual Lower Basin water usage reductions.

“Arizona recognizes the serious condition of the Colorado River, and we are prepared to be part of a responsible solution,” Arizona State Senate President Warren Petersen said in a statement sent to The Center Square. “What we will not accept is a federal plan that protects some states while placing a devastating and disproportionate burden on Arizona.”

Negotiations among Colorado River states have repeatedly failed to meet deadlines over the past year, leading at least four states, including Arizona, to build legal teams for potential litigation over the river’s water sharing. The Colorado River states are California, Nevada and Arizona in the Lower Basin and Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico in the Upper Basin.

The Arizona Department of Water Resources toed the line on potential legal action. The department told The Center Square in a statement that it would “work to complete the agreements necessary to implement the Lower Basin Proposal while preserving Arizona’s legal rights.”

“We appreciate the Trump Administration’s willingness to continue working with us toward a fair agreement, but the Senate stands ready to use every legal and legislative tool available if Arizona is forced to carry this burden alone,” Petersen said.

The previous Colorado River water usage guidelines from 2007 are set to expire at the end of 2026.

The Bureau of Reclamation’s new guidelines included “sideboards” to protect against extreme flow reductions in the river. The largest announcement among them was the potential annual 3 million acre-feet of water reductions that could be required from California, Nevada and Arizona.

The Colorado River Compact, originally signed in 1922, allocates each basin 7.5 million acre-feet of annual river water. Today, the agreement applies to seven states and 30 tribes.

“While our community is prepared to manage through short-term reductions to protect the Colorado River system, as the basin’s smallest water user, Nevada cannot solve the river’s imbalance alone,” John Entsminger, Southern Nevada Water Authority’s general manager, told The Center Square in a statement.

“Unfortunately, the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) released by the Department of the Interior today seeks to impose unrealistic reductions on Nevada and our water users,” Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, added in a statement Friday.

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Denmark Begins Extended Conscription as It Prepares for ‘Russian Threat’ and US Designs on Greenland – 19-Year-Old Danish Princess Begins Military Service

Copenhagen means to take on Moscow and Washington?

We have been reporting here on TGP about how Europe is re-arming at a frantic pace, to defend themselves from the ‘Russian threat’, that while existent, is much inflated by Globalists needing an outside enemy to distract from their ruinous public policies.

In the case of Denmark, the Scandinavian kingdom has a secondary reason for beefing up their military forces: the interest by Donald J. Trump on controlling the Arctic island of Greenland.

Reuters reported:

“Around ‌1,600 Danish military recruits on Monday began the country’s new extended conscription, embarking on an 11-month service period as Denmark accelerates its defense build-up driven by Arctic security pressures and the war in Ukraine.”

The standard service time has increased to 11 months, 7,500 conscripts trained annually by 2033 (up from ​5,000).

“The new intake arrives as Denmark prepares to deploy conscripts to Greenland for the first ​time later this month, with a company of more than 100 soldiers set to serve for one month taking over operational tasks from professional troops.

The deployment carries added political weight as U.S. President Donald ​Trump has repeatedly sought to annex the semi-autonomous Danish territory, citing national security, a demand firmly rejected ​by the governments of Greenland and Denmark.”

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Indian-origin Canadian trucker caught hiding millions in cocaine on cross-continent run

Bodycam footage from an Arizona state trooper on January 6, 2025, shows just how casually certain truck drivers engage in fraud and high-stakes smuggling.

It also shows how easily this kind of criminality rides alongside ordinary traffic on North American highways.

On Interstate 40 near Holbrook, a Volvo tractor-trailer drew a state trooper’s attention when its hazard lights began flashing, then leaving a turn signal flashing. When questioned, the Canadian driver claimed there was a switch problem and said he was heading to a Love’s mechanic — after already passing both a Love’s and a TA truck stop. The driver quickly pivoted his story, claiming he was heading to an “Indian mechanic,” when the trooper flagged his response as suspicious.

While examining the electronic logging device, the trooper quickly became aware of a concerning driving pattern.

There were multiple stretches of “unidentified drive time” appearing from Michigan through Ohio into New York, and again just before the stop.

The driver invented a co-driver named “Uncle” — someone who never logged in or out yet somehow erased hours when convenient. He claimed to be in the sleeper berth when the records showed he was driving. This is textbook hours-of-service fraud designed to push past the federal 11-hour driving limit.

What began as a traffic stop escalated when the trooper checked the sleeper berth. Tightly wrapped bricks of cocaine were found hidden underneath. More packages appeared on the opposite side. Officers then found kilo after kilo concealed throughout the produce load itself, turning out to be one of the larger commercial-truck seizures in recent memory.

The driver, 31-year-old Amarjeet Singh Matharu, had allegedly made the run multiple times before. For moving cocaine valued in the tens of millions of dollars range, he received just under three years in prison.

This bodycam footage finally offers a clear window into the kind of culture that has taken root in commercial trucking.

Ontario’s Auditor General reported in May that private career colleges routinely cut the required 103.5-hour Entry Level Training to as little as 59 or 81 hours, with some skipping emergency stops and left turns at major intersections altogether.

Unregistered schools were handing out certificates, dozens of colleges were never even inspected, and nearly 100 trucking companies with serious safety violations were still being approved to bring in temporary foreign workers; putting them behind the wheel of these increasingly deadly trucks.

“Driver Inc.” has become widely known as a model that misclassifies drivers as independent contractors, allowing companies to dodge overtime, proper wages, and hours-of-service rules. The result is financial pressure that keeps exhausted drivers on the road, compromising road safety at large.

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Government Will Steal Your Land to Feed the AI Machine

Private land may be seized to construct transmission lines required by the rapidly expanding AI data-center industry. If a property owner refuses to sell an easement voluntarily, a utility may resort to eminent domain, provided the project is declared a “public use” and the owner receives what the government calls “just compensation.” Let us call this what it is: legalized theft.

The government does not ask whether the land has been in your family for generations, whether you built your home with your own hands, or whether the money offered would ever replace what is being destroyed. A bureaucrat determines the supposed market value, a judge blesses the taking, and armed government agents will eventually remove you if you continue to resist. They hide behind legal phrases because “confiscation for corporate benefit” would expose the practice for what it has become.

The United States already has more than 3,000 data centers, with another 1,500 under development. These facilities consumed more than 4% of total US electricity in 2024, and demand is rising rapidly as companies construct gigawatt-scale AI campuses. New transmission lines must cross somebody’s property, and when the owner says no, the state may simply decide that no does not matter.

Seventy percent of Americans reportedly oppose having a data center built near their community. These facilities can consume enormous quantities of electricity and water while creating noise, traffic, pollution, and higher infrastructure costs. Health risks are not fully understood although reports of increased cancer risks are prevalent in communities near these facilities. Yet the same governments that claim to represent the public are preparing to override that opposition because the technology companies have more influence than the families whose land stands in their way.

This is already happening. CBS News reported that Georgia Power acquired more than 300 parcels for a transmission project intended largely to serve data centers. The utility said that between 70% and 80% of the new line’s capacity would support data-center demand. Families were informed that if they refused the proposed sale, Georgia Power could pursue condemnation.

Ansley Brown’s family sold the home her grandparents had built after receiving an eminent-domain notice. She called the process “theft,” and she was absolutely correct. Georgia Power would not even identify the data-center companies benefiting from the project, citing customer confidentiality. The landowner must surrender everything, but the corporate beneficiary is permitted to remain hidden. That tells you exactly who the government serves.

The Fifth Amendment states that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. The government has twisted those words beyond recognition. A transmission line that principally benefits unnamed private technology corporations is now presented as a public necessity merely because the electricity passes through the broader grid. Under that reasoning, nearly any private commercial project can be disguised as public infrastructure.

The Supreme Court opened the floodgates with Kelo v. City of New London in 2005. The Court ruled 5–4 that private property could be taken and transferred to another private party as part of an economic-development plan. The politicians promised jobs, tax revenue, and revitalization. The proposed Pfizer-related development never materialized as promised, and much of the condemned neighborhood remained vacant for years. Families lost their homes so politicians could gamble with property that was never theirs.

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