High drug prices are very unpopular, right? Of course they are! So, naturally, President Trump, visionary that he is, wants to replace the disgraced former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price with big pharma CEO Alex Azar -- whom, among other things, oversaw the doubling of insulin prices at Eli Lilly USA over a five-year period. But he's the bigliest person for the job of running Medicaid and Medicare and setting executive branch health care policy! Mr. Azar also served in Tha Bush Mobb's HHS back in the day, but surely that isn't a selling point, not just because you don't want "worked for Tha Bush Mobb" on your résumé, but because the revolving door between our government and big corporations is almost as popular as high drug prices. You know what else is unpopular? Weakened drug safety standards, but guess what Mr. Azar also supports. Hence both Public Citizen and Social Security Works help you tell your Senators to reject Mr. Azar as the next Health and Human Services Secretary.
Meanwhile, in a related note, the National Women's Law Center helps you tell the Trump Administration to rescind its order allowing certain corporations to evade the federal birth control coverage mandate for "religious" (or "moral"!) reasons. As I've been saying for a long time, a boss's "religious beliefs" aren't better than yours or mine, and certainly not more so than their employees, and I also won't abide unctuous pronouncements that they pay the money, they get their say -- I could just as easily argue that the boss's employees pay for their own health care in lost wages, or that the boss's customers pay for employee's health care, either of which would put decision-making power in better hands. And how many times must I tell these pimps! Birth control not only saves all of us money, it prevents abortions. Not too many years ago, a few Republicans remained who would remind us that birth control prevents abortions. And even if they've all lost their elections to rageheads since then, it's no less true.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Department of Justice to reject the proposed Bayer-Monsanto merger, then ActionAid USA still helps you do that. Where to begin with this monstrosity? With the fact that letting Bayer buy it lets Monsanto bury its notorious name? With the merger giving the resulting behemoth a quarter of the world seed market, which could help create a world where a mere three megacorporations control more than three-fifths of that market? With the fact that control of the seed market in fewer corporate hands gives small farmers (whom Monsanto prevents from replanting saved seed year over year, I kid you not) fewer choices? With the fact that seed concentration almost guarantees that multitudinous species of seed will go extinct because they "don't make money"? With the fact that it would make more of these farmers dependent on genetically-modified seed, seed manufactured not to increase yields but to withstand proprietary pesticides? Seriously, I have no idea where to start with this. I guess you can just pick a spot.
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