Walmart said Tuesday it will offer a less expensive version of insulin that could better fit into the budgets of millions of Americans who don’t have health insurance or struggle to pay for the lifesaving diabetes drug.
Starting this week, the retailer will sell an exclusive private-label version of analog insulin, ReliOn NovoLog, to adults and children who have a prescription. The drug will be available at its membership-based Sam’s Club in mid-July. The insulin will cost about $73 for a vial or about $86 for a package of prefilled insulin pens.
The insulin is the latest addition to Walmart’s private brand of diabetes products, ReliOn. It already sells a low-price version of insulin for about $25 as part of the line, but that is an older formulation that some doctors and advocates say is not as effective at managing blood sugar swings as newer versions of insulin, called analogs.
With the move, Walmart will bring its longtime focus on “everyday low price” to a drug that is a medical necessity for a growing number of Americans. More than 34 million people in the U.S. — or nearly 11% of the population — have diabetes, and about 1.5 million Americans are diagnosed every year, according to the American Diabetes Association. That percentage is about 14% among Walmart shoppers, said Warren Moore, Walmart’s vice president of health and wellness, on a call.
As the number of people with diabetes climbs, the cost of the 100-year-old drug has soared rather than fallen and drawn scrutiny from lawmakers. The annual cost of insulin for people with Type 1 diabetes in the U.S. nearly doubled from $2,900 in 2012 to $5,700 in 2016, according to the most recent data available from the Health Care Cost Institute. Some of the top manufacturers of insulin, including Sanofi and Eli Lilly, have been grilled by politicians during congressional hearings for hiking prices of the critical drug. In some cases, the companies have responded to criticism by rolling out limited, reduced price programs.
As we reported at THIRD, before the pandemic, Walmart was advertising pet insulin at their pharmacies -- and people who couldn't afford people insulin were buying it.
That's why they were advertising it.
I'm glad about Walmart's news and diabeties really is an epidemic in the US today -- and it's pretty bad in the UK as well.
Stan has diabetes and he got an e-mail from a reader asking about it. His reader is newly diagnosed and struggling and looking for some suggestions that might help. So I'm going to offer five here tonight.
1) Support.
Find someone who can be your buddy. My dad got diagnosed. As soon as he did, he was confronted with foods he couldn't eat that are all around him. We check in nearly every day with each other. I went on a low-carb diet immediately so he had have a meal buddy going through the same thing. We were able to compare recipes and food suggestions. It helped him and it helped me. We all need support in life. If you have a friend or family member that would be great but there are also support groups.
2) Educate yourself.
Most newly diagnosed will see a nutritionist -- and should. But that's at the start and you're usually far removed from that visit when you're sorting and struggling. You need to educate yourself. That means reading up at the American Diabetic Association, for example. Learn what new trends people are exploring. I started seeing all these UK articles sent to me by UK members of the community. All these articles were noting people in the UK increasing their bean intake for the fiber -- and doing it to manage their diabetes.
3) Have a receptive doctor.
My dad's doctor, Dr. Thacker, listens. Listens and responds. And he may ask her about something basic or if she's heard something about this or that in terms of new ways of dealing with diabetes. She's always frank and she's a great doctor. If you're doctor is not actively encouraging you or assisting you, find another doctor. Diabetes is serious. If you're doctor is just 'showing up' for your regular visit, do you honestly think she or he is going to pull it together and suddenly show interest and concern in an emergency?
4) Celebrate and be proud.
My father's lost over sixty pounds since he was diagnosed. He'd like to lose 20 more and maybe he will. But he does take pride in the sixty lost. This is a lifelong issue. You have to celebrate the wins. They may be a small step but they are a step and you need to affirm yourself.
5) Be rude.
My dad is not rude. I had to rip into him regarding this and when he still hesitated, I called his office manager, who I know from church and growing up. I told the man, "Get the candy out of sight. Get the doughnuts and the other crap out of site. You have a break room. Put it in there or I will be complaining higher up. You know my father is diabetic."
He works in an office. Instead of using the break room, sugary crap is put on a table in the main office and left out all day. Doughnuts, cookies, etc. Candy is on bowls on all the desks. Or was.
You can't be diabetic and work in that kind of situation. Be rude if you have to be but set boundaries. And if you can't be rude yourself, find someone who can.
After I yelled and hollered -- and I did yell and holler -- on the phone, changes were made in my father's office. It shouldn't take that. And you shouldn't be allowed to bring sugary things over and over and only sugary things. It's not healthy and there are people trying to lose weight and people with diabetes and other issues.
So that's my five suggestions. Be sure to read Stan's post on this tonight.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Tuesday, June 29, 2021. We're again addressing the airstrikes on Iraq.
What a load of nonsense. I'm referring to two articles about US President Joe Biden bombing Syria and Iraq. We covered the bombing of Iraq yesterday. I am opposed to the bombing but noted that legally Joe wasn't on shaky ground. (I'm not covering the bombing of Syria which I believe has no legal covering.) I read the two opinions calling out Joe's actions on supposed legal grounds hoping there was a strong argument there.
There's no argument being made. You can't make an argument if you don't pay attention. I'm not focused on Syria. I wouldn't pretend to think I could offer any reasoned legal opinion on Syria by brushing up over a day or two. By the same token, lazy asses who weigh in without knowing what's been going on in Iraq -- skimming a few articles does not tell you what's going on -- are idiots.
Before we go further, let me note Iraqis on social media. If you visited Arabic media in the last 24 hours, you would see a number of people pleased with the strikes. That's only surprising if you weren't aware that a group of Iraqis -- probably small, but they are vocal -- have been calling for airstrikes on the militias for some time.
The militias are in competition with one another. The militias as an umbrella are not popular with most Iraqis. If you count all the people supporting any of the various militias it would probably come to somewhere between 35% to 40% of the Iraqi people -- that's a guess. But that's counting people who support the Flintstone militia because it's their tribe (there is no Flintstone militia, FYI). They support the one representing them but they don't support the rest. They are in competition.
And not only are the militias in competition, Iraqis want their own country. They don't want to be a satellite or a colony of the United States or Iran or anywhere else. And Iran and Iraq have been at war in the not so long ago past and probably will be in the future. They have many flare ups -- often involving the military -- over things like borders and access to waterways and to water itself.
Iraq and Iran are neighbors and, like many neighbors, they quarrel from time to time. I'm not seeing even that basic awareness in the two 'expert; opinions being served up.
At NBC, Hayes Brown flaunts his stupidity as he insists that Joe Biden's actions had "weak" justification. He then wants to cite domestic law. He's incredibly stupid.
In the most basic manner, he's an idiot.
If you and I are debating an issue, the smartest thing I can do is haul it over to an area I have expertise in. So if we're debating malts at Burger King and I'm some sort of dairy expert, I'm going to be arguing about the milk product in it, not the straw or the cup.
Hayes Brown is supposed to be an expert in international relations (he studied it, I've never seen any indication that he actually grasps it -- meaning he can repeat and cite but he can't analyze of provide even a basic framework -- he's a regurgitator and I would've destroyed him in a classroom the moment he opened up is uneducated mouth to pontificate in that annoying manner he has). Hayes isn't even smart enough to make the argument in the arena he's studied -- that's how stupid he is.
Domestic law?
It's not Brown's area. And it shows. He cites this and he cites that. And it's all bull.
There are written laws -- and Hayes cites several -- and there is what is done with them. You can call that custom, if you want, but that's more of a generic meaning of the term "custom law." At any rate, Congress has provided no oversight.
Does it have the check on the Executive Branch? It does. It's also supposed to be the only body of the federal government that can declare war. But it has shirked that responsibility for years. Could it assert that authority now?
It could try but do you really see a Democratic Congress going after a president who is also a Democrat? More to the point, find the member of Congress who defended Tara Reid when she made her allegations of assault against Joe Biden. They couldn't even speak out in defense of her or argue she deserved the benefit of the doubt. They were either silent or, like Nancy Pelosi, they were attacking her.
And now you think they're going to go after him on something which, if properly pursued, could lead to a hearing on impeachment?
No one has time for Hayes' masturbation fantasies.
He wants you to know that there are limits to self-defense. Yes, there are. But to determine whether or not Joe exceeded that defense, you need to know the facts.
Though the militias have issued one statement after another threatening harm to US troops -- and claimed some of the attacks since the start of 2020 -- Hayes seems unaware of that or what that means. If you are being attacked and someone is publicly threatening you, that's a threat. You have a right to self-defense.
Self-defense does not just mean that you can defend yourself when bullets are fired at you.
The Iraq War is illegal and always has been.. That doesn't change the fact that the US troops currently in Iraq are in Iraq because the prime minister wants them there. He's had many opportunities to kick them out and hasn't done so.
As the head of the host country, he has obligations as well -- and that is international law. But, Hayes, international law and international relations aren't the same thing, are they? One's specific and the other, the one you claim expertise in, is a little more 'general studies,' right? Well we pay for the mistakes we make when choosing the easy road in our education.
There also needs to be awareness that Mustafa al-Kadhimi is legally in charge of the militias. They were made part of the Iraqi military.
After that, you need to be aware of what's been taking place in Iraq: The militias are out of control and do not respect the chain of command.
They regularly call out Mustafa -- he's even been publicly called a "traitor" by a leader of one militia.
When he had one of them arrested -- finally -- for the many assassinations that they've been carrying out against Iraqi activists, they responded how?
This was weeks ago. They descended upon Baghdad -- and the 'secure' Green Zone -- making threats against Mustafa, encircling his compound, terrorizing.
By the same token, they carry out their assassinations in public. Video camera in a neighborhood? They seem to delight in carrying out an assassination in front of one. And they think nothing of hailing a taxi to leave the scene of the crime. They're not sneaking around.
Often, before carrying out the assassination, they threaten the family for several weeks. That's what emerges when the families of the person murdered come forward.
Yet no militia member (leader or drone) has gone to prison.
At rallies, they openly injure and kill protesters. In plain sight. But they haven't been arrested, let alone put in prison.
It's so lawless it might make some long for the days when the Iraqi mafia controlled some of the SOI units. At least the mafia showed some respect for life. Some.
Mustafa is prime minister because the previous one failed to deliver on the basics -- protection. That means ending corruption, that means providing jobs, that means providing basic public service, that means reigning in the militias. Mustafa has done none of that.
He's been helped by a press outside of Iraq that has been ignorant (most of the western press) or that has been willing to whore for him because they had a relationship with him -- never disclosed in the glowing pieces about what a great job he's doing -- prior to his becoming prime minister. Mustafa, as a journalist, worked for a large number of outlets who praise him today.
He's not popular within Iraq. That's why he's been desperately forming alliances. That's why I think Nouri al-Maliki has a real shot at returning to power. (Nouri returning to power would be very bad for Iraq based on what he's done in the past.) Nouri's made some cosmetic changes -- aware that his anti-women positions hurt him, he's now working overtime to get female members of his State of Law in the front of the Iraqi press. I see no indication that this -- or any of his measures -- are more than window dressing but, as always, I could be wrong and it is possible that his return might be beneficial.
In the 2010 elections, Nouri couldn't even win a plurality of votes for his group. Iraqiya beat him. He was the sitting prime minister and he had done one bribe after another in the lead up to the election and worked overtime to disqualify various candidates that he saw as a threat to him, to prevent them from even running. And his group still lost to Iraqiya. (How did he get his second term? Ask Joe Biden about The Erbil Agreement. Oh, wait, no one ever does. They let him whine about stolen elections but never press him on how he nullified the votes of the Iraqi people to give Nouri a second term as prime minister that he never won.)
It is not a leap to state that US forces currently in Iraq are in that country at the pleasure and invitation of the prime minister. Yet he's unable to protect them from the militias which, theoretically and on paper, take their orders from him.
The situation is much muddier but that's your quick walk through. And based on the above, even if the US was hauled before the international court next week -- it won't be -- those sitting in judgment would picture themselves in the same situation and have an understanding and sympathy towards the argument of self-defense.
[The argument above wouldn't work for Syria for a number of reasons -- obvious even to me. They would include that the US operations are opposed by the leader of Syria.]
The other flaunting stupidity is, sadly, Bill Van Auken. From his nonsense:
Ostensibly, both Monday’s and February’s attacks were carried out in retaliation against attacks on US bases inside Iraq by Iranian-backed Iraqi militias hostile to the nearly two-decade-long American occupation. In February, the Pentagon cited a rocket that was fired at the US base in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital of Erbil. The latest airstrikes were justified as a response to militia attacks using drones against several targets, including a secret CIA facility.
One of the remarkable characteristics of the latest attacks is their failure to elicit any significant response or analysis, much less criticism, from within the US media and political establishment. A US president attacking two countries on the same day, in flagrant violation of international law and with no legal authorization from the US Congress, barely makes the news. Leading Democrats and Republicans both praised the action, with some suggesting that further aggression was in order against Iran.
As Phoebe said on FRIENDS, "Hello, Kettle. This is Monica. You're black."
Is there silence, Bill? Silence about attacks destroying lives?
You mean like the silence -- the ongoing silence -- about what's being done to the Kurds by Turkey? I saw that one weak ass article by WSWS because it was sent by WSWS to the public e-mail account. That was about a Kurd in a Turkey. It didn't change the fact that WSWS remains silent, to this day, on the Turkish War Planes bombing the Kurdistan Region. On the civilians killed. On Turkey using a drone to attack a refugee camp. On Turkey sending in ground forces -- sending them into Iraq. Building military bases in Iraq. All of this without the public consent of the Iraqi government. And don't forget how they're now helping to destroy the planet as they 'clear' areas by taking down all of the forests in Northern Iraq -- they might be 'hiding' terrorists -- bad forests.
Don't talk about silence, Bill, it's not a look that works for you while you're at WSWS.
In fairness to Bill, he's usually an honest broker and it's apparently policy that WSWS not recognize the Kurds and their suffering. I have no idea why, take it up with WSWS. My point being, I do get that his hands are tied in what he can write. But for any of us who've been following WSWS' long silence on the assault on the Kurds, we're not going to take Bill's article seriously as a result.
Glenn Greenwald (SUBSTACK) offers his thoughts on the bombing:
Beyond the propagandistic justification is the question of legality, though even to call it a question dignifies it beyond what it merits. There is no conceivable Congressional authorization — none, zero — to Biden's dropping of bombs in Syria. Obama's deployment of CIA operatives to Syria and years of the use of force to overthrow Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad never had any Congressional approval of any kind, nor did Trump's bombing of Assad's forces (urged by Hillary Clinton, who wanted more), nor does Biden's bombing campaign in Syria now. It was and is purely lawless, illegal. And the same is true of bombing Iraq. The 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) in Iraq, which the House just last week voted to repeal, has long since ceased to provide any legal justification for ongoing U.S. troop presence and bombing campaigns in that country.
In its statement justifying the bombing raids, Biden's Pentagon barely even bothered to pretend any of this is legal. It did not cite either the 2002 AUMF for Iraq or the 2001 AUMF authorizing the use of force against those responsible for 9/11 (a category which, manifestly, did not include Iran, Iraq or Syria). Instead, harkening back to the days of John Yoo and Dick Cheney, the Biden Defense Department claimed that “as a matter of international law, the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense,” and casually asserted that “as a matter of domestic law, the President took this action pursuant to his Article II authority to protect U.S. personnel in Iraq."
Those claims are nothing short of a joke. Nobody seriously believes that Joe Biden has congressional authority to bomb Syria and Iraq, nor to bomb “Iranian-backed” forces of any kind. As The Daily Beast's long-time War on Terror reporter Spencer Ackerman put it on Sunday night, discussions of legality at this point are "parody” because when it comes to the U.S.'s Endless Wars in the name of the War on Terror, “we passed Lawful behind many many years ago. Authorization citations are just pretexts written by lawyers who need to pantomime at lawfulness. The U.S. presence in Syria is blatantly illegal. Such things never stop the U.S.”
That is exactly right. The U.S. government is a lawless entity. It violates the law, including its own Constitution, whenever it wants. The requirement that no wars be fought absent congressional authority is not some ancillary bureaucratic annoyance but was completely central to the design of the country. Article I, Section 8 could not be clearer: “The Congress shall have Power . . . to declare war.”
Those are his thoughts and the above is the closest he really comes to a legal analysis.
I disagree with him. I get his point and would've made it myself a decade ago. Time does move on. And Congress has done nothing. If you repeatedly abdicate your power, you no longer have it.
More to the point, we've allowed the position of 'commander in chief' to grow to such epic proportions that any claim Joe wants to make regarding the US military and its actions overseas can be critiqued, can even be legally challenged but show no real shot at leading to a win in the courts. Legal analysis requires not just knowledge of the law but also knowledge of the courts and how they rule. They give presidents a wide swath when it comes to the role of commander in chief.
Glenn's piece is worth reading and I do share his righteous dismay. But when Congress has abdicated for so long, it would require real effort for them to retake the powers the Constitution grants them. They don't have the energy or desire to demonstrate a real effort.
Am I cynical? Jaded? Probably.
I'm also tired of nonsense.
I love Ajamu Baraka but this Tweet is pure nonsense:
No, the Iraqi government did not demand that. Some members of the Parliament demanded it -- you didn't have enough members present at the session for a quorum -- and that would be a bit like Ajamu Tweeting that the US government demanded something happen when it was really the GOP minority in Congress.
Reality, they had a teleconference this year about the status of US forces in Iraq. That teleconference could have resulted in the Iraqi government demanding that US forces leave. That is not what happened. They are redefining the relationship.
So Ajamu's Tweets is just useless and he should probably expand his range of sources. To many in the US have bought that nonsense because outlets like ANTIWAR.COM have pimped it.
As someone who has spent way too much time on the Iraq War, I would love for the war to be ended and for all US troops to come hom.
But it's lies that keep the US troops there. And those lies include that the 'Iraqi government' wants US troops out.
I'm also real damn tired of the lies that protect the Iraqi government and celebrate it. It's not helping the people. It's failed the people. Iraq remains a failed state. The militias target everyone -- including the journalists.
The following sites updated:
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Margaret Atwood's THE HANDMAID'S TALE9 hours ago
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More fake asses9 hours ago
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Dragon Man9 hours ago
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Carl Nassib9 hours ago
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Leave Kevin Space alone10 hours ago
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George Ezra10 hours ago
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AMERICAN DAD10 hours ago
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Early to bed . . . makes Joe cranky10 hours ago
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TO MY EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS12 hours ago
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Spacey Jane, 'Lots Of Nothing'18 hours ago
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