Showing posts with label Inhalers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inhalers. Show all posts

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Obama banning medical devices he can"t pronounce (asthma inhalers banned over "environmental concerns")

I must have posted this video several dozen times already, usually associated with his propensity for gaffes:






And it’s not just medical devices. Banned next will be the words ‘intercontinental,’ ‘corpsman,’ and the Austrian language. But there’s real news here too – Obama, in what I can only guess is a pretext to saving money when ObamaCare is fully implemented, wants to kill of asthmatics: Obama Administration to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns


Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer:

Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government’s latest attempt to protect the Earth’s atmosphere.


If you are caught in a flood, and you go out on your porch and piss into it, you are technically contributing to said flood. This doesn’t even come close to that because the ozone depletion scaremongering of decades past was an utter hoax. in essence, there is no flood here to even piss into. 



The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.

The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.


But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $ 20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $ 30 to $ 60.



The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle, an asthma sufferer, noted a while back that when consumers are forced to use environmentally friendly products they are almost always worse:


Er, industry also knew how to make low-flow toilets, which is why every toilet in my recently renovated rental house clogs at least once a week.  They knew how to make more energy efficient dryers, which is why even on high, I have to run every load through the dryer in said house twice.  And they knew how to make inexpensive compact flourescent bulbs, which is why my head hurts from the glare emitting from my bedroom lamp.    They also knew how to make asthma inhalers without CFCs, which is why I am hoarding old albuterol inhalers that, unlike the new ones, a) significantly improve my breathing and b) do not make me gag.  Etc.


And the regulatory state continues to grow bigger, eating liberties and freedoms along the way. No matter what, the regulatory state just keeps getting bigger and bigger.


Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Free Asthma Inhalers, brought to you by Peabody Energy


 

Why Free Inhalers? Because COAL CARES.

Coal Caresâ„¢ is a brand-new initiative from Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, to reach out to American youngsters with asthma and to help them keep their heads high in the face of those who would treat them with less than full dignity. For kids who have no choice but to use an inhaler, Coal Caresâ„¢ lets them inhale with pride.


Puff-Puffâ„¢ inhalers are available free to any family living within 200 miles of a coal plant, and each inhaler comes with a $ 10 coupon towards the cost of the asthma medication itself.



 

Read more here.

Monday, September 23, 2013

Is Obama Phasing Out Asthma Inhalers



Conservatives Launch Bogus Attack On Obama Over FDA’s Phase Out Of Certain Inhalers



The conservative media today attacked the Obama administration by attempting to link them to the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to phase out “over-the-counter asthma inhalers containing chloroflouorocarbons (CFCs).” The Weekly Standard published a piece by Mark Hemingway headlined “Obama Administration Set to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns,” which claimed that the “Obama administration would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer.”

But it turns out that the FDA was simply following through with plans put in place when George W. Bush was president.


Hemingway reported:


    Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer


Hemingway went on to cite an Associated Press article that explains some details of the inhaler ban, but Hemingway must not have read the AP article too closely. That’s because the AP reported that “[t]he FDA finalized plans to phase out the products in 2008″ when Bush was president, not Obama. From the AP article:


    The FDA finalized plans to phase out the products in 2008 and currently only Armstrong Pharmaceutical’s Primatene mist is available in the U.S. Other manufacturers have switched to an environmentally-friendly propellant called hydrofluoroalkane. Both types of inhalers offer quick-relief to symptoms like shortness of breath and chest tightness, but the environmentally-friendly inhalers are only available via prescription.


Moreover, the FDA stated in a September 22, 2011, press release that it began “public discussions about the use of CFCs” for inhalers as early as January 2006 and that it had “finalized the phase-out date for using CFCs in these inhalers and notified the public in November 2008.” From the FDA press release:


    The FDA began public discussions about the use of CFCs in epinephrine inhalers in January 2006. The FDA finalized the phase-out date for using CFCs in these inhalers and notified the public in November 2008. Many manufacturers have changed their inhalers to replace CFCs with an environmentally-friendly propellant called hydrofluoroalkane (HFA).


The United States has been committed to reducing CFCs ever since it signed The Montreal Protocol, an international agreement that was originally adopted on September 16, 1987, under the Reagan administration.


Despite the fact that The Weekly Standard’s attack on Obama was refuted by the very source the Standard cited, other conservatives immediately pounced:



Among other brain-dead conservatives who regularly display a lack of respect for the facts was radio moron Tammy Bruce, little parrot Amanda Carpenter and the proto-fascist website Pajamas Media. All conservatives. America waits for the day these conservatives have something other than the values of brown-shirted thugs. Everyday these bitter right-wing misfits have a decision to make, fidelity to American values like the truth or to use lies and half-truths to attacks America loving Democrats who only want the best for the nation.