We want to begin by asking citizens to look a few decades down the road at what LIVING NEAR YOUR WORK will look like as we described global corporate campuses and global factories looking nothing like today's Baltimore row houses on campuses looking like today's Johns Hopkins or UMMS.  The earliest start of far-right wing global banking 1% policy is gradual but will end looking 180 degrees from today's societal ideas of LIVING NEAR YOUR WORK.

First, we want to address the low-income housing structure tied to LIVE NEAR YOUR WORK.  We have shouted for a decade against our 99% global labor pool immigrants being controlled by labor brokers with workers forced to move constantly living in housing that was substandard-----maybe no heating or lighting----still under construction or rehabbing and not safe for living.  This labor broker chop shop structure has now extended from our 99% global labor pool to our US citizens poor and working class wanting only shelter and steady employment.  As we stated, the subprime mortgage loan frauds have been tied to these dynamic labor broker chop shops making these housing situations even worse for community members wanting a stable tenet/homeowner anchor in communities.  Do we not like our US citizens as low-income workers? 

OF COURSE WE DO AND WE WANT THEM LIVING IN STANDARD HOUSING FOR A LONG-TERM.

So, what was SECTION 8 looks to have become chop shop housing operated by labor brokers who are generally tied to US city political machines and those 5% to the 1%  black, white, and brown freemason/Greeks.

These chop shops are the lower-income end of LIVE NEAR YOUR WORK.  The percentage of US workforce being tied to these chop shop housing structures is growing as fast as US citizens are pushed into poverty.


The Live Near Your Work Benefit


Live Near Your Work is a homebuying incentive for individuals working in Baltimore City. Incentives are funded partially by employers and partially by the City of Baltimore. Funds can be used toward your downpayment or closing costs associated with the purchase of a home in Baltimore City.

Am I eligible?Over 100 employers have signed on to participate in the Live Near Your Work program. If yours is found in the list below: Congratulations! You can likely claim this benefit.


Contact your HR department or benefits manager for assistance in applying for the Live Near Your Work incentive. If you are unsure of the contact for your company, reach out to Liz Koontz, Live Baltimore's Employer Outreach Manager, at 410-637-3750 x114 or by email.
Please note that some employers place restrictions on their Live Near Your Work benefit, including, but not limited to: length of employment, job title, and location of purchase.


What if my employer isn't listed?Many companies are receptive to employees' requests for this program. Contact Liz Koontz, Live Baltimore's Employer Outreach Manager, at 410-637-3750 x114 or by email for assistance in speaking with your employer.

__________________________________________


The subprime mortgage loan frauds are targeting houses at $400,000 ---$600,000 this allows an ARTIFICIAL RISE in property value. Add to this all the selective and targeted tax and cash back incentives and we see a house selling for $279,000 would end costing $200,000.
We want to begin by asking citizens to look a few decades down the road at what LIVING NEAR YOUR WORK will look like as we described global corporate campuses and global factories looking nothing like today's Baltimore row houses on campuses looking like today's Johns Hopkins or UMMS. The earliest start of far-right wing global banking 1% policy is gradual but will end looking 180 degrees from today's societal ideas of LIVING NEAR YOUR WORK.


First, we want to address the low-income housing structure tied to LIVE NEAR YOUR WORK. We have shouted for a decade against our 99% global labor pool immigrants being controlled by labor brokers with workers forced to move constantly living in housing that was substandard-----maybe no heating or lighting----still under construction or rehabbing and not safe for living. This labor broker chop shop structure has now extended from our 99% global labor pool to our US citizens poor and working class wanting only shelter and steady employment. As we stated, the subprime mortgage loan frauds have been tied to these dynamic labor broker chop shops making these housing situations even worse for community members wanting a stable tenet/homeowner anchor in communities. Do we not like our US citizens as low-income workers?


OF COURSE WE DO AND WE WANT THEM LIVING IN STANDARD HOUSING FOR A LONG-TERM.


So, what was SECTION 8 looks to have become chop shop housing operated by labor brokers who are generally tied to US city political machines and those 5% to the 1% black, white, and brown freemason/Greeks.


These chop shops are the lower-income end of LIVE NEAR YOUR WORK. The percentage of US workforce being tied to these chop shop housing structures is growing as fast as US citizens are pushed into poverty.

We have an entire generation of Baltimore citizens having been forced to play these few decades of ROBBER BARON frauds these real estate games. Many do not even know what EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESS HOUSING laws and diversity community policies used to create stable housing for citizens and creating stable communities----looks like.

Baltimore homes sales, prices continued to climb in June

Sarah GantzContact Reporter
The Baltimore Sun  July 12, 2017


Baltimore-area home sales and prices continued to climb in June as inventory dwindled.


Just more than 4,500 home sales closed in June, at a median price of $279,400, up 1.6 percent from the median sale price for the same month last year, according to a new report by ShowingTime.


Meanwhile, June marked the 21st consecutive month of declining inventory. Despite 5,851 new listings during the month, total active inventory was down 12.6 percent from June of last year, according to the monthly report, which is based on listing activity from MRIS, a division of the multiple listing service Bright MLS.


Tight inventory has benefited Baltimore’s lesser-known neighborhoods, as prospective home buyers are forced to expand their search, said Annie Milli, executive director of Live Baltimore, a nonprofit that promotes the benefits of living in Baltimore City.


“The neighborhoods seeing the most increase in activity are not the usual suspects,” Milli said. “When these neighborhoods do well, we see it as an indicator that buyers are comfortable expanding their search areas.”


When buyers can’t find what they’re looking for in the city’s more popular neighborhoods, they branch out to the adjacent areas.
From Baltimore to Florida to California and between — view photos of celebrity homes.


For example, Better Waverly in Northeast Baltimore has seen an uptick in sales as buyers fail to find a home in nearby Ednor Gardens, which has long been an in-demand neighborhood, Milli said.
Fourteen homes sold in Better Waverly in the first half of the year, compared to four sales in the same period last year, according to an analysis by Live Baltimore.


Across the city, 985 home sales closed, up 7.8 percent from June of last year. The median list price rose 5.8 percent from last year, to $154,950.


Carroll County saw the greatest increase in home sales and median sale price.
There, home sales were up 8.2 percent from the year before. The median sale price, $299,000, rose 7 percent from June of last year.


The steady march in home sales and prices shows continued buyer demand, despite declining inventory, said Jonathan Hill, a spokesman for MRIS.
“It shows the market is stable,” Hill said. “The market shows continued growth. There are still drivers in the market, buyer demand is still making appreciation of prices possible.”


Homes spent less time on the market and sold closer to their list prices, as buyers continued to scoop up new listings.


Homes spent a median of 19 days on the market in June, down from 22 days in the year-ago period.
Closing prices were, on average, 96.6 percent of the list price, up from 96.1 percent of list price last year, according to the report.


__________________________________________

When Baltimore City creates ARTIFICIAL housing value every which way but loose------it kills the ability of Baltimore long-term homeowners to get a return as this article states. Those new homeowners getting all kinds of subsidy bringing a $275,000 house not actually valued at that price down to a $200,000 closing cost will be paying HIGHER TAXES then the house is worth.

These new homeowners are always told to think of property values growing over a few decades but-----what downtown communities will look like as INDUSTRIALIZATION along the PORT OF BALTIMORE soars----is de-valuation.

Since global banking 1% are staging a few billion global labor pool filling our US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES-----waiting for those global corporate factories to be built------the chop shop labor broker housing will continue for our low-income citizens constantly tied to these VERY BAD EMPLOYMENT/HOUSING structures. If MOVING FORWARD continues with Greater Baltimore becoming nothing but miles of global corporate factories----then the chop shop will become factory dormitories. That is for what global Wall Street Baltimore Development is growing towards.......

Of course in the process of filling these US cities with global labor pool 99% ----today's US 99% caught in this system will be made EX-PATS facing third world global factory housing.

Incentives & Neighborhoods

The Johns Hopkins entity that employs you and the geographic location where you purchase a home determine the Live Near Your Work grant amount you are eligible to receive.

So, is a Baltimore citizen shouting against this kind of development a 'traitor' to city planning? OF COURSE NOT. Development of each Baltimore community can easily be done WITH JUSTICE under legal and honest goals. To FIX BALTIMORE is to get rid of these housing schemes meant to scam 99% of citizens tied to real estate.



Baltimore home sellers see low return on investment, Zillow finds

Sarah GantzContact Reporter

The Baltimore Sun  Oct 3, 2017



“All of this slow steady growth is very positive to me because it’s sustainable,” said Annie Milli, executive director of Live Baltimore, which promotes home ownership in the city. “We’re growing at a rate that our residents can really come along.”


Baltimore homeowners who sold their property last year didn’t get much of a return on their investment — just $5,000 more than they paid, according to a new report from Zillow.


The return on investment for a home sold in Baltimore in 2016 was 5.4 percent — the lowest among 33 cities studied by Zillow, a real estate database company.


Sellers last year in some West Coast cities saw percentage gains more than 10 times higher than in Baltimore, as high growth in technology jobs continues to drive up their home values, sales and the general cost of living.


Oakland, Calif., topped the list with a 78 percent gain, followed by Portland, Ore., at 64.7 percent and San Jose, Calif., at 56.5 percent. The highest East Coast cities were No. 8 Philadelphia at 51.7 percent and No. 10 Boston at 49.6 percent.


But in Baltimore, a slower recovery in the housing market resulted in lower return on investment, said Aaron Terrazas, a senior economist with Zillow.
“The general state of the housing market, it h

as not recovered to the same degree as other housing markets have,” he said.


Some don’t necessarily see that as bad news.
“All of this slow steady growth is very positive to me because it’s sustainable,” said Annie Milli, executive director of Live Baltimore, which promotes home ownership in the city. “We’re growing at a rate that our residents can really come along.”


The average home sale price in Baltimore last year was $167,473, up 8.42 percent from the year before, according to MarketStats by ShowingTime, which tracks residential home sales in the area.


Baltimore home sellers also sold their homes more quickly than in some markets that saw more appreciation — just short of three and a half years before selling, according to Zillow.


That could be a reflection of more young and first-time homebuyers, as well as investment properties being bought, renovated and put back on the market in short period of time, Terrazas said.


Meanwhile, in the West Coast cities that topped Zillow’s list, he said, owners stayed in their homes between seven and nine years before selling, which could be a sign of more mature buyers who are purchasing homes they plan to stay in for a long time.

__________________________________________

When we see Baltimore LIVE or any of global Wall Street Baltimore Development 'labor and justice' organizations promote this idea of reduced property taxes----we see BALTIMORE LIVE saying as of 2013 as much as a 30% drop in property taxes will be phased in------we already know that drop in property taxes is tied with a residential community being handed over to a global corporation.  The drop in property taxes goes to the corporation.  Meanwhile, those NEW HOMEOWNERS in gentrifying communities thinking they are getting a deal on INFLATED HOME PRICES coming with tax breaks and cash back ----will see their property taxes soar to replace all this community real estate changing from residential to corporate with no taxation for corporations.

THERE IS NO GOAL OF DROPPING BALTIMORE PROPERTY TAXES ON HOMEOWNERS.

When new homeowners in Baltimore live a few years in our communities and see no real attempts at development---see the corruption and third world level of public services no longer public----and those tax breaks expire---they sell that house too early to get a return on investment.  This happens over and over and over.  DON'T WORRY SAYS BALTIMORE MAYOR PUGH----WE WILL BRING NEW PEOPLE TO BALTIMORE.  Indeed, now it is those high-skilled global labor pool 99% being tied to these housing scams.

WHEN THE GOAL OF DOWNTOWN AND CITY CENTRAL IS INDUSTRIALIZATION AND MASSIVE GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES-----THERE WILL BE NO PROPERTY VALUE CLIMB.

The goal is having a small US city center filled with global 1% and their 2% and until MOVING FORWARD MASSIVE GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS AND GLOBAL FACTORIES are installed, our working and middle-class trying to be homeowners are going to lose over and over again.  This will be only a few decades-----so, a constant turnover of housing making Baltimore communities dynamic without stable, steady family homeowners/tenets.


This is a MASTER PLAN in place since late 1980s---90s-----all media and 5% black, white, and brown pols and players KNOW the goals and these media discussions allowing pols to pretend there is affordable housing with tax relief in the future are LYING, CHEATING, AND STEALING the dream of home-ownership.

What to do about Baltimore’s high taxes


By Len Lazarick October 6, 2015
A version of this article runs in this month’s Business Monthly serving Howard and Anne Arundel counties.
By Len Lazarick


Len@MarylandReporter.com


What to do about Baltimore’s high taxes?


It is an old question perplexing Maryland political leaders, but with new urgency. And there have been precious few new answers.


Fifty years ago, more than 900,000 people lived in Baltimore, a third of the population of Maryland. Over that half-century, that population has gone down by a third to 622,000, meaning almost as many people left Baltimore as live in all of Howard County today.


The people who remain are poorer and concentrated in those same areas as those shown in a redlining map from the 1930s. The head of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council showed that map to a Howard County Chamber of Commerce lunch at Baltimore’s Horseshoe Casino in July. The mortgage lending maps of the 1930s reinforced the racial segregation of Baltimore more than 80 years ago.


As Baltimore began to lose population in the 1960s, especially after the 1968 riots (which were much more widespread than the uprising this spring), one of the things city leaders did to maintain public services was to raise property taxes.


But as taxes went up, the population went down.


Double the rate


Now, Baltimore has a property tax rate of $2.248 per $100, more than twice as high as any in the state. That high rate is among one of the many factors holding the city’s population from growing again. By comparison, Baltimore County’s rate is half that at $1.10; Howard County’s is $1.014, and many other counties are under $1.00, including Anne Arundel, Montgomery and Prince George’s.


City officials know this, but have only been able to trim the rate by pennies. To make up for these exorbitant rates and attract new development to the city, they have granted big tax breaks to developers willing to build major new projects in the city, particularly the now bustling Harbor East area.


These tax breaks have created a major divide in the city, with new developments paying lower property taxes and older areas paying the same high rates. What to do about them was the subject of debate last month sponsored by the Maryland Public Policy Institute, a free market-oriented think tank.


Cutting the tax rate


The debate was not about whether to cut Baltimore’s property tax rate, but how much to cut it and how soon.
“Any cut is better than none; a bigger cut is better than a small cut,” said Louis Miserendino, a visiting fellow at the institute and director of the McMullen Scholars Program at Calvert Hall College High School.


He said Baltimore should follow the examples of San Francisco and Boston, which drastically cut their taxes to spur a revival in city living.


“Baltimore taxes are way too high,” agreed Matt Gallagher, head of the Goldseker Foundation and former chief of staff to Gov. Martin O’Malley.


Gallagher also headed Mayor O’Malley’s CitiStat program, and he brought a note of political and governing reality to the discussion at the University of Baltimore’s new Angelos Law School building.


Hmmmm, Baltimore is soaked in US Treasury and state municipal bond debt tied to Baltimore tax revenues during O'Malley's terms-----O'Malley worried about taxes being too high?  REALLY?


Miserendino suggested that there should be a statewide cap on property taxes at 1.5%, a move which would only affect Baltimore property taxpayers. This would attract more people to live in the city and contribute to the state’s smart growth policies encouraging new development where infrastructure already exists. State taxpayers would then make up the difference in Baltimore’s lost revenues, much as California did for San Francisco in the 1970s, Miserendino said.


Wishful thinking


However, Gallagher said, “It’s wishful thinking that the state would fund this.
“We would have done it if we thought it could be done,” said Gallagher.


Gallagher’s solution is small cuts in the city property tax every single year on a predictable basis so that someone buying a home would know that their tax rate would gradually be going down. He also suggested renegotiating the deals the city has with the owners of one-third of city property that is not taxed at all, because it is owned by nonprofit institutions, in particular The Johns Hopkins University and Medical Institutions, and the University of Maryland. They already make some payments in lieu of taxes to the city.


Gallagher also pointed to major differences between Baltimore’s situation and that of San Francisco and Boston, particularly Baltimore’s “high concentrations of poor people” and the amount of money it spends on police: $450 million a year. (Baltimore has more police officers per citizen (46.3 per 10,000) than all but one major U.S. city, Newark, N.J.)


Jody Landers, a former City Council member who ran for mayor, suggested that Baltimore adopt the tiered property tax rates of the District of Columbia, which charges a much higher property tax rate for commercial real estate than it does for owner-occupied residential property. Washington, which had had a lower population than Baltimore for the last 60 years, now has 46,000 more people.


What it gets


Gallagher did not lay out the reasons that that the state would not help lower Baltimore’s tax rate, but most state legislators are well aware that Baltimore gets more state aid per capita than any other jurisdiction, at $1,953 — compared to a statewide average of $1,189. Most suburban counties get far less money back than their taxpayers pay the state.


In addition, the state spends $193 million to run the Baltimore City jail, central booking and its community college, which are functions other jurisdictions pay for themselves.


Hogan’s plans

Last month, Gov. Larry Hogan announced in a Baltimore Sun op-ed piece that his administration would be announcing “a series of innovative ideas that have the potential to deliver real change” for Baltimore.


These included “a plan to knock down blocks of derelict buildings that tarnish communities across Baltimore, replacing them with parks and other open spaces.” There already is such a program in Baltimore that O’Malley helped finance, but presumably Hogan is proposing to do it on a larger scale. Sun columnist Dan Rodricks responded, “send money, not a bulldozer,” which Republicans called a typical liberal reaction.


Hogan also promised a sustainable jobs program, and an alternative to the Red Line light rail project he rejected in June.


“My Transportation secretary, Pete Rahn, will unveil a new approach to transit that includes ideas to better move people around Baltimore, including dedicated corridors to rapidly move people East-West and North-South,” Hogan said.


Finally on education, Hogan promised, “My administration will vigorously pursue and support approaches to education that reject the status quo in order to make a real difference for students.”


The state already sends $913 million to Baltimore for its public schools, $11,310 per pupil, thousands more per student than all but the state’s smallest, poorest counties get. The city itself contributes a lower percentage of the school budget than any other jurisdiction.


For the moment, these are just generalities from Hogan. Since he continues to promise to cut taxes and spending, the city cannot expect a massive infusion of funds.

____________________________________________

Today, LIVING WHERE YOU WORK is seeing HOPKINS and UMMS for example,  both are BIOTECH corporations expanding to building global PHARMA factories for example with headquarters in those global factory campuses and downtown UMMS/UnderArmour will be only industrial/global resort no longer needing LIVING WHERE YOU WORK----that structure is now in counties tied to whatever global foreign global factory these corporations partner with.

So, LIVE WHERE YOU WORK becomes Chinese-style FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES global corporate campus and global factory dormitory housing.

Who will be living in today's downtown and city center where all these real estate scams pretend to be gentrifying for middle-affluent class homeowners?  Those global 1% and their 2%. 

Rather than be soaked in taxes, fees, fines, property values artificially controlled at a whim by global Baltimore Development and global hedge fund IVY LEAGUE Johns Hopkins-----99% WE THE PEOPLE must rebuild each Baltimore community with local small business economies, real mixed-income housing by removing corporations from our HUD/BALTIMORE HOUSING AND DEVELOPMENT PUBLIC AGENCIES.

'Those bonds are to be repaid through new revenue generated on the property'.

As we see above, bonds to be repaid by new revenue generated on the property.  This means of course no revenue will be going into Baltimore City coffers.  This building as well is easily converted into corporate space as BIOTECH facility grows. 

THIS IS NOT REAL AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT.

Each new development----East Baltimore Johns Hopkins, Harbor East, now UMMS, Cove Point UnderArmour comes with these revenue structures -----all taxes that would be paid to stabilize greater Baltimore are captured to only these individual corporate campuses. As these sets of NEW APARTMENTS are made corporate office space what was affordable housing ---disappears.

New apartments in Poppleton get underway

Natalie ShermanContact ReporterThe Baltimore Sun Feb 23, 2017

Baltimore leaders are scheduled to gather Thursday to celebrate the start of construction of a new multimillion-dollar apartment building in Poppleton near the University of Maryland BioPark.


The project, part of a planned $460 million, 33-acre redevelopment, has been in the works for more than a decade, as the city acquired hundreds of properties for the site and the developer weathered the recession to secure financing. At one point, the two sides sparred in court over delays to the project, which is supposed to rebuild the area as the University of Maryland, Baltimore spreads.


The first phase is a six-story complex on Schroeder Street with about 260 apartments, 19,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, a dog park and a plaza in front of the historic Poe House. Most of the building's units will be market-rate, but about 20 percent are expected to be subsidized.

Two New York firms, La Cite Development and BRP Development Corp., are the developers for this part of the project, which was estimated in 2015 at more than $70 million. KeyBank Real Estate Capital provided $56.1 million in FHA-insured financing for the first phase. Baltimore also agreed in November to issue $12 million in bonds for infrastructure. Those bonds are to be repaid through new revenue generated on the property.

______________________________________________
Each new development----East Baltimore Johns Hopkins, Harbor East, now UMMS, Cove Point UnderArmour comes with these revenue structures -----all taxes that would be paid to stabilize greater Baltimore are captured to only these individual corporate campuses. As these sets of NEW APARTMENTS are made corporate office space what was affordable housing ---disappears. Here we see the partnerships overseas that will become those BIOTECH GLOBAL FACTORIES branching off from a HOPKINS going NORTH and from a UMMS going NORTH...............................

'The Chinese pharma company JHL Biotech opened its own KUBio plant in May in Wuhan, China'. Image credit: GE Healthcare Life Sciences'


'Biologics
Think Inside The Box: Pfizer Will Use GE’s Mobile Biotech Factory To Make Next-Generation Drugs In China
Jun 30, 2016 by Mark Egan'

No doubt with GE AND PFIZER building their global PHARMA BIOTECH in Chinese FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----then US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES will bring these CHINESE GLOBAL PHARMA FACTORIES to partner with Johns Hopkins and UMMS BioTech Parks.


This is the goal of MOVING FORWARD in Baltimore and what we are told are affordable housing or GENTRIFYING communities will end being covered with these Chinese global PHARMA factories tied to manufacturing BIOLOGICS.  General Electric has created a MOBILE factory----modeled on our US meth labs no doubt----to drop these facilities into any Chinese community for of course $2-6 LABOR with worker dormitories of course.

Keep in mind, while Baltimore City council allows these bond deals to capture all revenue generated in these NEW COMMUNITIES to stay in those communities-----the 99% of Baltimore citizens paying taxes at the highest rate in Maryland see those taxes go to these same NEW CORPORATE communities-----and not their communities.



Jul 24, 2013 @ 06:13 AM 52,082 2 Free Issues of Forbes


China's Top Pharmaceutical Companies In 2012 (List)


Russell Flannery , Forbes Staff

Unlike Chinese Internet companies that generally get good press, the country's pharmaceutical makers often seem to be in the news only when something bad happens.  Yet the industry is one of the world’s largest.  The China National Pharmaceutical Industry Information Center earlier this month posted a list of the industry’s largest businesses ranked by the value of their production for last year.   The list named companies, but didn't provide their associated production values. Here's the top 25: 



1. Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings
  
2. Xiuzheng Pharmaceutical
 
3. Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Group
  
4. Harbin Pharmaceutical Group Holding
 
5. Weigao Holding
   
6. North China Pharmaceutical Group
  
7. CSPC Pharmaceutical Group
   
8. China National Pharmaceutical Group  

9. Bayer BAYRY +0% HealthCare China
  
10. Shanghai Pharmaceuticals SHPMY +0% Holding
  
11. Kangmei Pharmaceutical
   
12. Hangzhou East China Pharmaceutical Group
 
13. Pfizer PFE +1.18%
    
14. Qilu Pharmaceutical
   
15. Shanghai Roche Holding RHHBY +0%
    
16. Buchang Pharma
    
17. China Yuanda Group

   
18. Sichuan Kelun Pharmaceutical
  
19. China Resources Sanjiu Medical and Pharmaceutical

20. Furen Pharmaceutical Group
  
21. Novo Nordisk
   
22. Yunnan Baiyao Group
   
23. Sanofi (Hangzhou)
     
24. Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine
  
25. Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group
 
      -- with Nancy He

We will discuss housing public policy this week as we see below our seniors in Canada and US are under attack as global banking 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA hand all that is senior health housing and health after care to global investment firms---whether hitting Asian 99% or US/Canada 99% of citizens.
IT'S ALL SIMPLY MONEY AND PROFITEERING OFF US OLD FOLKS!

Below we see where a TRADE DEAL supposedly keeps a Canadian government from stepping in to stop this abuse of Chinese senior citizens in a CANADIAN FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE in British Columbia.  This is of course the same thing happening in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.


Trade Deal Ups Risks in Chinese Firm’s Takeover of Seniors’ Care Giant


FIPA means province could be blocked from improving care standards for residents.


By Scott Sinclair and Stuart Trew 27 Feb 2017 | TheTyee.ca

'The state of support for seniors in British Columbia is already shameful.

Mackenzie’s annual review found only 15 per cent of facilities were meeting the guideline of 3.36 hours of direct care per resident per day — an improvement over the previous year'.

'The ripple effect of #XiJinping seizing control of Chinese global giant #Anbang, amid corruption&fraud charges, is felt across the #PacificRim. @paulwillcocks @TheTyee: How the #Chinese Government Took Control of #BritishColumbia Seniors’ Homes'


And here is that MENTAL HEALTH super-sized funding by Obama and Clinton neo-liberals in Affordable Care Act at work just the way we KNOW it was meant to


'Perhaps as a result, “25 per cent of residents were prescribed antipsychotic medications without a diagnosis of psychosis,” Mackenzie noted. Almost half — 48 per cent — were on antidepressants, even though only 24 per cent had been diagnosed with depression'.




How the Chinese Government Took Control of BC Seniors’ Homes

And why the Anbang saga is a symbol of our indifference to seniors’ support.

By Paul Willcocks Yesterday | TheTyee.ca

Ultimate decisions about 21 B.C. seniors’ residences were made in Anbang’s Beijing headquarters — now controlled by the Chinese government.

Photo by Julien GONG Min, Creative Commons licensed.

Great. The lives of seniors in B.C. care homes, where they are already over-drugged and under-supported, now depend in part on the Chinese government.

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On Friday, Beijing seized control of Anbang Insurance Group, a financial giant with investments around the world. It cited corruption, fraud and a risk the whole $390-billion company could go broke.


Last year, Anbang spent an estimated $1 billion to buy Residential Concepts, which operates 21 seniors homes in British Columbia. It’s the biggest private provider in the province, collecting $87 million from the provincial government in 2015/16.

Anbang has no experience in seniors care. Its finances were murky and ownership so tangled as to be incomprehensible. It offered no promises of additional investment in the company or increased employment. Concerns about its business practices were already widespread.


But to promote its pro-China agenda, the Trudeau government turned a blind eye to the risks — and shifted them to seniors. Ottawa quickly approved the takeover, and the provincial government offered no objections and transferred operating licences to the Chinese company.

Last week’s Chinese government takeover is no surprise. When the sale was debated in the House of Commons, Conservative Mark Strahl asked what would happen “when the Anbang house of cards finally collapses.”

“Are seniors about to find out that their landlord is actually the People’s Republic of China?” the Chilliwack-Hope MP asked.

And that is exactly what seniors and their families have learned.

Why does it matter? The B.C. government went along with the deal because it said Anbang would still have to meet provincial standards.

But if one of the 21 residences needs significant improvements, where will the money come from? Lenders won’t be keen; the managers running Anbang for the Chinese government aren’t likely to let subsidiaries increase debt when they fear it’s already insolvent.

If the Chinese government’s goal is to save Anbang, what pressure will be put on its global properties to deliver more cash, and how will that affect residents? As one small example, Seniors Advocate Isobel Mackenzie reported last month that food costs in seniors’ residences across the province varied from $4.92 to $18.44 a day, averaging $8. Will Chinese government pressure force managers to cut costs on basics?

And if Anbang does end up insolvent, as the Chinese government fears, what happens to Retirement Concepts and its residents? (Retirement Concepts issued a statement saying the “temporary change in management at Anbang will not impact the operations, staff or residents.”)

In a Tyee article last year, Scott Sinclair and Stuart Trew offered their prediction if “the company faces liquidity problems, because it has overpaid for foreign acquisitions, for example, or Chinese regulators clamp down on risky insurance products.” It would then try to extract more money from subsidiaries like Retirement Concepts, they warned.

The state of support for seniors in British Columbia is already shameful.


Mackenzie’s annual review found only 15 per cent of facilities were meeting the guideline of 3.36 hours of direct care per resident per day — an improvement over the previous year.

The number sounds abstract. But the reality is that a lack of staff to meet residents’ needs translates into dramatic reductions in quality of life — sitting in soiled diapers, simply because no one is available to help you to the bathroom, showering once a week or less often. And there is the simple lack of someone to talk to for a few minutes, as overworked staff try to keep residences running.

Perhaps as a result, “25 per cent of residents were prescribed antipsychotic medications without a diagnosis of psychosis,” Mackenzie noted. Almost half — 48 per cent — were on antidepressants, even though only 24 per cent had been diagnosed with depression.

And the government has steadily been reducing the hours of home care support for eligible seniors, even though that is the most cost-effective way to keep them healthy and in their homes.

The Anbang deal is the natural continuation of the BC Liberals’ ideological commitment to hand seniors care over to private companies striving to maximize return for their owners.

A 2017 Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report noted that between 2001 and 2016, the number of long-term care beds provided by non-profits and the health authorities was cut by more than 10 per cent. The number of spaces provided by for-profit companies increased by 42 per cent. BC Liberal policies promoted for-profit care.

Trade Deal Ups Risks in Chinese Firm’s Takeover of Seniors’ Care Giant


Mackenzie’s report suggests that might be good for companies, but bad for seniors. Last year, 33 per cent of facilities owned and operated by a health authority met the care guidelines, hardly a great record. But among contract residences — including the private businesses — the number was four per cent.

The new government took a significant step to address the problem in this month’s budget, providing $548 million over three years “to improve services for seniors across the continuum, including investments in primary care, home and community care, residential care, and assisted living.” A focus will be on ensuring residences, which serve 28,000 people, provide the recommended number of hours of care.

But we have miles to go. And the Anbang saga — especially governments’ willingness to allow a high-risk Chinese takeover of a Canadian business — show how much our attitude to the importance of seniors’ support needs to change.

____________________________________________


We have discussed in detail MOVING FORWARD FAR-RIGHT AUTHORITARIAN DEEP STATE brings these Chinese-style methods of population control and they are being placed under the terms REHABILITATION and THERAPEUTIC.  This segue from public health to housing will come with only a reminder to our seniors and to our pipeline to prison population ------the use of PHARMA will be repressive and repressive.  The rehabilitation of youth and young adults will be dormitory forced labor and the rehabilitation of our seniors will be PHARMA as control towards hospice.  When we see the article below state 'antipsychotic medications' are being used there is always LSD VIRTUAL REALITY therapy to send our seniors off without a clue.

We will note with this article towards housing policy------British Columbia was the first to go ONE WORLD ONE FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE becoming more Asian than British or European and we still see SEGREGATED HOUSING for Asian seniors with the building privatized to OLD WORLD ASIAN MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1%.

Trudeau PRETENDING he has no power to protect these global citizens inside a FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE according to TRADE DEALS. Remember, these TPP deals are illegal and UNCONSTITUTIONAL and can be VOIDED easy peasy.   These conditions of no US Rule of Law inside US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES as here in CANADIAN have been in place these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----global banking 1% are simply MOVING FORWARD with openly ending national sovereignty.




Trade Deal Ups Risks in Chinese Firm’s Takeover of Seniors’ Care Giant

FIPA means province could be blocked from improving care standards for residents.


By Scott Sinclair and Stuart Trew 27 Feb 2017 | TheTyee.ca


The federal government has approved the sale of one of B.C.’s largest seniors’ care home chains to a Beijing-based conglomerate with a “murky” ownership structure, to say the least.

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While the details of Investment Canada’s ruling are still under wraps, a spokesperson for Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains told the Globe and Mail “no issues were raised” by the takeover of Retirement Concepts, which owns 21 seniors residences across B.C., by Cedar Tree Investment, a holding company controlled by China’s Anbang Insurance.


The minister’s benign assessment contrasts sharply with the controversy attending recent Chinese acquisitions in the U.S. and Europe. Over the last year, regulatory concerns have led to the cancellation of more than 30 deals worth $75 billion, according to the Financial Times, including Anbang’s attempted $1-billion acquisition of a landmark California hotel.


Beyond these corporate intrigues — and that awkward Nov. 7 “cash for access” meeting at which host Miaofei Pan “made the case to the prime minister to allow Chinese investment in seniors’ care and real estate development” — Canada’s controversial 2012 investment treaty with China clearly raises some important issues with respect to the takeover.


The first is how the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement provides Cedar Tree, and its Anbang backers, an extrajudicial means to contest new regulations, such as those to protect vulnerable seniors, ensure quality of care or maintain adequate training and staffing levels in the fast-growing private retirement home industry.


Another is how the web of investment protections in the FIPA and similar deals shifts the risk of such cross-border deals going bust from foreign investors to Canadian taxpayers.


Canada’s retirement and long-term care system is under-regulated in many provinces. An investigation by the CTV News show W5 found at least 1,500 cases of staff-to-resident abuse in homes across Canada in 2013, a number the news program claimed to be low due to under-reporting. Retirement Concepts, B.C.’s biggest private provider, has faced complaints in the past, including staffing shortages and the use of subcontracting to fire and then rehire employees at lower wages.


When shareholder profits become a priority for essential services, quality of care tends to decline. A 2016 study by Dr. Margaret McGregor of Vancouver comparing international experiences with long-term care found that for-profit facilities consistently provided poorer service. “There is this conflict of interest between the profit motive and actually spending money on things like staffing,” she said.


Unfortunately, the B.C. government has embraced the private sector rather than look to public or not-for-profit options for meeting increasing demand for seniors’ care.


B.C. Finance Minister Mike de Jong told the Globe and Mail he’s not worried about the sale of Retirement Concepts to a Chinese company, since no matter who owns the service they must follow provincial standards.

OH, REALLY???


But here’s where the FIPA, signed by former prime minister Stephen Harper in 2012 and ratified in 2014, makes an already murky situation even murkier.


As the CCPA and other critics of the investment treaty have pointed out, if an established Chinese investor objects to stronger regulations (e.g., stricter training requirements, staffing levels or standards of care in retirement homes), the FIPA gives it the option to sue the Canadian government before unaccountable tribunals that are outside the Canadian legal system and courts. Such tribunals are not concerned with whether those regulations are consistent with Canadian law and norms, but only whether they were “necessary,” applied in an “arbitrary” manner or violate some other aspect of the FIPA’s broadly worded investor rights.


Deals like Anbang’s takeover of Retirement Concepts add a whole other layer of profit maximization to the private health care sector. As McGregor and Dr. Lisa Ronald explained in a commentary in the Toronto Star, “the likely scenario is that Anbang will lease the properties back to Retirement Concepts, the previous private for-profit owner, who will continue to provide the services.” Anbang’s sole interest is in a stream of rising rents, in large part to finance its wildly popular high-yielding investment products.


You don’t have to be a financial wizard to see that if the company faces liquidity problems, because it has overpaid for foreign acquisitions, for example, or Chinese regulators clamp down on risky insurance products, it must then squeeze its tenants, including Retirement Concepts. This deeply flawed sale-and-lease-back business model led, in 2011, to the bankruptcy and collapse of Southern Cross, Britain’s largest care homes operator with more than 31,000 residents.

When the hard times inevitably hit, provincial regulators must step up standards and enforcement to prevent cost cutting on the backs of seniors.


If a FIPA tribunal were to find that new regulations undermined the value of the company’s investment, Canadian taxpayers would be left holding the bag. For example, requirements to reinvest revenues in improved staffing, training, equipment or facilities could be construed as violating the foreign investor’s right to freely transfer funds back to China or the FIPA’s minimum standard of treatment obligation.


Future moves by the province to reverse direction toward more stable not-for-profit and public delivery of long-term care services can be challenged by Anbang’s Cedar Tree subsidiary as a form of expropriation or violation of the firm’s right to “fair and equitable treatment” under FIPA. Again, the validity of such a claim and the amount of any compensation due will be determined not in Canadian courts, but by a private investment tribunal. Canada is already the most sued developed country under similar rules in NAFTA.


Finally, legislation now before the Senate to implement CETA, the Canada–EU free trade deal, would raise the threshold for reviewing all foreign investments (not just those by European investors) from $600 million to $1.5 billion. In future, a takeover like that of Retirement Concepts, which has been valued at $1 billion, might escape scrutiny altogether.

Breaking Down the Harm to Canada Done by Treaty with China
read more


In that case, the government would not even have the right to put modest (and difficult to enforce) conditions on the new buyer, as Canada has attempted to do in this case.


In the eagerness to portray Canada as open for business and to lock in binding foreign investor rights, we must ask who is looking after the interests of vulnerable groups such as seniors, employees in the private health care sector, or indeed the Canadian taxpayer? A publicly financed, not-for-profit solution to the rising demand for long-term care is by far the better option. It would create high-quality care, decent-paying jobs and benefit from greater accountability.


Unfortunately, Canada’s trade agreements from NAFTA onwards, including FIPA with China and CETA, present real barriers to achieving this. Anbang would be able to sue or threaten to sue Canada for decisions made by B.C. to improve its long-term care system. These extra-judicial rights are not available to domestic companies and certainly not to citizens.


People should be concerned about who is running Canada’s long-term care and retirement homes. There are a lot of issues with providers already — Canadian or otherwise — and we need better regulations to deal with their infractions.


The deal may yet fall through. Various B.C. regional health authorities have still to decide whether operating licences should be granted to the new owners. Opposition parties are questioning why the federal government approved it, with Conservative MP Cathy McLeod asking the House of Commons Thursday why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “put the care of our parents and grandparents at the mercy of profiteers pulling strings from Beijing?”


The rights Anbang and Cedar Tree have under the FIPA to frustrate public interest regulation and shift risk to Canadian taxpayers lend added urgency to that question.

______________________________________________

We usually discuss these senior and pipeline to prison housing issues under civil rights and justice public policy so we simply want what is a huge number of US citizens incarcerated during ZERO TOLERANCE to understand how these NEW INNOVATIVE REHABILITATIVE policies pushed by 5% GREEK JUDGES is tied to what we see with senior housing in Canada soon to be US.

Senior housing is becoming that DORMITORY LIVING as telemedicine becomes the only contact with doctors seniors can access and small dormitory size efficiencies are all they can afford. So too will this same housing be doled to our pipeline to prison rehabilitation citizens----this is what global banking 1% call AFFORDABLE HOUSING. It's all industrial corporate campus control and will be outside all of what US citizens think of as US RULE OF LAW---CIVIL RIGHTS, CIVIL LIBERTIES----US CONSTITUTION.

You will notice that CANADA as US seniors have paid plenty of money into retirements and health savings to live a simply but developed nation quality of life---but those savings have been allowed to be stolen during ROBBER BARON GLOBAL 1% FRAUDS.

The 5% freemason/Greeks will first be handed these 'housing' businesses for seniors and pipeline to prison young adults but the goal will have all that business in the hands of global investment firms. Here in Baltimore all our public housing is already being transferred to global investment firms.



The rare prison-reform documentary that listens to the jailers as well as the jailed18 individuals tell 18 different stories of their experiences within the criminal justice system



Rachel Leah10.26.2017•4:34 PM


The United States' prison population has surpassed 2 million. One in three black men are expected to go to prison in their lifetime, compared to one in 17 white men. One out of every 115 adults, black, white and otherwise, is incarcerated.


The statistics are harrowing, frightening even. But lost in those numbers is the more human notion that America's enormous and expensive prison system is populated and operated by individual, thinking, caring people.


That is what a new film series released today, called "We Are Witnesses," wants viewers to remember. Created by the criminal-justice platform The Marshall Project, in partnership with Participant Media, The New Yorker and Condé Nast Entertainment, "We Are Witnesses" features 18 individuals telling 18 different stories of their experiences with the criminal-justice system.


Marhsall Project founder and "We Are Witnesses" executive producer, Neil Barsky, told Salon that by diving into a series of intimate interviews, the project attempts to "convey the enormity and the tragedy of the criminal justice ecosystem." He calls it "a 360 degree look at the millions and millions of people whose lives are impacted by our system of crime and punishment." 


Yes, that means getting face to face with the prisoners in the system and those who have made their way out of it. But that also means listening to often-unheard voices, ones that may be disquieting to prison reform advocates.


There's the Rikers corrections officer, who relays how terrifying it is to walk the prison's halls, the victims of crime, the retired federal judge overwhelmed by his caseload, and a retired police officer. "I wanted to show that while a system could be corrupt and corrupting, the people involved can be noble," Barsky says. "I don’t see this as a good versus evil institution — mass incarceration — I see it as a perversion of justice."


Some of the stories are more familiar. There's Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in 2014 when he was put in a chokehold. There's the late Venida Browder, the mother of Kalief Browder who committed suicide after he was held in Rikers Island under abominable conditions for three years without trial for allegedly stealing a backpack. There's Yusef Salaam, a member of the wrongfully convicted Central Park Five, innocent teenagers President Donald Trump notoriously wanted put to death.

But then there's also Steve Osborne, a retired NYPD police officer, who tries to convey what it means to be a cop. "There's no room for error," he tells the camera. "Nobody wants to hear that you made a mistake." He counters Erica Garner's viewing of the video of her father's death, defending the officer responsible.


And this happens throughout the films: while many of the stories overlap when it comes to trauma and severity of punishment, others contradict them. "The idea of this, is let the viewer decide," Barsky says. "I still believe that showing all perspectives is a much more powerful way of changing minds."


"We Are Witnesses" isn't trying to draw conclusions for you, but it is urgent to make people understand the personal and national costs of such an ineffective, often inhumane system. "The criminal justice system, by its very nature, isolates and demonizes those behind bars and those guarding them," Barsky says. Nonetheless, he says "I think across the board there’s a growing awareness that mass incarceration should be seen as a crisis, but because it’s been going on for so long, it’s seen as the status quo. 'We Are Witnesses' is one way to address that."

________________________________________________


What we are seeing in stats like this and although these stats always create separate stats for our black 99% these stats and the SKEWED DATA is the same for our 99% white Baltimore citizens. First we notice that what is being called good is not really good. LIVING WAGE has $30,000 a year as poverty line for individuals----it has $58,000 for family of four being poverty line. In Baltimore poverty line for family of four is around $21,000. So, the QUALITY OF LIFE tied to an AMERICAN CITIZEN is falling fast.

We were speaking to a Baltimore woman low-income saying she owned 3 houses. What we have in Baltimore is a growing GLOBAL LABOR POOL LABOR BROKER/CHOP SHOP HOUSING controlled by 5% freemason/Greeks being paid PATRONAGE funds from our pols and global Baltimore Development 'labor and justice' organizations to grow global labor pool and US citizens as global labor pool density. Someone 'owns' a house today and not several years from now. Housing is constantly DYNAMIC.

This home-ownership and self-employed stat is tied to these global labor broker/senior housing policies.

ABSOLUTELY NO EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EQUAL ACCESS HOUSING HAPPENING IN BALTIMORE NOW OR THESE FEW DECADES.

As the subprime mortgage loan targeted our low-income communities of color----so to does this global labor broker/senior care housing.

'No. 4: Baltimore, Md.

Median Household Income: $53,231
Home Ownership Rate: 44.6%
Share Who Are Self-Employed: 17.1%
Change In Population, 2010-16: 4.6%'


As housing in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zone move towards extreme wealth extreme poverty----small city center for global 1% and their 2% we are seeing global corporate campuses with high wealth with our majority of low and working class citizens being in constant flux tied to temporary housing to live or own.

This same housing ownership data skewing these few decades also showed in the subprime mortgage loan frauds where anyone with a pulse was placed into homeownership knowing FORECLOSURE was coming. We can have better GOALS for our 99% of black, white, and brown citizens.




Cities Where African-Americans Are Doing The Best Economically 2018


Joel Kotkin


The 2007 housing crisis was particularly tough on African-Americans, as well as Hispanics, extinguishing much of their already minuscule wealth. Industrial layoffs, particularly in the Midwest, made things worse.

However the rising economic tide of the past few years has started to lift more boats. The African-American unemployment rate fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government started keeping tabs in 1972. Although that’s 3.1 percentage points worse than whites, the gap is the slimmest on record. A tightening labor market since 2015 has also driven up wages of black workers, many of whom are employed in manufacturing and other historically middle and lower-wage service industries.

The gains have not been evenly spread. To determine where African-Americans are faring the best economically, we evaluated America’s 53 largest metropolitan statistical areas based on three critical factors that we believe are indicators of middle-class success: the home ownership rate as of 2016; entrepreneurship, as measured by the self-employment rate in 2017; and 2016 median household income. In addition, we added a fourth category, demographic trends, measuring the change in the African-American population from 2010 to 2016 in these metro areas, to judge how the community is “voting with its feet.” Each factor was given equal weight.
____________________________________________
We will discuss in detail the MOVING FORWARD live where you work to see all US civil rights to housing ---all Federal HUD housing funds tied to equal opportunity and access being thrown aside----although the US Constitution and all the Federal laws require it-----under this global banking 1% TALKING POINT of LIVING WHERE YOU WORK.

Here is NJ TRENTON looking just like MD BALTIMORE installing all these MOVING FORWARD housing policies and look---this is WELLS FARGO-----leading in our US CITY HOUSING after these few decades of being top gun subprime mortgage loan fraud vendor.

WE ARE BEING TOLD LIVING WHERE YOU WORK IS SUSTAINABILITY WHILE IT IS SIMPLY BEING USED BY FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL BANKING 1% TO UNDERMINE ALL US HOUSING POLICY AND LAWS FROM LAST CENTURY.

BUT I WANT TO LIVE IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD! Sorry, we are being sustainable you must work at the global corporate campus to live here.



**************************************************************************


Live Where You Work Trenton

The City of Trenton has partnered with the NJ Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (HMFA) to become the first Live Where You Work community!!

What is Live Where You Work Trenton?



Live Where You Work Trenton is a special home mortgage incentive program that provides low-interest mortgage loans to homebuyers who work in Trenton and who are looking to purchase a home in Trenton. The goal of the program is to...

(1) strengthen our neighborhoods and increase community involvement through homeownership;
(2) attract individuals who work in Trenton to also live in our City; and
(3) develop positive relationships between Trenton and members of the local business and residential communities.

As a result, homebuyers who both work and want to live in Trenton will be able to take advantage of the Live Where You Work program incentives.

What are the benefits of Live Where You Work Trenton?
The primary benefits of Live Where You Work Trenton include:

• Low-interest mortgages for homebuyers
• Downpayment and closing cost assistance for the purchase of a home
• More flexible underwriting criteria for the loan qualification process

Additional incentives are available to homebuyers buying in one of Trenton’s Urban Target Area neighborhoods. To find out if your prospective home falls within Trenton's Urban Target Area neighborhoods, please click on Target Area to confirm. The incentives include the following:

• Homebuyers do not have to be first time homebuyers
• Enhanced maximum income limits and purchase price limits

MAXIMUM INCOME LIMITS

Location

1-2 Family

3+ Household

City wide

$85,400

$98,210

Urban Target Area

$102,480

$119,560

MAXIMUM PURCHASE PRICE LIMITS

Location

New 1 family

New 2 Family

Existing 1 Family

Existing 2 Family

Existing 3 Family

Existing 4 Family

City wide

$395,595

NA

$395,595

$445,563

$541,340

$624,623

Urban Target Area

$483,505

$544,578

$483,505

$544,578

$661,638

$763,428

Where are properties for sale in the City of Trenton?


The City of Trenton would like to offer all prospective buyers an opportunity to research available properties for sale within its city borders. If you would like to research this information further, please feel free to visit our FREE home search tool by clicking on available city properties or visit the HMFA’s Housing Resource Center at http://www.njhousing.gov/ and find out more about available housing opportunities.

In addition, please take a look at new developments impacting our city including the beautiful Goat Hill Development, and other showcase properties!

When can homebuyers begin to take advantage of the program?
Homebuyers can obtain a Live Where You Work mortgage today. Contact 1-800-NJHOUSE for information on participating lenders. In addition, Trenton has partnered with GMAC to bring additional lending benefits to the program.

IS THIS THE GM FINANCIAL ARM THAT WENT BANKRUPT FROM PARTICIPATING IN SUBPRIME MORTGAGE FRAUD?

For more information on the GMAC partnership, please click on GMAC incentive program for further details or contact a GMAC representative at (856) 797-2121.

In addition, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage is an approved lender for the LWYW program, for more information on financing options, contact directly Lillian Hernandez at 609-278-3854 x101 or by mobile 609-658-7607 and click on the logo below.



If you are interested in learning about the Live Where You Work mortgage program, please call 1-800- NJHOUSE or click on Live Where You Work.

____________________________________________
OH, REALLY????


Equal Housing Opportunity - HUD

www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal... What we do. The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity administers federal laws and establishes national policies that make sure all Americans have equal access ...

If cash back on purchase sounds like a global banking product merchandising ploy to deregulate our mortgage lending laws and create so many different lending schemes----COMPLEX FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS------then this is indeed the goal.

Remember, MOVING FORWARD development in our US mid-size cities come first to need more middle/affluent class US and immigrant citizens able to infuse more TAXES, FEES, AND FINES. The US Treasury and municipal bond market fraud has over $12 trillion in bond debt that global banking intends to suck from this coming decade's new urban homeowners. Get them here---get them in a house----then forget all those INCENTIVES.

Baltimore has had a global market DYNAMIC to its population these few decades leaving communities to fail and never having real connections......it is now going to become far worse.

CASH BACK FOR YOU CAR----CASH BACK FOR JOINING A NEW CREDIT CARD ---CASH BACK FOR BUYING A HOUSE. LOT'S OF SUBSIDY AND CASH BACK---WHAT COULD GO WRONG?


Mortgage Pre-Approval
Getting you the Pre-Approval letter that your Realtor will need so you can write an offer on your dream home.


HOME POINT FINANCIAL AFFINITY PROGRAM CAN GET YOU CASH BACK ON YOUR NEW HOME PURCHASE!ASK US HOW MUCH YOU QUALIFY FOR

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HOME POINT FINANCIAL877-902-6636
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What we see below was a mortgage lending policy written as Bush was exiting after being ROBBER BARON -IN-CHIEF of massive subprime mortgage loan fraud.  99% of WE THE PEOPLE are being told by the title of this policy SAFE ACT that this was about shaking out those bad characters from the mortgage lending market.  As the article below shows it seems to only shake out the single property buyer that maybe flips a few houses ----or a single buyer wanting to buy property to hand to a second homeowner.  MOM AND POP buys a house for their child  ----someone buys a house for another for business purposes.

Indeed, the house flippers were a problem in subprime mortgage frauds but those flippers were usually those mortgage lending institutions handing money for mortgages greater than this 2-3 limit each year.  It is the casual property flipper-----someone fixes a decaying house and acts as agent to sell that has been included in property and mortgage law for several centuries.  What about those homeowners wanting to be a OWNER SALE to sidestep real estate agents offering terms to new owners not tied to mortgage loans ----as the new owner paying the old owner monthly using the revenue from renting floors or rooms. 

It is this OWNER AS REALTOR power that takes total control of real estate sales from what are very captured real estate agencies in US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.

'Four years ago the home loan industry allowed anyone--including criminals--to broker mortgages as long as they coughed up a filing fee and took refuge under an employer's license. These days new applicants must sit for 20 hours and existing brokers for 8 hours of education. Everyone must pass federal and state tests as well as credit and criminal background screenings. These days states even fingerprint mortgage brokers'.


When we read BUSH-ERA SAFE ACT we see all kinds of references to these small real estate transfers as the problem in mortgage loan origination ------WHICH IS A LIE.  The mortgage loan originators many in Silicon Valley and Seattle were MERS TITLE MILLS-----none of these SAFE ACT laws now being installed in each state addresses the GORILLA-IN-THE-ROOM mortgage loan fraud debacle.


'Federal Secure and Fair Enforcement Mortgage Licensing Act of 2008'.

'The repeal of this exemption significantly affects the private loan industry and hard money lending'.


The Blog of the Real Property Section of the Maryland State Bar Association


Important Changes to the Maryland Mortgage Lender LawJanuary 29, 2014

· by Ground Rules · in Legislative, Security Interests

· Lynne T. Krause, attorney and founding partner of Krause & Ferris in Annapolis, provided the following report on changes to licensing requirements under the Maryland Mortgage Lender Law:


During the 2012 Maryland General Assembly session, a little-noticed piece of legislation repealed the exemption from licensing in the Maryland Mortgage Lender Law (“MMLL”) for a mortgage lender who makes “3 or fewer” residential mortgage loans in a year. The amendment to Md. Code, Fin. Inst., §11-501 et seq. went into effect January 1, 2013. The repeal of this exemption significantly affects the private loan industry and hard money lending. According to the Fiscal and Policy Note for this bill from the Department of Legislative Services, the primary purpose of the bill is to make the Maryland Mortgage Loan Law comply with the Federal Secure and Fair Enforcement Mortgage Licensing Act of 2008 (“SAFE Act).



The MMLL is a complicated statute, with most of its provisions relating to licensing of mortgage lenders. The statute generally states that a person must be licensed to make a residential mortgage or deed of trust loan unless that person is exempt from licensing.
The 2012 amendment eliminated the exemption from licensing for a lender who made three or fewer mortgage loans per year. The Maryland Department of Legislative Services in their Fiscal and Policy Note states that since there was no exemption in the SAFE Act for persons who are unlicensed making three or fewer loans per year, they made this change. The 2012 amendment also eliminated a similar exemption for a broker of residential mortgage loans who brokered no more than one loan per calendar year.


Md. Code, Fin. Inst., §11-502 retained other exemptions from licensing that were previously in the statute. Those exemptions include mortgage loans by: (a) nonprofit charitable organizations or religious organization; (b) loans by an employer to an employee; (c) loans to a borrower who is a person’s “spouse, child, parent, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, or grandchild’s spouse;” (d) real estate brokers who make a mortgage loan to facilitate a purchase of real estate brokered by the lender provided it has a repayment schedule of two years or less to assist a borrower in purchasing a dwelling; and (e) a licensed Maryland home improvement contractor who assigns a mortgage loan without recourse within 30 days after completion of the contract.


The 2012 amendment also revised certain definitions of loans that the MMLL covered. The MLLL previously defined a “mortgage loan” as a loan for personal household or family purposes in any amount that was secured by an interest in residential real property in Maryland, or if it was a commercial loan secured by residential real estate, not in excess of $75,000.00 and was supported by independent evidence of the commercial purpose.” The new definition of a “mortgage loan” regulated by the MMLL is “any loan primarily for personal, family, or household use that is secured by a mortgage, deed of trust, or other equivalent consensual security interest on a dwelling or residential real estate on which is dwelling is constructed or intended to be constructed.”



The definitional change to “mortgage loan” was taken directly from the Model State Statute complying with the SAFE Act. Now if a residential mortgage loan has a specific commercial purpose, and was not a loan “primarily for personal, family, or household use” then such a loan is no longer covered by the MMLL notwithstanding the amount of the loan. However, in making such a loan it is very important to document what that commercial purpose is to be if the loan is secured by residential real estate.



As many of you know, banks, savings institutions, and credit unions are generally not required to be licensed in the State of Maryland to make mortgage loans. Also, the MMLL does not apply to a deferred purchase money mortgage in connection with the sale of a dwelling or residential real estate for a residence that the seller built and then resold, such as in a situation in which a builder purchases a lot, builds a home on it, and then sells it, taking back a purchase money mortgage deed of trust. (Md. Code, Fin. Inst., § 11-502(c))


This is a fairly complicated statute and it is important that you read it carefully if you are to handle a transaction arguably covered by this statute. The penalties for violating this statute as detailed in Md. Code, Fin. Inst., §11-523 make it a felony for a person to “willfully” violate this statute. The penalties for a conviction could mean imprisonment for up to 10 years and a fine of up to $50,000.00. Also as additional financial penalties, any unlicensed person “who is not exempt from licensing under this subtitle who makes or assists a borrower in obtaining a mortgage loan in violation of the subtitle may collect only the principal amount of the loan and may not collect any interest, costs, finders fee’s, broker’s fees, or other charges with respect to the loan.” (Emphasis added.)

_________________________________________


All the legalese tied to this Bush era SAFE ACT now coming down to our state and local real estate sales policies are written to make one think our SELLING OUR OWN HOME is not off the shelf when indeed it appears that IS the intent of these laws. 

'In fact, a mortgage loan originator is defined in Section 1503 (3)(A)(i) of the SAFE  Act as "an individual who takes a residential mortgage loan application; and offers or negotiates terms of a residential mortgage loan for compensation or gain."

'This definition is the cause of much of the confusion amongst investors who think that they can no longer sell real estate and finance the purchase themselves without a license from their state'.

Most concern comes from small real estate developers buying and acting as sellers in flipping houses 1-3 houses a year.  What WE are concerned with for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE is the freedom to decide if we are going to be SALE BY OWNER ----able to control the sale of our own personal property acting as real estate broker. 

THIS IS WHAT IS UNDER ATTACK.  WHEN INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS LOSE THE CONTROL OF SELLING THEIR HOMES TO WHOM THEY WANT HOW THEY WANT-----WE LOSE THE ABILITY TO EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESS.

As this article states these SAFE ACT laws are written as usual very hard to define -----and state's assuring these EXEMPTION GROUPS historically recognized are using vague language as well.......WE DON'T KNOW HOW THIS WILL BE INTERPRETED.

'Accordingly, many Land Contracts are subject to the new rules, despite prior information to the contrary'.

Hmmmm, this SAFE ACT does not effect any of the major player in subprime mortgage loan origination fraud---so what is it actually doing?


Land Contract Regulations: The SAFE Act Impact on Seller Financing
06-28-2012

The Department of Housing And Urban Development (“HUD”) issued a final rule for the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act (“S.A.F.E. Act”), effective August 29, 2011.  This article summarizes a few key sections of the new rules for the real estate community.  This article is not a substitute for legal advice from a knowledgeable licensed attorney.


Background:  


Real estate investors, brokers and other industry participants have repeatedly sought confirmation that they can engage in activities or transactions that are prohibited by the SAFE Act or other laws.


Neither wishful thinking nor hiding one’s head in the sand can change law or make prohibited activities lawful.  Attempts to interpret the SAFE Act and the Michigan Mortgage Loan Originator Licensing Act (MLOLA) sections applicable to Land Contracts have been complicated by a disjointed law-making process, multiple sets of federal and state laws, the involvement of multiple state and federal governmental agencies, different and sometimes conflicting rules and regulations.


To make matters worse, purveyors of the legal equivalent of “snake oil” are offering real estate training based on land contracts.  These “legal gurus” and their disciples have spread bad information to the real estate community.


Combine wishful thinking, bad advice from both non-lawyers and lawyers and the confusing law-making process by state and federal agencies, and the result is incomprehension and non-compliance.


Even well-intentioned, knowledgeable, ethical persons, those who always follow the law (and some who even teach the law), have been stumped in their efforts to navigate through this bewildering maze.


Many Land Contracts Are Covered as of August 29, 2011


Many real estate investors have relied on outdated guidance that land contracts are not regulated by the SAFE Act.  That is now untrue.  There are circumstances when a land contract might not be subject to the SAFE Act, but the presumption is that land contracts, also known as “installment sales agreements,” are subject to the SAFE Act.  A significant portion of the public comments submitted on HUD’s proposed SAFE Act rules pertain to the issue of a property owner selling and financing the sale of his or her own property.  Whether an owner sells a property using a deed and “take-back” mortgage, or a land contract, the transaction is subject to the new rules.  The HUD rules clarify that a land contract is a “residential mortgage loan” under the SAFE Act.


The HUD SAFE Act Rule states in part:


As an initial statement, HUD confirms the commenters’ observation that a ‘‘residential mortgage loan’’ includes an installment sales contract, which the commenters advise is frequently involved in seller financing. ‘‘Residential mortgage loans,’’ as defined by section 1503(8) of the SAFE Act, refers to typical financing mechanisms such as mortgages and deeds of trusts. In addition, the SAFE Act definition also includes ‘‘other equivalent consensual security interest on a dwelling (as the term ‘dwelling’ is defined by section 103(v) of TILA) or residential real estate upon which is constructed or intended to be constructed a dwelling,’’ which has the potential for including a broad range of other financing mechanisms. For the purposes of this rule, ‘‘equivalent consensual security interests’’ specifically include installment sales contracts, consistent with the treatment by many states of such contracts in the same manner as mortgages and purchase money mortgages offered by sellers of residential real estate. While there is no formal recorded lien held by the provider of financing, the fact that the seller holds title to the property until the contract has been paid in full is the practical equivalent of a lien for purposes of the SAFE Act and its purposes and is comparable to the status of a mortgage in a state that follows title theory under mortgage law.



Accordingly, many Land Contracts are subject to the new rules, despite prior information to the contrary.

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WHAT???? 

Those global banking 1% Clinton neo-liberals Dodd Frank wanting to further harm 99% of WE THE PEOPLE and our ability to own homes and property?  Say it isn't so!  Bush signed this SAFE ACT so we indeed know it is true.

In US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones like Baltimore our city and state realtors have been largely part of these subprime mortgage frauds and they are largely tied to the global Wall Street development corporations MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD for only the global 1%.  But, those 5% to the 1% realtors are going under the bus as global real estate/investment firms replace all those realtor player peeps.

This article was written by a right wing realtor activist making this seem like another left policy issue when it is again FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL 1%.  Today, we are seeing those 5% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA pols as realtors being handed properties in pay-to-play. This policy will move forward any ability of a US citizen to buy and sell homes without what will become harder to get real estate licensing.

All of our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones are filling with international lawyers tied to corporate and global tribunal law----so too are those able to get real estate licenses not far ahead.


Dodd-Frank Hijacks Owner Financing

By Ric Thom

Private property owners have been swept into the regulations of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act which was signed into law in July 2010. Owner financing will be regulated in Title XIV Section 1401(2) (E) Mortgage Loan Origination Standards. The law restricts private property owners who want to sell their own property using owner financing (installment sale). These are some of the consequences.


Homeowners die before they receive all of their equity under the Dodd-Frank Act.



The act requires any homeowner who sells their property using an installment sale, known as owner financing, to fully amortize the installment sale note. It does not allow any balloons to be negotiated between buyer and seller in the note. This means if you are 55 or older there is a good chance you will die before that 30 year note pays out.


Part of the purpose of the Dodd-Frank Act is to protect seniors who use or invest in financial products. The Federal government chastises insurance companies for the deplorable practice of selling seniors 30 year annuities because Ma and Pa will die before they receive their money. Yet, the Dodd-Frank act does the same thing when it mandates that you cannot receive all of your equity for 30 years. Just shortening the amortization period does not help either. How many buyers can afford the monthly payments on a ten or fifteen year amortization?


The Dodd-Frank Act strips homeowner’s of their equity



Part of the rationale for the act is to protect homeowners from having their equity stripped from them by unscrupulous lenders. Yet, the Act which mandates that an installment sale note be fully amortized over 30 years with no balloons does just that. Ma and Pa who use owner financing when they sell their property receive a note for their equity. They have the right and the ability to sell that note in the future. Anyone who purchases that note takes into consideration the time value of money. Just like bonds these notes are sold at a discount. The longer it takes for the note to pay out, the more of a discount the note holder has to take. So, if Ma and Pa need to sell that note in the future they are going to have to sell at a 30-35% discount as opposed to a 5-10% discount if it had a balloon. So, you can see that by the government mandating no balloons they have potentially stripped Ma and Pa’s equity by 20-30%. I can see the reason behind not allowing these installment sale notes to negatively amortize or to be interest only, but I don’t think allowing a balloon in 8 to 10 years is unreasonable or predatory. That gives the new buyer ample time to refinance or sell the property before the note becomes due. It is not reasonable to require Ma and Pa to wait 30 years to receive their equity, unless that is what they wish to do.


An Installment Sale is Not a Loan


Thirteen states have exempted owner financing to some degree from their Mortgage Loan Originator Act in 2009. They did this because they realize owner financing is not a loan; it is an installment sale. There is no third party lender; no points or origination fees are charged. In spite of this, Congress included owner financing in the Dodd-Frank Bill with additional regulations. Owner financing is not predatory. The seller has 100% skin in the game. Ma and Pa simply want to receive their equity over time with a reasonable interest rate. They don’t want to receive cash. They don’t want to invest in 1% CDs or in a stock market that lost 40% of its value in recent history. The sellers do not want the property back; they simply want a decent return on their money. That’s why they sold it in the first place. Today’s buyer using owner financing will most likely be tomorrow’s seller using owner financing.


The IRS does not recognize the installment sale as a loan. They view it more as a trade. The property owner is trading the property for a note, which represents the seller’s equity. The IRS only taxes the seller as they receive payments.


Yet, Ma and Pa who might have only one property which they want to sell using the installment sale method are penalized, scrutinized and regulated.


Over-criminalization


This act regulates the sale of your personal residence, your cabin in the mountains, the vacant lot next door, a rental house, a duplex, triplex and four-plex. How many of the millions of property owners are going to know that if they use owner financing they are going to have to fully amortize the note, verify and document that the buyer can qualify, and that the interest rate is supposed to be fixed for the first five years? If they sell their property and don’t comply with these restrictions, they could be fined up to $25,000 and a possible felony charge simply because they did not know of the restrictions and requirements. The 13 states which exempted owner financing realized it would be a regulatory nightmare trying to keep track of every residential transaction that property owners enter into, not to mention the cost associated with that regulation. 99% of the people who use owner financing do not make a business of selling their property using the installment sale method. It is most likely they would only sell property using on installment sale a few times during their life. But that one time might involve trying to sell four properties at the same time.


Each state has its own version of owner financing; some states use notes and mortgages, some use deeds of trust or contract for deed. Each state already has case law and state statues that set the standards for owner financing and provide the protections for buyer and seller. The Dodd-Frank Act simply adds another, conflicting layer of complexity to the simple act of selling your private property on an installment sale. The states should remain in control of owner financing.


Trying to apply the same rules and regulations and licensing requirements for banks and professional mortgage loan originators to Ma and Pa on Main Street is counterproductive. It is only going to drive owner financing underground. Buyers and sellers will still use it, but they won’t use realtors or title companies which creates opportunity for abuse where there wasn’t any before.


Is your credit good enough to sell your home?


The Act does allow a balloon in the installment sale note if Ma and Pa become mortgage loan originators. The Dodd-Frank Act restricts you to only three real estate transactions in a 12 month period where you offer owner financing terms. If you want a balloon or you want to sell a 4th property within a 12 month period using the installment sale you have to become a mortgage loan originator, which means: you have to have good credit, put up a surety bond, take 20 hours of classes on Federal and State mortgage laws, pass a national test, and take continuing education courses. 30% of mortgage brokers were unable to become mortgage loan originators because they either had poor credit or were unable to pass the test. Ma and Pa are sure to experience the same thing. Requiring a seller to take a test and have a certain credit score to transfer their private property is a slippery slope. It is an erosion of our private property rights.


This act, which is over 2000 pages and requires over 500 new rules to be written by 40 different agencies by July 2011, was meant to regulate Wall Street and protect consumers from the predatory lending practices of mortgage brokers, but has over-reached into Main Street and into the lives of Ma and Pa. Selling your own property using the installment sale method did not create the financial crisis. Including it in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is inappropriate. An installment sale is not a loan. This act is a limitation of the rights of property owners which will be virtually impossible to regulate. We need to ask our congressional representatives to exempt all owner-financing and return it’s regulation to the states or at the very least, to remove the draconian restrictions, in the Dodd-Frank Act.


The Act is just the framework. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has the authority to relax or expand the rules and regulations in the bill. They are in the process of reviewing the rules and regulations that do not go into effect until July 2011. Until then, it is my understanding that everyone will be following the laws of their state, but that could change come July 2011. Please write your congressional representatives, write your local board of realtors, and the National Association of Realtors or anyone else that might get the word out for Ma and Pa.
___________________________________________
We will look at all these housing public policy this week along with what is that US CONSTITUTIONAL EQUAL PROTECTION LAW tied to Federal equal opportunity/access as below we see the completely ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1% US Supreme Court ruled to weaken yet again those Federal housing protections.


'From a distance, the result in Inclusive Communities looks like a win'.

'That is, the use of statistics, no matter how persuasive, to show disparate impact without additional evidence creates a danger of “abusive disparate impact claims” that may hobble local governments and developers. Without strict safeguards, the opinion said, “disparate-impact liability might cause race to be used and considered in a pervasive way and ‘would almost inexorably lead’ government or private entities to use ‘numerical quotas.’”'

This current ruling hit the part to our Federal housing act still acting with some protection----disparate impact.  This article makes the breakdown in these equal opportunity and access laws seem to be a white vs black issue when these laws strongly protected according to class/ cultural identity-----including 99% of white citizens.

'Disparate impact means that some policy, adopted for a non-racial reason, might end up burdening minority-housing opportunities more heavily than those provided to whites; if so, the policymaker would be required to justify the policy to a court on grounds other than race'.

When the US SUPREME COURT via this TEXAS case pushes the DISPARATE IMPACT towards how it impacts DEVELOPERS as this ruling does----we have MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS AND GLOBAL FACTORIES not interested at all as to what kind of housing 99% of WE THE PEOPLE want.

What is saves is the right of global 1% as developers to access and opportunity----this has nothing to do with 99% of WE THE PEOPLE black, white, or brown citizens.


WHO APPOINTED THIS US SUPREME COURT?  ROBBER BARON POLS AND PRESIDENTS?  WELL, WE SIMPLY VOID THOSE APPOINTMENTS AS ILLEGAL AND REVERSE THESE RULINGS--EASY PEASY.

The U.S. Supreme Court Barely Saves the Fair Housing Act


Disparate-impact claims survived in a 5-4 decision, but the narrow opinion suggests a tough fight ahead for civil-rights laws.

Jessica Rinaldi / Reuters

• Garrett Epps
• Jun 25, 2015

Subscribe to The Atlantic’s Politics & Policy Daily, a roundup of ideas and events in American politics.


As the Supreme Court term winds down, there is discussion whether the Court is in some way drifting to the left. That narrative may take on additional steam after Thursday’s decisions--King v. Burwell, negating a far-right challenge that might have destroyed the Affordable Care Act, and Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, an attempt by the state of Texas to radically scale back the scope of the federal Fair Housing Act.


Both challenges failed Thursday. But it would be a mistake to read Inclusive Communities as a “liberal” decision. Although four justices clearly wanted to radically cut back the Act, the majority--Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan--signed on to an opinion narrowing it in crucial ways.


This was no ringing victory for civil rights; it was a near-death experience that may produce health problems for the Act down the road.



The issue in Inclusive Communities was whether the Act allows plaintiffs only if they can show that a government agency or private actor in renting, selling, or otherwise making housing available on the basis of race, intended to discriminate on the basis of race, or whether the Act also forbids acts that have a “disparate impact” on housing opportunities. Disparate impact means that some policy, adopted for a non-racial reason, might end up burdening minority-housing opportunities more heavily than those provided to whites; if so, the policymaker would be required to justify the policy to a court on grounds other than race.


In this case, for example, the plaintiffs produced evidence that the Texas Housing Department awarded tax credits to more developments in poor, minority areas than in areas with majority-white population. The effect, they argued, was to lock minorities into certain parts of the Dallas metro area, perpetuating and extending the area’s segregated housing patterns. The department argued that its decisions followed a complicated set of criteria generated in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and including questions like the cost of land and construction (lower in low-income areas) and “community revitalization,” meaning the economic boon that development can represent to poorer areas. The federal district court held that the agency’s non-racial justifications were not sufficient. The Court of Appeals reversed, arguing that disparate-impact claims are permitted but that these plaintiffs had not made their case.


Before that case could be reheard, however, the state of Texas asked the Supreme Court to take a radical step by reinterpreting the FHA to bar disparate-impact claims altogether. Every circuit court of appeals that had considered the issue had held that the Act permitted disparate-impact claims. But the high court granted review. The Court had granted review in two earlier cases, but both had settled at the last minute. The Texas case finally teed the issue up squarely.


“The Court acknowledges the Fair Housing Act’s continuing role in moving the Nation toward a more integrated society.”From a distance, the result in Inclusive Communities looks like a win. Writing for himself and the four moderate-liberals, Justice Kennedy explained that the disparate-impact interpretation had a lot going for it: it tracks two other Court precedents concerning the employment-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act; it has been upheld by every court of appeals to consider the issue; Congress readopted the Act in 1988 with language that seems to recognize disparate-impact liability in all but a few categories of cases; and it has become a part of the landscape of urban planning, such that many large cities—including San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Baltimore--submitted a brief asking the Court to leave the Act alone. Eliminating disparate-impact claims would thus destabilize not only other areas of civil-rights law, but also a great deal of city planning. “The Court acknowledges the Fair Housing Act’s continuing role in moving the Nation toward a more integrated society,” Kennedy concluded.


But the majority opinion is less a ringing reaffirmation than a stern warning—claims like those brought by the plaintiffs in this case, Kennedy wrote, actually might raise “serious constitutional questions.” That is, the use of statistics, no matter how persuasive, to show disparate impact without additional evidence creates a danger of “abusive disparate impact claims” that may hobble local governments and developers. Without strict safeguards, the opinion said, “disparate-impact liability might cause race to be used and considered in a pervasive way and ‘would almost inexorably lead’ government or private entities to use ‘numerical quotas.’”


Kennedy concluded that “we must remain wary of policies that reduce homeowners to nothing more than their race.” And the implication is that anything outside the “heartland” of disparate-impact liability—that is, “zoning laws and other housing restrictions that function unfairly to exclude minorities from certain neighborhoods without any suffi­cient justification”—would be dangerous territory.


These particular plaintiffs, the opinion made clear, almost certainly must lose on remand. Disparate impact lives on. But the lower courts have plenty of ammunition in this opinion to use against any novel use of the FHA.


If the result seems “liberal,” it is only in contrast to the dissenting opinions, which are truly radical—contemptuous both of judicial precedent and the history of executive enforcement of civil-rights laws over the past half-century. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for himself, urged the court to begin overturning all those precedents—especially the case that originated the theory of disparate-impact liability, Griggs v. Duke Power, which used it to invalidate a neutral-seeming employment policy that had the effect of trapping black workers in laborers’ positions. The Civil Rights Act, Thomas said, didn’t justify the decision; the Court had relied on a deceitful bunch of bureaucrats at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who schemed to enlarge the scope of the law—and their own power—by hoodwinking the Court. It is a striking argument, especially when made by the former head of the EEOC—one who, during his tenure, had tried to reorient the Commission away from the role it had played in the ‘60s and ‘70s.


Thomas concluded with a strange set of musings about racial disparities in general. Disparity is the way of the world. He quoted conservative economist Thomas Sowell to the effect that some minority groups end up running the economies of entire nations: “the Chinese in Malaysia, the Lebanese in West Africa, Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, Britons in Argentina, Belgians in Russia, Jews in Poland, and Spaniards in Chile—among many others.” Besides, he said, “over 70 percent” of players in the NBA are black.
The principal dissent, by Justice Samuel Alito writing for Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia, is, a bit less eccentric but equally radical. The precedents are not worthy of respect, Alito argued. Congress may have re-enacted the Act in 1988, but its changes didn’t mean everyone supported DI; the Reagan administration had said the Act didn’t allow DI claims. HUD, which issued regulations supporting DI, was actually trying to manipulate the Court rather than expressing its “’fair and considered judgment.’”


Like Thomas, Alito pointed out that disparities are everywhere—not only in the National Football League but in the Office of the Solicitor General, which mostly sends young lawyers to argue in front of the Court.


With one more vote, these two screeds would have created a gaping hole in the fabric of civil-rights law, with malign effect far beyond housing. That Kennedy rejected that course is an occasion for relief. But if you think that the great danger facing the United States is too much separation rather than too much equality, Kennedy’s opinion is no cause for celebration. It is a slow and measured step to the right, rather than a radical one. But its direction is clear.

We want to spend a day focused on MOVING FORWARD ending 20th century's public health protections at work and in our communities tied to research and data identifying toxic levels of exposure of hundreds of chemicals so 99% WE THE PEOPLE and our elected officials know how to regulate, provide oversight and accountability, in chemical corporation production---and industrial use of harmful chemicals.  Not rocket science----just public interest public policy.  When our US citizens march and protest against environmental injustice and never identify these CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA policies creating far-worse injustice then exists now in US cities-----they are using TALKING POINTS.  It is that 5% global banking pol and player MOVING FORWARD all these deregulation which will kill hundreds of millions of the few billion global labor pool 99% and US WE THE PEOPLE.

We showed yesterday that global banking neo-liberals are installing the same deregulation of CHEMICAL EXPOSURE STANDARDS in UK---in Europe------as in US/Canada.  They do this because TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT----TRANS ATLANTIC TRADE PACT is MOVING FORWARD even as our global banking pols are pretending to fight them.

'Trade implications: Extensive restrictions could create unnecessary barriers to trade and violate the EU’s commitments under the Agreements of the World Trade Organization. The apparel industry is a global industry; a rapidly-imposed ban on CMRs in apparel may lead operators in this sector to temporarily or permanently stop marketing certain products in the EU'.

Here we see European 99% being told total deregulation of chemical restrictions must be done for TRADE reasons and of course JOBS, JOBS, JOBS.  We do not want global corporate factories in our US Foreign Economic Zones---so there is NO TRADE ISSUES.  Local and regional manufacturing WILL adhere to last century's safety standards.

Again, these deregulation policies are being installed because Euro and US Foreign Economic Zones will operate as they do overseas---

Upcoming European Chemical Restrictions in Apparel Raise Concerns

By Charlotte Ryckman and Roberto Yunquera Sehwani on July 29, 2016


Posted in Fashion & accessories, Regulatory & government affairs

The European Commission intends to ban the use in apparel of hundreds of Cat. 1A and 1B carcinogenic, mutagenic and toxic for reproduction substances (“CMRs”) within the next year. To do so, the Commission expects to use the so-called “fast-track” procedure to ban CMRs under Regulation 1907/2006 (“REACH Regulation”), instead of the standard procedure for prohibiting substances. Historically, the fast-track procedure has been reserved for mixtures that contain CMRs and are intended for the general public.  The Commission has indicated that its proposal to ban the use of CMRs in apparel is a “test-case” of its intention to also ban Cat. 1A and 1B CMRs in articles (i.e., objects) intended for consumers on a regular basis in the near future.  This fast-track procedure allows less scientific input from the European Chemicals Agency (“ECHA”) and industry, and the related restrictions would create significant barriers to international trade.


“Standard” vs. “Fast-Track” Procedure

Title VIII of the REACH Regulation empowers the European Commission to restrict the use in mixtures (e.g., inks, paints) and articles (e.g., apparel) of substances that pose an unacceptable risk to human health or the environment.  Restricted substances are listed in Annex XVII of the Regulation, which is regularly updated.


There are two different procedures for adding new restrictions:

the “regular” and the “fast-track” procedure. In both cases, the Commission proposes the restrictions, and its final proposal is then adopted through “comitology” (i.e., a process involving the input of Member States).  The road towards the final Commission proposal, however, is very different for each procedure:

• Standard procedure: The standard procedure is generally highly regarded for the sound scientific input it gathers. Articles 69 – 73 of the REACH Regulation include important steps, such as ECHA’s or a Member State’s preparation of an Annex XV dossier analyzing the restrictions, assessments by the Agency’s Risk Assessment Committee (“RAC”) and Socio-Economic Assessment Committee (“SEAC”), and consultation of the Forum for Exchange of Information on Enforcement (“Forum”).

• Fast-Track Procedure: Article 68(2) of the REACH Regulation, however, empowers the Commission to ban the use of substances that are classified as Cat. 1A or 1B CMRs in mixtures and articles that could be used by consumers without the preparation of a dossier, the opinions of the RAC and SEAC or the consultation of the Forum. As the Commission recognized in its Article 68(2) Paper of 2014, the legislation provides little to no guidance on the use of this procedure.

Indeed, the fast-track procedure was originally intended, and until now has been used solely, to restrict the use of mixtures intended for consumers that contain Cat. 1A or 1B CMRs in concentrations above specific thresholds. Entries 28 to 30 of Annex XVII contain the general ban for mixtures containing Cat. 1A and 1B CMRs, and the Commission has regularly updated them by amending their Appendixes.
The procedure was historically intended for mixtures due to the potential high exposure of consumers using them. In contrast, there is scientific uncertainty on the risk of exposure of consumers to CMRs contained in articles.  As the Commission recognizes in its Article 68(2) Paper, the “main difference between articles and substances and mixtures is that there might be cases where there is no or very limited possibility of exposure of consumers to a CMR substance contained in an article.”


The Proposed CMR Restrictions

The Commission’s long term strategy is to use the REACH fast-track procedure to restrict the use of Cat. 1A and 1B CMRs in a broad range of consumer products. The upcoming ban in apparel is intended as a “test-case”.

Following concerns raised by the industry, the Commission recently announced that it intends to restrict the use of Cat. 1A and 1B CMRs in textiles in two phases. First, it will restrict CMRs in textiles that are in direct contact with the skin.  This concerns primarily apparel, but also products such as footwear and bed linen.  We understand that these restrictions could be adopted by spring or summer of 2017.


Second, the Commission will restrict Cat. 1A and 1B CMRs in textiles that are not in direct contact with the skin, such as accessories (e.g., buttons), floor coverings, and carpets.  The Commission will not start this second phase until it presents its final proposal for textiles that are in direct contact with the skin.


It is still unclear which Cat. 1A and 1B CMRs the Commission will target. Initially, it had proposed to restrict 286 CMRs.  The Commission should only restrict those substances for which there are validated detection and measurement methods.


Analysis of the Planned Restrictions

The Commission’s initial proposal to restrict no less than 286 CMRs in a wide category of textile products raises significant concerns. These include:



Duplication: Of the CMRs that the Commission intends to restrict under the fast-track procedure, several are already subject to other restrictions in the REACH Regulation. The resulting double bans or restrictions might create confusion and duplication. The Commission indicated last June that it is aware of this issue and that it “is committed to avoid double regulation for the same substance and use.”

• Trade implications: Extensive restrictions could create unnecessary barriers to trade and violate the EU’s commitments under the Agreements of the World Trade Organization. The apparel industry is a global industry; a rapidly-imposed ban on CMRs in apparel may lead operators in this sector to temporarily or permanently stop marketing certain products in the EU.
• Socio-economic impact: It is questionable whether the Commission has sufficiently considered the cost of compliance with the upcoming restrictions. Widespread and simultaneous restrictions may represent a significant burden for industry, including numerous small and medium-sized enterprises (“SMEs”), and increase the price of apparel for consumers.

Next Steps

What lies ahead? The Commission has agreed to gather additional expert input over the next few months.  This will include input from the Forum, ECHA, and a group of experts, including industry representatives.  Subsequently, the Commission will open its proposal for a public consultation, likely by the end of 2016 or early 2017.  Once this public consultation is closed, the Commission will adopt its final proposal.
Although much remains to be decided, it is clear that a ban of hundreds of CMRs in all skin contact textiles will significantly affect apparel and footwear companies that market their goods in the EU and EEA. In the mid-long term, the Commission’s plans will likely also have a significant impact on the wider global textile and consumer goods industry.


_________________________________________
All US citizens understand the US has these few decades had CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA pols working for global banking and global corporate profits.  We know EPA------FDA-------all Federal agencies have been captured and laws protecting against public health exposure to toxic chemicals.  This is why there was a CANCER ALLEY in Louisiana and Texas---it is why our coal workers are seeing lung disease soar---it is why fracking killing our fresh water aquifers and fertile land went unabated---it is why PHARMA is being found to be toxic and deadly AFTER it has been released for several years------there has been no enforcement of last century's CHEMICAL MANUFACTURING REGULATIONS.

As well, LAUTENBERG of NJ has been in office these few decades as top gun global banking 1% Clinton neo-liberal.  Just because a pol backs a few bills that sound good does not make that pol a left social progressive on public policy.  We see in Maryland all the time pols pushing social progressive policies knowing none of it will be enforced.  So, LAUTENBERG did good work in cigarette smoking exposure----a CHEMICAL MANUFACTURING REGULATION----BUT, he was bound to global banking, global corporations and his bill for 21ST CENTURY STANDARDS FOR CHEMICAL REGULATIONS----will end as deregulation looking just like BREAKING GLASS STEAGALL.

So, US is MOVING FORWARD these same CMS deregulation as in UK and Europe----wrapping the policies in titles making it sound public interest.  Was START TREATY about de-nuclearization as national media and Clinton neo-liberals stated?  NO, it was about retooling the nuclear arsenals and distribute decayed nuclear materials.


The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act


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New Chemicals Review Progress under Amended TSCAAs of February 13, 2018:

• 30 new chemical reviews were completed in January 2018.
• 1278 new chemical reviews have been completed since enactment.

On June 22, 2016, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act which amends the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the Nation’s primary chemicals management law was signed into law.

The new law, which received bipartisan support in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, includes much needed improvements such as:

• Mandatory requirement for EPA to evaluate existing chemicals with clear and enforceable deadlines;
• New risk-based safety standard;
• Increased public transparency for chemical information; and
• Consistent source of funding for EPA to carry out the responsibilities under the new law.

One year later, on June 22, 2017, EPA announced a number of implementation activities which have enabled EPA to meet its first-year statutory responsibilities.


We would ask Bonnie Lautenberg why are you not shouting that the BLENDED CIGARETTES being sold as lowest costing cigarettes across the nation are the same chemically-filled tobacco banned during these tobacco industry fights------all regulations protecting public from toxic chemicals in cigarettes have been ignored and shelves restocked.  A 30 year CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL Lautenberg as head of EPA-----oh, we KNOW what is MOVING FORWARD.


This is why REAL left social progressive shout----we cannot get REAL LEFT social policy installed while Congress, statehouses, and city councils are still filled with far-right wing global banking 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA. So, now Trump will simply take this structure to totally deregulate US chemical manufacturing laws just as in UK.

The hazardous nominee who could lead the EPA's chemical safety program

By Bonnie Lautenberg


Updated 6:40 PM ET, Wed December 6, 2017

(CNN)As a Senator, my late husband, Frank Lautenberg, made it his mission to fight for the health of Americans -- especially kids. He fought to protect them from exposure to toxic chemicals in our air, water, consumer products and cigarette smoke.

Frank's passion for defending the most vulnerable of Americans came from his father -- a Polish immigrant who worked in silk mills. As an adult, Frank's dad took great pride in his own personal health. Yet he only lived to the age of 43, dying of colon cancer after years of working in the silk mills.

Frank's final fight during his last year in Congress was to ensure strong public health protection would guide our decisions about chemical safety. To do this, he sought to fix the nation's badly broken chemical safety law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).


Bonnie Lautenberg

Inspired by Frank's vision, his colleagues continued working towards a bipartisan solution -- culminating in 2016 with the signing of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act into law. The Lautenberg Act aimed to plug the holes in our chemical safety net, to better protect Americans from toxic chemicals tied to cancer, infertility, learning disabilities and other serious health impacts.


But today that progress is endangered. Michael Dourson, President Trump's nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) chemical safety program, has made his living helping the chemical industry in its efforts to weaken safety standards for their chemicals. If confirmed, he would be in charge of reviewing the safety of chemicals that our kids have exposure to.

The Lautenberg Act requires the EPA to evaluate chemicals using the "best available science," but Dourson has made a career practicing what has been called "mercenary science." Over and over again, through his consulting company, Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA), Dourson downplayed the health threats of his clients' products.

Study ties pesticides in food to reduced fertility in women


For example, in a study funded by the American Chemistry Council, Dourson has argued for a safe exposure level of the carcinogen trichloroethylene (TCE) that is up to 15 times higher than the EPA's recommended level. He did similar work on PFOA, a chemical that was used to make Teflon, 1,4-dioxane, a frequent drinking water contaminant -- and many more.


But it isn't just unfamiliar chemicals with confusing names -- all of us are familiar with tobacco and its dangers. The health impacts of secondhand smoke were already on Frank's radar as far back as 1987, when he worked to ban smoking on airplanes. Yet Michael Dourson was working with a tobacco industry front group as recently as 2001 -- helping it downplay the dangers of its products.


Dourson is certainly not unique in doing this kind of work: There are plenty of scientists who worked for big tobacco, and more recently the chemical industry. But why on earth should someone with that background oversee our federal chemical safety program? How could anyone trust Dourson to put public health before the interests of the clients he has spent decades defending?

Senators acted to pass the Lautenberg Act because toxic chemicals pose a threat to all of our families. And clearly President Trump cares deeply about his own children and grandchildren. I'm surprised any of them would entrust the safety of their loved ones to Dourson.



Michael Dourson will only serve to undermine Frank's legacy and threaten the safety of families and children across our country. Now it's up to members of the Senate to recognize this and keep our health out of his hands.

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SOUND CREDIBLE SCIENCE------this is what backs AFFORDABLE CARE ACT handing health policy to IPAB-----they are supposed to give sound credible science-----we discussed the difference between public interest VALUE-ADDED and corporate profit VALUE ADDED.  What we have today in our Federal agencies are CORPORATE PROFIT-VALUE-ADDED executives---including EPA.  They will say CLEAN COAL is good----they will say FOOD MANUFACTURED using no food is good.

We know COREY BOOKER---OBAMA----LAUTENBERG all raging far-right global banking neo-liberals---this is how we know this structure is MOVING FORWARD 21ST century deregulation of all last century's public health and workplace chemical safety research just as in UK, Europe.



'The EPA would set priorities for evaluating chemicals and would not first have to show they pose a potential risk. Manufacturers could ask the EPA to evaluate a particular chemical if they are willing to cover those costs'.


'Manufacturers could ask the EPA to evaluate a particular chemical if they are willing to cover those costs'.


Obama signs new law named for Lautenberg to stem toxic chemical risks

Updated on June 22, 2016 at 9:52 PM Posted on June 22, 2016 at 1:14 PM
President Obama signs the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act


By Jonathan D. Salant
jsalant@njadvancemedia.com,
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com


WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed into law legislation to regulate toxic chemicals, a measure championed by the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg until the day he died.
With Lautenberg's widow Bonnie and several New Jersey lawmakers looking on, Obama affixed his signature to the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act.


"Frank was passionate about this," said Obama, who served in the Senate with Lautenberg. "For him to be able to see this legacy completed must be greatly satisfying. He's looking down on us and feeling pretty good right now."

The bill would require the Environmental Protection Agency to test chemicals using "sound and credible science" and impose regulations if they are shown to pose a health risk.


The EPA would set priorities for evaluating chemicals and would not first have to show they pose a potential risk. Manufacturers could ask the EPA to evaluate a particular chemical if they are willing to cover those costs.


It updates a 40-year-old federal law requiring chemicals be tested for safety. That bill prevented the U.S. government from regulating asbestos even after it was linked to cancer.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who now holds Lautenberg's seat in Washington, and Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-6th Dist.) were among those standing behind Obama on stage as he signed the legislation in an auditorium in the executive office building adjacent to the White House.


"It is truly a great testimony to not only bipartisan efforts but the legacy of Frank Lautenberg," Booker said. "That's why I rolled up my sleeves and worked even harder. I felt an extra personal obligation to get things done."


Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the bill would allow New Jersey to keep its tougher regulations on chemicals and would allow consumers to know whether chemicals in their products were safe.
"Without this bill, people really don't know what's harmful," Pallone said.


In the audience were Reps. Donald Norcross (D-1st Dist.), Scott Garrett (R-5th Dist.), Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-9th Dist.) and Donald Payne Jr. (D-10th Dist.)
Bonnie Lautenberg said after the bill signing that the bill was a top priority of the senator's.
"Frank worked very hard on this," she said "I wish he was here to see this day come. I hope he knows what happened."

_____________________________________________
'In May, a Trump administration appointee to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) toxic chemical unit directed the rewriting of rules on toxic chemicals that would make tracking their health risks more difficult'

AND here is Trump taking that 21st century chemical manufacturing toxicity structure and doing just as we said-----making it about ending last century's public interest public health toxicity data-----and making it about creating data putting corporate profits FIRST.

THIS WAS THE GOAL OF OBAMA AND LAUTENBERG POLICY CHEERLEADER COREY BOOKER------TRUMP SIMPLY MOVING FORWARD REQUIREMENTS OF TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT HAVING US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES ALLOWING GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TO OPERATE IN US AS THEY DO OVERSEAS.

'It is possible to both support the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals on education and healthy lives, as well as business growth'.

Well, since UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABILITY is global corporate sustainability of profits-----the opposite of US and global  99% SUSTAINABILITY ---then yes, TRUMP is MOVING FORWARD far-right wing global banking sustainability ----by totally deregulating chemical manufacturing policies and creating data making corporate products known to HARM-----look public interest.  Who built overseas FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES and filled them with global corporate factories that then were allowed to devastate both environment and public health of communities and workers? 

UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL 1% NEO-LIBERALS------

Directed to rewrite the rules on toxic chemicals.


Education Plus Development

Chemical warfare on children’s brains: Where environmental toxins meet education


Virginia Rauh and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek Monday, November 13, 2017


Education Plus Development

In May, a Trump administration appointee to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) toxic chemical unit directed the rewriting of rules on toxic chemicals that would make tracking their health risks more difficult. Easing regulations on certain toxic chemicals—regulations that aim to keep dangerous toxic exposures out of the air, public drinking water, and the nation’s food supply—can result in a “chemical brain drain” that strangles the learning potential of children. This is clearly problematic as early childhood development programs show strong evidence of long-term impact and are among the few areas in the U.S. that enjoy strong bipartisan support. Exposing environmental toxins to children provides a new and insidious form of chemical warfare that can thwart these efforts to raise educational outcomes.


What are the effects of toxins?


For adults, exposure to toxins, including organophosphate pesticides, is known to cause impaired memory, convulsions, and parkinsonism, among other serious health effects. Currently, these pesticides are among the most widely used in the U.S. and globally for agricultural insect control and food production. Although banned for indoor residential use by the EPA in 2001, these chemicals continue to be used on numerous crops in farming communities, where residents are exposed via airborne drift and the general public is exposed via food residues.

One of us, Virginia, has demonstrated the potency of these chemicals on baby brain growth. Exposures during pregnancy have been linked to lowered birth weight, motor delays, ADHD-type behaviors, and working memory problems and tremor—and these adverse effects have been corroborated by published reports from other groups in California and New York, despite differences in populations, geographical locations, and ways of measuring exposure in the body. Most dramatically, behavioral effects have been backed up by changes in brain structure, persisting into adolescence.


The developing brain does not expect to be exposed to toxic chemicals that threaten its very structure and connections. Moreover, the developing brain is particularly vulnerable to lead and some pesticides—a sensitivity that is greatest in utero and throughout early childhood. Why? First, the structure and connections in the brain of an unborn child are fragile and “unfinished”. Second, young children have disproportionately heavier exposures to widespread chemicals, reflecting their higher metabolic rate, greater consumption of food, water, and air per pound of body weight, as well as reduced capacity to clear or expel chemicals from the body.


The negative consequences of early chemical exposure are both long lasting and potentially irreversible, with effects on school success, physical and mental health, and quality of life in adulthood. Protecting brain development from toxic chemical threats should be a global priority. This will require that regulatory agencies are aware of the impact their decisions can have on young children.


From one perspective, this example from the U.S. highlights conflicting economic and public health interests. On the one hand, governments hope to create environments in which children thrive—be it in school or out. Conversely, businesses enjoy greater profits when they are free from regulation. However, economic and public health interests should not be in conflict—they should be completely aligned. The workforce of 2042 is in utero today and we need to ensure policies provide enabling environments for successful development.


It is possible to both support the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals on education and healthy lives, as well as business growth. To do so, however, requires that policymakers look across sectors—beyond the traditional bins in which they practice—to see how they influence one another.  This means that educators need to understand environmental context, and science/public health professionals need to broaden their outcomes to include key indicators of learning.


As we prepare for success in a rapidly changing world, child health and education must remain a central priority. Ensuring that our children are ready to meet the challenges of the 21st century will require that we are mindful of the many factors that enhance or restrict future thinkers, actors, and doers. The use of toxic chemicals is high on the list of those policies that may yield short-term benefits to industry at the expense of long-term capacity of our children (and future workforce) to contribute to a vital and healthy national economy. True investment in early childhood is more than a budgetary issue; it means having the foresight to remove toxic exposures from our environment to create the conditions for optimal learning that will enable our children to thrive.
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We already mentioned the obvious dangers of 21ST century deregulation of chemical manufacturing toxicity-------it places our US citizens and global 99% of labor pool inside global factories filled with the most toxic of materials just as is done in Asia-----we must be competitive in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.  There will be no more Federal testing or university research setting toxicity guideline data for humans et al-----

Below we see what is a GORILLA-IN-THE-ROOM issue only able to MOVE FORWARD if total deregulation of toxicity is installed.  Remember, GREEN REVOLUTION gave us BIG AG MONSANTO filling our food supply with fertilizers and pesticides =====killing our US soil making it arid ====killing our pollinators and soil symbiosis-----now these same far-right wing global banking 5% players are MOVING FORWARD FAKE FOOD.

We read in national media one of those global 1% are starting a global corporation tied to manufacturing food that has no food sources.  We have had artificial taste additives-----many people doubt if there is any real food in a MCDONALD'S hamburger for example.  Now they are manufacturing what will be sold as food---with the tastes of what people are used to being food-----but having no real food in it. 

REMEMBER---THIS IS VERY PLANETARY MINING SLAVE COLONY SCIENCE.



'Establish a Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII), a public-private partnership, through the National Network of Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) focused on advanced manufacturing in the U.S. food industry'.

TANG is that artificial drink substance------but people do not drink TANG for their body nutrient content.  We KNOW vitamins and minerals introduced through artificial supplements are not processed as vitamin and minerals attained from REAL FOOD.  So, any manufactured food containing NO REAL FOOD----will not provide nutrients body needs---it will simply make people feel they have eaten.


It's all so TRANSFORMATIONAL-----we use this one example of how 21ST century deregulation of chemical manufacturing will allow this to MOVE FORWARD----even though it creates human detriment. The same as saying MONSANTO is good as all wild seed sources are privatized and chemicals are harming humans and flora/fauna.



UNL College of Engineering Transformational Food Manufacturing Innovation Institute (TFMII)

UNL College of Engineering
(402) 472-3181

The Transformational Food Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Advanced Food Manufacturing (TFMII) is a shared vision that began in 2015 to create a national public‐private partnership focusing on improving the quality, volume, safety and security of food through advanced manufacturing.

As part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) NNMI Competition, an initial proposal was submitted in April 2016. NIST then requested a full proposal, which is due July 22, 2016. (resource: http://www.nist.gov/amo/upload/NNMI2016FAQ.pdf)

The Institute has been proposed to help the U.S. government define the critical needs of the U.S. food and beverage industry for advanced manufacturing and research. If selected, the breadth and depths of the organizations of the TFMII will serve as a resource and a catalyst for innovative research and commercialization of technologies currently needed in the food industry and as rapid response and expert advice to the government. The TFMII will be headquartered at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with branches at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Davis.

Background
In May 2016, a workshop was held in Washington, D.C., completing a critical follow‐up from the first workshop of the Transformational Food Manufacturing initiative held in May 2015 at the University of Nebraska‐Lincoln (Food Factory of the Future Workshop). 

The D.C. workshop created a technology roadmap to identify the few critical technology areas the TFMII will focus on in order to fulfill its mission. Representatives from approximately 25 companies, manufacturing partnerships, state and regional development entities and universities worked to do the following:

• Identify the gaps in the current technology universe of the food and beverage industry
• Create a future roadmap proposal of realistic and proven technological solutions to help propel the industry to the next evolutionary level.

Establish a Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII), a public-private partnership, through the National Network of Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) focused on advanced manufacturing in the U.S. food industry.

The MII opportunity:

• $70M from the U.S. Dept. of Commerce over 5 years
• Minimum 1:1 match from industry, academia, state and local governments (past winners have demonstrated ›2:1)
• This is an open topic competition; 2 MIIs will be awarded
• Proposal deadline: July 22, 2016

 

• The growing global population (~9 billion people by 2050) can be destabilized by a lack of healthy and plentiful food supply.
• 50% of the world’s food supply is lost to waste.
• In the U.S., the $300B food manufacturing industry is in a state of crisis.
• Energy and water intensive production methods have changed little since the early/mid 20th century.
• Much of our food is handled by humans who transfer and introduce contaminants and pathogens, creating recent recalls.
• Low margins, activist investors and industry inertia are drastically reducing R&D from the industry in favor of short returns.
• At the same time, there has been a dramatic increase in food safety-related recalls.
• The U.S. economy, global security and stability depend on our ability to make more abundant, higher quality, safer, less expensive and more secure food for a growing global population.

 

• Establish a pre-competitive public-private partnership (i.e., an MII) to transform how food is made.
• Focus primarily on food safety, security and automation as the unifying pre-competitive themes for the partnership.
• Industry executives identify the following three areas as highest priorities:
  • Traceability – advanced sensors and big data analytics are necessary to detect and monitor transmission and growth of pathogens/allergens along the entire supply chain.
  • Sanitation – this is a water, time and labor intensive process representing a cost of 3% of gross revenues industry wide
  • Raw material prep-processing (disassembly) – these are dangerous (deboning), difficult, repetitive processes where humans can transfer contaminants across the entire production process.

Deploy transformational advanced manufacturing teams across four major technology areas:

• Automation and Control – This will allow workers to elevate their technical skill sets and operation away from the production floor.
• Sensors – State of the art sensors, both for automation and control, as well as for real-time detection of contaminants will be necessary.
• Big Data – Advances in information technology are making it possible to track critical food data along the entire supply chain.
• Antimicrobial Materials and Coatings – Significant cost reductions can be realized if coatings can be developed that are hostile to contaminants or better protect the final product.

These efforts will be integrated into a matrix involving:

• Sanitation – Savings in sanitation costs can be used to capitalize the food manufacturing transformation into the future.
• Raw Materials Preparation – The challenge is handling and cutting ingredients that are variable in size, shape, material properties, etc.
• Food Production Processes – This is at the heart of the transformation, making the food remotely away from the production floor

The ability to automate and control food production opens tremendous opportunities to tailor foods to individual customer tastes and preferences.

This will create opportunities for:

• Ultra-Customization – Like cars and consumer goods, food in the future can be customized for different personal and cultural tastes.
• Reduced Waste – Smaller lots with targeted ingredients will lead to significant reduction in the amount of food discarded in western societies.
• Sustainability – Production methodologies will be far more efficient, reducing the demand for ingredients, preservatives, energy and water.
• Safer, Wholesome Food Supply – This will drastically reduce the change of external microbial contamination and the risk of expensive food recalls.

Successful transformation of the food manufacturing industry will require solutions to and result in additional critical challenges:

• Standards and Certifications – Current codes and standards in the industry are often confusing (multiple agencies), antiquated, and impediments to positive change.
• Workforce Development – This transformation will create the need for a highly skilled technical workforce.
• Consumer Education/Public Policy – Success of the transformation will ultimately depend on a well-informed consumer who understands precisely what constitutes ‘high quality food’, how to keep it safe and protect the consumers.

_________________________________________

'The Transformational Food Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Advanced Food Manufacturing (TFMII)'

Of course all this must be PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP in order to send all Federal and state taxes to subsidize what is global corporate private profits.


A public–private partnership facilitated by:

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln|Georgia Institute of
Technology|University of California–Davis


TRANSFORMATIONAL FOOD MANUFACTURING INNOVATION
INSTITUTE (TFMII) TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP WORKSHOP:


TRANSFORMING THE FOOD FACTORY TO THE CULINARY
CENTERS OF THE 21ST/22ND CENTURIES
10‐11 MAY 2016 /WASHINGTON, DC


Agriculture is the natural (but increasingly engineered and therefore less natural) transformation of biomaterials from one form to another form more valuable to humans. Advances in biomimetic materials and processes and the promise of biomanufacturing are gradually blurring the line between agriculture and manufacturing'.


'Both isolates are a byproduct of factory cheese production and cannot be efficiently broken down by the body in high concentrations.


Why I’m Breaking Up with Quest Bar, and You Should Too'

So, what we are seeing is reprocessing of what would be waste food products in processing REAL FOOD----making them taste like something else.  We are seeing as well protein replicated under lab conditions being called natural.  As this article states-----it is not natural and our bodies are not digesting much of what these 'food' products are.  Increasingly these NEW INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS PATENTED are being distributed in third world nations as nutritional sources and are now entering our US food source supply for low-income people.  Do high-protein as high-caffeine products harm people?  YES.


The ''#1 Protein Bar'' may not be as perfect as we all think.
Lila SeeleyAmerican University

May 04, 2015

 Protein bars are all the craze these days, serving as “healthy” on-the-go snacks for our generation’s busy lifestyle. One brand in particular has gained recent popularity: Quest Bar. These protein-packed bars have taken over social media as fans share their favorite flavors and clever ways to transform the bar into cookies and even cereal.


Photo courtesy of Instagram.com/questnutrition


Quest Bars boast an impressive amount of protein and fiber with only 1 gram of sugar in one low-calorie bar. For any diet conscious, busy consumer, Quest Bars seem like the perfect grab-and-go snack.


Although the brand advertises itself as such, a closer look at the ingredients label reveals that this bar may not be as healthy as we once thought.


Photo by Lila Seeley
Sometimes ignorance is bliss, but when it comes to the food (or food-like substances) we’re consuming, truth triumphs over any wishful thinking. So, we at Spoon AU did our own little research into some of the ingredients behind the oh-so-famous Quest Bar.


Protein Blend (whey protein isolate and milk protein isolate)Photo by Malia Budd


Although whey protein is infamously used by body builders for increased muscle growth, whey protein isolate and milk protein isolate are far from natural sources of protein. Both isolates are a byproduct of factory cheese production and cannot be efficiently broken down by the body in high concentrations.


For many, these protein sources are known to cause digestion complications resulting in bloating, gas and constipation. No thank you Quest Bar.


Isomalto-Oligosaccharides (IMO)Photo by Lila Seeley


Yes, Quest Bar makes an effort to point out that this ingredient is derived from plant sources. However, the ingredient is added only after a lengthy processing method that results in a thick sticky syrup. IMO is not considered a natural fiber and is harder for your body to digest, causing even more havoc on your digestion.


Are 17 grams of fiber and 20 grams of protein in one serving really worth an achy cramping belly?


SucralosePhoto courtesy of Purepharma.com
This artificial sweetener, also known as Splenda, finds itself at the very end of the bar’s ingredient list, following a few other low-sugar sweeteners like erythritol and stevia. Some speculation exists surrounding the actual health consequences of Sucralose, but studies have found that Sucralose increases the chances of cancer and digestive diseases.


Regardless, artificial sweeteners are highly processed compounds that do not have a place in a healthy, balanced diet.


Photo by Lila Seeley
Quest Bars can be tasty, convenient forms of high concentrated protein. Not to mention, they’re fun to bake, broil and microwave into creative low-calorie treats. But next time you’re reaching for a protein bar snack, think twice about what you’re consuming. There are many other healthier options out there for a nutritious on-the-go snack.

______________________________________

We need to know that FDA is global BIG AG BIG MEAT------the one giving us the junk food having given billions of people around the world a host of industrial food disease vectors-----

We shared what was protein taken from non-meat sources ---here is yet another claiming to be 'vegan'.  We have lab manufactured meat------having nothing to do with natural food sources.  IT'S CHEMICALLY SIMILAR ------IS THE SAME MODUS OPERANDUS FOR PATENTING NEW BRANDS FROM GENERICS.

There is almost no CLINICAL TRIAL RESEARCH being done with what is completely artificial blending of chemical compounds with goals of tasting like FOODS PEOPLE LIKE.


'Government, Meet the Future. The Future, Government

In 2014, Impossible Foods filed what’s known as a GRAS notice, or “generally recognized as safe,” with the FDA. In it, the company listed the reasons it considered soy leghemoglobin safe for humans to consume. Leghemoglobin, they argued, is chemically similar to other globins considered safe, so it should carry the same confidence with consumers'.

This is today's FDA showing rightful concern over public health and safety-----what 21st century deregulated chemical manufacturing policy does is eliminate these global corporations even having to come to FDA for approval------if people can eat it and not die immediately there is no safety issue

'Hansen takes issue with the idea that leghemoglobin is similar to other edible globins are therefore safe. “As the FDA pointed out in their response, just because proteins have similar functions or similar three-dimensional structures, doesn't mean that they're similar," Hansen says. "They can have a very different amino acid sequence, and just slight changes can have impacts."'

This same repackaging of PHARMA untested and allowed to be patented because a former brand is similar----is creating widespread harmful reactions and/or death.....BIO-SIMILARS. Note that vegans are people wanting MOST PURITY AND NATURAL in their foods---they are being PLAYED.



The Impossible Burger: Inside the Strange Science of the Fake Meat That 'Bleeds'


The cook, complete with hair net, lays the red patty down on the grill and gives it a press with a spatula. And there, that unmistakable sizzle and smell. She flips the patty and gives it another press, lets it sit, presses it, and pulls it off the grill and onto a bun.


This is no diner, and this is no ordinary cook. She's wearing not an apron, but a lab coat and safety goggles, standing in a lab-kitchen hybrid in a Silicon Valley office park. Here a company called Impossible Foods has over the last six years done something not quite impossible, but definitely unlikely: Engineering a plant-based burger that smells, tastes, looks, and even feels like ground beef.


There are other veggie burgers on the market, of course, but Impossible Foods wants to sell consumers a real meat analog—one that requires a very different kind of engineering than your Boca or black bean burgers. So WIRED wants to take you on the deepest dive yet into the science behind the Impossible Burger.


Biting into an Impossible Burger is to bite into a future in which humanity has to somehow feed an exploding population and not further imperil the planet with ever more livestock. Because livestock, and cows in particular, go through unfathomable amounts of food and water (up to 11,000 gallons a year per cow) and take up vast stretches of land. And their gastrointestinal methane emissions aren’t doing the fight against global warming any favors either (cattle gas makes up 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide).


This is the inside story of the engineering of the Impossible Burger, the fake meat on a mission to change the world with one part soy plant, one part genetically engineered yeast—and one part activism. As it happens, though, you can’t raise hell in the food supply without first raising a few eyebrows.


The Lean, Mean Heme Machine

What makes a burger a burger? The smell, for one, and taste and texture, all working in concert to create something animal. It’s loaded with all manner of proteins that interact with each other in unique ways, creating a puzzle of sorts. But Impossible Foods thinks the essence of a meat lies in a compound called heme, which gives ground beef its color and vaguely metallic taste—thanks to iron in the heme molecule. In blood, heme lives in a protein called hemoglobin; in muscle, it's in myoglobin.


Interestingly, you’ll find globins (a class of proteins) not just across the animal kingdom, but in plants as well. Soy roots, for example, carry a version called leghemoglobin, which also carries heme. Leghemoglobin in soy and myoglobin in meat share a similar 3-D structure consisting of what's known as an alpha helical globin fold, which wraps around the heme.


So what if you could extract the heme from a plant to obtain that secret ingredient in ground beef? Well, the main problem, Impossible Foods found, is that you'd need a heck of a lot of soy: One acre of soybeans would yield just a kilogram of soy leghemoglobin.

Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown figured out how to hack together a better way. Technicians take genes that code for the soy leghemoglobin protein and insert them into a species of yeast called Pichia pastoris. They then feed the modified yeast sugar and minerals, prompting it to grow and replicate and manufacture heme with a fraction of the footprint of field-grown soy. With this process, Impossible Foods claims it produces a fake burger that uses a 20th of the land required for feeding and raising livestock and uses a quarter of the water, while producing an eighth of the greenhouse gases (based on a metric called a life cycle assessment).


Now, engineering a “beef” burger from scratch is of course about more than just heme, which Impossible Foods bills as its essential ingredient. Ground beef features a galaxy of different compounds that interact with each other, transforming as the meat cooks. To piece together a plant-based burger that’s indistinguishable from the real thing, you need to identify and recreate as many of those flavors as possible.


To do this, Impossible Foods is using what's known as a gas chromatography mass spectrometry system. This heats a sample of beef, releasing aromas that bind to a piece of fiber. The machine then isolates and identifies the individual compounds responsible for those aromas. “So we will now have kind of a fingerprint of every single aroma that is in beef,” says Celeste Holz-Schietinger, principal scientist at Impossible Foods. “Then we can say, How close is the Impossible Burger? Where can we make improvements and iterate to identify how to make each of those particular flavor compounds?”


This sort of deconstruction is common in food science, a way to understand exactly how different compounds produce different flavors and aromas. "In theory, if you knew everything that was there in the right proportions, you could recreate from the chemicals themselves that specific flavor or fragrance," says Staci Simonich, a chemist at Oregon State University.

Then there’s the problem of texture. Nothing feels quite like ground beef. So Impossible Foods isolates individual proteins in the meat. “Then as we identify what those particular protein properties are, we go and look at plants for plant proteins that have those same properties,” says Holz-Schietinger. Plant proteins tend to taste more bitter, so Impossible Foods has to develop proteins with a cleaner taste.


What they’ve landed on in the current iteration is a surprising mix. Ingredients include wheat protein, to give the burger that firmness and chew. And potato protein, which allows the burger to hold water and transition from a softer state to a more solid state during cooking. For fat, Impossible Foods uses coconut with the flavor sucked out. And then of course you need the leghemoglobin for heme, which drives home the flavor of “meat.”


For something that so accurately mimics the taste and look and feel and smell of meat (and trust us, it does), the Impossible Burger is actually not all that complex. “Earlier iterations were much more complex because we didn't fully understand it,” says Holz-Schietinger (experiments with cucumber and the famously smelly durian fruit didn't ... pan out, nor did trying to replicate the different connective tissues of a cow). “Now we understand which each component drives each sensory experience.”


At the moment, the Impossible Burger is only available in select restaurants, though Impossible Foods just opened a plant with the idea of increasing production from 300,000 pounds a month to a million. But as they focus on expansion, some critics are raising questions about the burger of tomorrow.


Government, Meet the Future. The Future, Government

In 2014, Impossible Foods filed what’s known as a GRAS notice, or “generally recognized as safe,” with the FDA. In it, the company listed the reasons it considered soy leghemoglobin safe for humans to consume. Leghemoglobin, they argued, is chemically similar to other globins considered safe, so it should carry the same confidence with consumers. Food companies aren’t required to tell the FDA when they’re introducing new ingredients, and filing this sort of self GRAS determination is not mandatory, but Impossible Foods says it did so in the name of transparency.


“Leghemoglobin is structurally similar to proteins that we consume all the time,” says Impossible Foods’ chief science officer David Lipman. "But we did the toxicity studies anyway and they showed that that was safe.” They compared the protein to known allergens, for instance, and found no matches. The company also got the OK from a panel of experts, including food scientist Michael Pariza at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.


But the company didn't get the blessing it was looking for from the FDA. As detailed in documents FOIA'ed by environmental groups and published by The New York Times in August, the FDA questioned the company’s conclusions. “FDA believes that the arguments presented, individually and collectively, do not establish the safety of SLH [soy leghemoglobin] for consumption, nor do they point to a general recognition of safety…,” the FDA wrote in a memo. That is not to say the FDA concluded leghemoglobin to be unsafe, just that it had questions.


The FDA also noted that the company's engineered yeast doesn't just produce leghemoglobin—it also produces 40 other normally occurring yeast proteins that end up in the burger, which "raises further question on how the safety argument could be made based solely on SLH." Impossible Foods insists these proteins are safe, and notes that the yeast it has engineered is non-toxic, and that its toxicity studies examined the whole leghemoglobin ingredient.


Impossible Foods withdrew its GRAS notice in November 2015 to perform a new study. They fed rats more than 200 times the amount of the leghemoglobin ingredient than the average American would consume if the ground beef in their diet—an average of 25 grams a day—was replaced with Impossible's fake meat (adjusted for weight). They found no adverse effects.


Meanwhile, the Impossible Burger is on the market, which has some environmental groups peeved. That and there's the larger question of whether GRAS notifications should be voluntary or mandatory. “The generally recognized as safe exception was meant for common food ingredients, not for the leading-edge products, especially the innovative like the leghemoglobin,” says Tom Neltner, chemicals policy director at the Environmental Defense Fund, which was not involved in the FOIA. “We don't think it should be a voluntary review, we don't think the law allows it.” Accordingly, the group is suing the FDA over the agency’s GRAS process.

DOthers are concerned that leghemoglobin—again, a new ingredient in the food supply, since humans don't typically eat soy roots—hasn’t gone through enough testing to prove it’s safe, and agree with the FDA that Impossible Foods’ GRAS notification came up short. “The point of some of us that are being critical of this is not that everything that's engineered is unsafe or anything like that,” says Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist at the Consumers Union, which was also not involved in the FOIA. “It's like, look, any new food ingredient, some new food additive, of course it should go through a safety assessment process.”


Hansen takes issue with the idea that leghemoglobin is similar to other edible globins are therefore safe. “As the FDA pointed out in their response, just because proteins have similar functions or similar three-dimensional structures, doesn't mean that they're similar," Hansen says. "They can have a very different amino acid sequence, and just slight changes can have impacts."

This is what happens when the future of food lands on the government’s plate. The central question: Should Americans trust companies to do their own food safety testing, or should that always be the job of the feds?


The reality is, different kinds of modified foods attract different levels of regulatory attention. "It is a patchwork system with little rhyme or reason," says crop scientist Wayne Parrott of the University of Georgia. "It depends on what is done, how it is done, and its intended use." You hear plenty about the crops, and most certainly about the long hullabaloo over that GM salmon. But not engineered microorganisms, which are extremely common. Why?

"Out of sight, out of mind," says Parrott. "And people also get more emotional over animals than they do over other things. With the salmon it was political. Very, very political."


Really, there's no inherent danger in genetically modifying a food. After all, the FDA wasn't raising its voice about soy leghemoglobin because it comes from genetically engineered yeast. The agency's job is to determine the safety of foods. "Any risk that's associated comes from traits," Parrott says. "It doesn't come from the way you put those traits in there."


This is only the beginning of a new era of high-tech, genetically engineered foods. Because if we want to feed a rapidly expanding species on a planet that stays the same size, we’re going to need to hack the food supply. Our crops will have to weather a climate in chaos. "We want to improve efficiency so we can feed 9 billion people without more land, without more water, without more fertilizer or pesticides," says Parrott.


And humanity will sure as hell have to cut back on its meat consumption. “We'll change the world more dramatically than any company possibly in history has ever done it,” says Impossible Foods founder Brown. “Because when you look at the impact of the system we're replacing, almost half of the land area of Earth is being occupied by the animal farming industry, grazing, or feed crop production.” That system, of course, will not give up ground quietly.


But who knows. Maybe shocking the system isn’t so impossible after all.

___________________________________________
'As more biosimilars come to market, patients need to know that their treatments they rely on are safe and up to standard with other drugs approved by FDA. To make this happen, the FDA must instill ironclad patient safety standards that ensure biosimilars are as safe and effective as the reference innovative biologics'.


What we are seeing with INNOVATIVE MANUFACTURED FOOD is mirrored in INNOVATIVE uses of old brand patents made NEW again----as BIO-SIMILAR treatment any number of disease vectors---and NO----they are not brought through any clinical trial or safety standards because FAST-TRACKING to market is the VALUE-ADDED.
21st century reforms of CHEMICAL MANUFACTURING SAFETY-------is designed to open these kinds of markets-----no public safety ----not much real public health.

All of this falls under the far-right wing global banking 1% GREEN REVOLUTION which is today's GLOBAL GREEN CORPORATION PARTY.

THE BLOG
03/31/2011 08:25 am ET Updated May 31, 2011


Biosimilar and Counterfeit Meds: When Do They Become Dangerous?

By John Horton

A recent 60 Minutes special blasted open the dark and dangerous world of counterfeit drugs — a multi-billion dollar market that potentially affects the health and safety of anybody taking a prescription drug. The tens of thousands of fake prescription drugs that enter the U.S. each year range from sugar pills that fail to deliver necessary medical benefits, to those containing actual toxins that can kill (and indeed, have been linked to fatalities).


Over the last few decades, regulators and private industry, working together, have improved their collective sense of what works and what doesn’t, to fight counterfeiters. What if they were able to go back in time and apply these “lessons learned” decades ago, saving countless lives?


They can’t, of course — but there is an opportunity to apply that collective wisdom to a class of relatively new drugs called “biologics.” Precisely because biologics, which are made from living organisms, show significant promise, they will inevitably be a target for counterfeiters intent on making outrageous profits at the expense of patient safety.


So what can be done to prevent prescription drug counterfeiters from injecting the U.S. market with fake biologics?

First, the FDA is currently considering what is called an “abbreviated pathway” for approving legal knock-offs of biologics (called “biosimilars“) that will enable copycat and thus cheaper versions of these life-saving medications to become FDA-approved. It’s important to ensure that this process doesn’t cut corners: the FDA should hold biosimilars to the same standards of safety as the original biologics. Unlike non-biologic medicines, where a “generic” version is more or less an exact chemical replica, biosimilars can never truly be identical to the original biologic. Hence, the only way to ensure the same level of safety is to require similarly rigorous clinical testing for biosimilars as is required for the original biologics.


Second, it’s important to be open-eyed about how counterfeiters operate. Some have been known to insert convincingly real-looking counterfeits into the normal prescription drug supply chain. “Track and trace” technology affords regulators and drug companies the ability to follow a drug’s supply chain back to the origin.

Third, it’s important to empower pharmacists, physicians and patients. When a biosimilar is approved, labels and product names should adequately educate the reader as to whether the drug is the original biologic or a copycat biosimilar. As with any product, it’s tempting for copycat manufacturers to want to cash in on the original creator’s trademark, suggesting that the products are identical; but when it comes to medicines, is it safe to allow that?

Let's discuss why US citizens both right and left wing hate the policy of IPAB-------AND what makes the difference if an IPAB is American or WORLD HEALTH UNITED NATIONS.

US citizens are being told they are now captured by corporations because those 5% global banking 1% pols and players have a crony hold on all levels of government doing anything global banking tells them.  So, the policy of IPAB today----with this corporate capture means all health care policy and pricing decisions will be made in corporate profit and corporate welfare------with no thought of 99% WE THE PEOPLE and public interest. Our US health system was public and local before Clinton era------our local county PUBLIC HEALTH would have been working for what was best for all Baltimore citizens and all funding from FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL TAXES would reach those health agencies to assure these goals were met.  THIS IS HOW IT NEEDS TO WORK AS WE STOP MOVING FORWARD.

We know Obama and Clinton neo-liberals installed the IPAB to make sure global 1% corporations and not 99% of citizens controlled all health policy making sure we could not end PROFITEERING AND CORPORATE WELFARE QUEEN SUBSIDY.  
We know that a WORLD HEALTH UNITED NATIONS IPAB would be far worse as global 1% from third world nations having no regard to Western medical ethics and morals would have strong powers of installing policies.  We do not want either of these structures to continue to be built.

While 99% of WE THE PEOPLE are watching national news propaganda on sex scandals and FAKE Russian conspiracies ---our local US cities and counties DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES are MOVING FORWARD these global banking 1% health policies.

Trump is NOT stopping Trans Pacific Trade Pact---he is not stopping IPAB.


THE BLOG
04/20/2011 04:32 pm ET Updated Jun 20, 2011


Why Does (Almost) Everyone Hate the IPAB?

By Linda Bergthold


What IS the IPAB you ask?


If you know the answer to this, you will score big points with your friends, because only about .5% of the population knows the answer. The IPAB is the Independent Payment Advisory Board established in the health reform bill to help keep Medicare spending under control. Sounds good, right?


Actually, almost everyone hates the idea of the IPAB. Everyone, that is, except more than 200 economists and health care researchers, the former head of OMB, Peter Orszag, and of course the president of the United States, who made the IPAB a central part of his deficit reduction proposal last week. In fact, he recommended strengthening not repealing it. The reason for the president’s strong support is the conclusion reached by many economists that the type of decisions that need to be made about Medicare spending require independence and expertise.


Here’s what the IPAB is, and why so many groups fear its power. The Board would be composed of 15 members appointed by the president (and subject to Senate confirmation). The members would be physicians, patients, the elderly, economists, health insurers, employers and researchers. This board would be asked to recommend ways to control Medicare spending, triggered by a certain percentage increase in Medicare costs each year. The recommendations of the Board each year must be approved by Congress in their totality unless Congress can come up with options for savings that are similar to what the Board has proposed. Sort of a “base closing” kind of up-or-down vote. There are safeguards for Medicare benefits, however.


With regard to IPAB’s recommendations, the law says:
The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.


There are many reasons why this type of Board faces opposition. Its independence from the political process is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It’s an advantage because recommendations about reducing Medicare costs probably should be done by independent experts (including patients), not by politicians, who can be swayed by financial contributions and pressure from their health care constituencies. It’s a disadvantage for the same reason. The IPAB would be largely independent of congressional control. Politicians do not want to give up the opportunity or responsibility to tweak Medicare, and both Democrats and Republicans oppose the Board for that reason. Many health industry and physician groups also oppose the Board because it could have too much power to reduce or change their rates of reimbursement. Consumer and patient groups have doubts about what the recommendations might do to patient care and coverage (even though the law forbids the Board from reducing benefits). Add to that the difficulty of coming up with recommendations for cuts when you cannot touch benefits or raise revenue, and you get the picture. This is not a popular program.


The arguments against the IPAB are both substantive and ideological. Republicans say that health care recommendations by the IPAB will be made by bureaucrats or “experts” you don’t know (and would be a government takeover of course). Actually that’s the way these decisions are made right now in the way Medicare is administered by private sector plans, and how is that going? Do you know the people in your insurance plan or in the Medicare bureaucracy who are making the decisions about your benefits? They may be bureaucrats, but is it comforting that they are “your” or “Congress’s” bureaucrats? It is true that this Board would not be as accountable to the Congress as it would be to the president, but the IPAB is not completely without accountability given the opportunity for Congress to come up with its own solutions if it doesn’t like what the Board recommends.


As members of the public and current or future patients or Medicare beneficiaries, should we hate the IPAB too? Should we oppose the idea? It all depends on where you think the authority for controlling the cost of Medicare should reside. If you believe that an elected official would make better decisions about Medicare spending, then you would oppose the IPAB. If you think appointed experts from a variety of fields of expertise, then you would support the IPAB. Whatever you believe, there will be plenty of hyperbole launched around this board in the next few months as the federal budget is debated. I personally believe that the IPAB can play an important role in helping to keep Medicare viable, and I think the president has taken a courageous stand in supporting it. Whether it will survive the budget negotiations in the coming months is not clear.

__________________________________________

The IPAB was attached to MEDICARE TRUST because for several decades MEDICARE has indeed controlled health costs and been a standard of EQUAL PROTECTION FOR ALL 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens.  Until Clinton era----that was in PUBLIC INTEREST giving the US the strongest and best in quality health care in the world.  US citizens went to a local hospital and doctor and felt secure in what was prescribed or procedures done.  CLINTON ERA 1990s broke all those protections down, outsourced and privatized to FAKE OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE FREEMASON NGOs and private corporate  universities all our PUBLIC HEALTH WITH PUBLIC INTEREST.

Fast forward to today-------MEDICARE has been fully privatized, defunded, and these BOARDS are filled with global corporate executives using MEDICARE IPAB to set policies which will take PRIVATE INSURANCE PLANS down as well.  So, those middle-affluent class thinking they have that GOLD OR PLATINUM====EVEN THAT LOWLY SILVER PLAN-----will fall under the same constraints set by MEDICARE and IPAB.  That means lots of fees and little access to quality health care.

99% WE THE PEOPLE WANT TO RETURN TO MEDICARE LEADING IN PUBLIC INTEREST COST, QUALITY, AND EQUAL ACCESS======SO WE MUST STOP MOVING FORWARD GLOBAL DEREGULATED, PRIVATIZED, PREDATORY, AND PROFIT-DRIVEN AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.

Please do not fall for MEDICARE FOR ALL----SINGLE PAYER----UNIVERSAL CARE as doing this---these are all global banking 1% FAKE talking points.

Global banking 1% pols are using these health reforms aimed at MEDICARE to expand to controlling private health insurance in a very, very NEGATIVE way.

Medicare Leads in Controlling Health Costs


July 21, 2016 at 11:30 AM


Medicare has been the leader in reforming the health care payment system to improve efficiency and has outperformed private health insurance in holding down the growth of health costs, as we note in our newly updated report on Medicare’s finances.  Since 1987, Medicare spending per enrollee has grown by 5.7 percent a year, on average, compared with 7.0 percent for private health insurance.  (See figure.)




This favorable trend will continue over the coming decade, according to the latest national health expenditure projections from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).  Medicare spending per enrollee will grow at an annual rate of 3.9 percent between 2014 and 2025, CMS projects, while private health insurance will grow by 4.6 percent.


The Affordable Care Act (ACA) envisions that Medicare will continue to lead the way in efforts to slow health care costs.  It authorizes the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation to test new models to reduce program spending while preserving or enhancing the quality of care.  And the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) of 2015 moves toward paying physicians based on quality of care rather than volume of procedures.  Along with directly reducing Medicare costs, the ACA and MACRA payment changes may also encourage structural changes throughout the health care payment and delivery system that may generate further savings.

__________________________________________

Below we see one reason IPAB installed by OBAMA AND CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS is so bad-------the appointments keep our ELECTED OFFICIALS at Federal, state, and local level in control of health care policy----total control goes to these few people.  This is called BIG GOVERNMENT-----global banking 1% is pretending this is SOCIALISM-----government telling 99% WE THE PEOPLE what to do.  THIS IS NOT GOVERNMENT----it is a global corporate tribunal ------government is OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE.  Don't be confused by terms like BIG GOVERNMENT-----CORPORATE SOCIALISM.


So, yes this is the gorilla-in-the-room issue in health care reform----do you hear any of those FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT POPULIST pols and 5% players mentioning any of these problems?  No, they support AFFORDABLE CARE ACT and just want to TWEEK it----to make it ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE UNITED NATIONS.

'But common sense still matters.

President Obama’s ACA established the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a 15-member panel of unelected federal employees; its members to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The law does not require the IPAB to be bi-partisan in structure, as is required for almost all other independent agencies. Its mission is specific - to restrict payments to doctors and hospitals in order to achieve a reduction in Medicare spending beneath a specified cap'.


The GORILLA-IN-THE-ROOM issue bigger than IPAB with no bi-partisan rules-----CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA are of course ONE WORLD ONE POLITICAL PARTY------is this FAST-TRACK cuts to MEDICARE.

US citizens constantly here of this term FAST-TRACKING----it is a policy installed these few decades ago----rarely used decades ago-----now used all the time.  It takes all deliberation and participation out of Congress, state assemblies, and local government and makes excuses of EMERGENCY NEED OF EFFICIENCY in installing policy from a BOARD like IPAB----right away.  No time for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE to know what is happening or to respond to stop MOVING FORWARD.

Again, Wyden of OR is pretending to push this as he is a raging global banking 1% ONE WORLD UNITED NATIONS 5% pol.  He pretends because OR tends to be right wing conservative more so than CA and WA.


As far-right wing global banking 1% ----CLINTON/OBAMA love that FAST-TRACKING as much as BUSH NEO-CONS. Anything to take 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE out of legislative process.


January 31,2017



Wyden Pushes to Block Fast-Track Cuts to Medicare


Resolution and Bill Blocking IPAB Would Prevent Administration from Rushing Through Harmful Policies to Undermine Medicare

WASHINGTON – Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today introduced a resolution and a bill that would prevent the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) process from moving forward. The resolution comes before the Feb. 1 statutory deadline required to discontinue the process.



“Given the Trump administration’s short but disturbing record of irresponsible and cruel executive actions, it would be a huge mistake to leave in place the authority to push through harmful cuts to Medicare with minimal input from Congress,” Wyden said. “The president has picked people to lead his health care team at HHS, including Congressman Tom Price, who have long records of supporting policies that would shift cost to seniors and other vulnerable Americans. I am deeply concerned about their commitment to the promise of Medicare – a promise of guaranteed health benefits for seniors and vulnerable Americans who count on it.”


Independent Payment Advisory Board, commonly referred to as IPAB, was set up under the Affordable Care Act to make recommendations to reduce Medicare spending if it exceeds a certain target. The ACA allows for a one-time, fast-track process to discontinue the entire IPAB process, but it requires that a joint resolution be introduced no later than February 1, 2017.


Wyden introduced both a resolution, as prescribed by statute, as well as a bill to unwind IPAB. The resolution takes advantage of a one-time opportunity to discontinue the process, whereas the bill repeals IPAB in full.

_________________________________________


We have shouted for over a decade that MARYLAND was ground zero for all this global banking 1% global corporate health reform policy----so, it makes sense our Maryland Assembly working for global HEDGE FUND IVY LEAGUE JOHNS HOPKINS would MANDATE health insurance coverage under one of the most privatized and unjust state corporate health systems in the nation.

The MANDATE-----tied to a global corporate IPAB making policy and pricing ASSURES that 99% of Maryland and US citizens will be SOAKED with fees in insurance policy monthly payments while not getting the access to ordinary care.  WE THE PEOPLE will be declared TOTALED===as our auto insurance had been allowed to do these few decades and declared not worth the investment in REPAIRS.

More and more American citizens and Maryland citizens are being pushed to CATASTROPHIC health plans just because of these GOALS.

THIS HEALTH MANDATE TIED TO WORLD HEALTH IPAB------ASSURES US CITIZENS AND OUR IMMIGRANT LABOR POOL 99% WILL BE VICTIMS -----

All of our Maryland candidates for GOVERNOR---no matter if running as REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT are pledged to MOVE FORWARD all these global banking 1% health reforms ---killing our US best in world history AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH CARE.

IT HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH FUNDING HEALTH CARE FOR THE POOR=======


General Assembly weighs bill to require Marylanders to buy health insurance
Andrea K. McDanielsContact Reporter  Baltimore Sun


Responding to the federal repeal of the individual mandate requiring everyone to have health insurance, Maryland lawmakers are considering legislation that would impose the requirement at the state level.


“We need to find some way to stabilize the individual insurance market. The premium increases we are facing are really high if we don’t,” said Sen. Brian J. Feldman, a Montgomery County Democrat and sponsor of the bill.


The federal requirement was a key part of the Affordable Care Act designed to ensure enough people were on the insurance rolls to keep costs down. Congress removed the mandate as part of the federal tax overhaul passed in December.

OH, REALLY?????

“I think there is a strong desire to respond to what is happening on Capitol Hill,” Feldman said.


The proposal will get hearings this week.
The legislation has the support of more than half of the House of Delegates. Sen. Thomas M. “Mac” Middleton, a Charles County Democrat who co-sponsored the Senate bill, chairs the committee that will consider the legislation in that chamber. He calls the proposal “innovative.”


Maryland is one of about nine states currently weighing legislation to replace the federal mandate with a state one, but with a unique twist.

The Maryland bill would require those who choose not to buy a plan to pay an annual fine starting at $700, but it would offer people the option of using that money as a down payment to purchase insurance the following year. Supporters hope to use the fine to prod people to get coverage rather than penalize them.


With federal subsidies and incentives, 60,000 of the state’s 200,000 uninsured could buy insurance for less than or the same cost as the proposed fine, supporters say.


Getting more people to buy health insurance could help slow the skyrocketing premium increases faced by people who buy their health coverage on the state insurance exchange.

WHAT DO STATS ALREADY SHOW?  HAVING HEALTH INSURANCE DOES NOT MEAN ACCESSING HEALTH CARE---WHICH IS THE GOAL.


“We in Maryland need to make sure people are insured to keep their premiums down,” said Del. Joseline Pena-Melnyk, a Montgomery County Democrat sponsoring the bill. “We think this will allow us to keep health care accessible and affordable.”


The insurance mandate — one of the most reviled aspects of the law known as Obamacare — is considered essential to its success. When mostly sick people enroll for insurance it drives prices up.


“The Republicans did some real damage to the ACA by repealing the individual mandate,” said Jonathan P. Weiner, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. “The ranks of the U.S. uninsured could increase by 13 million over the next decade because of this. The Maryland legislature is the leader of a pack of eight or so blue states trying to respond to this federal repeal by enacting a similar mandate at the state level.”
The idea of using the penalty as an incentive for people to buy insurance is a new one, Weiner said.

MARYLAND IS A GLOBAL BANKING 1% OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE ROYAL STATE---NOT DEMOCRATIC OR BLUE.


“What the Maryland legislature is proposing is both timely and innovative,” Weiner said. “Not only does it replace what the Republicans took away, it improves upon the soon-to-be-defunct federal law by seamlessly converting tax penalties into insurance coverage, rather than simply depositing it into the state’s coffers.”


Lawmakers propose automatically putting people’s fines toward purchasing insurance unless they opt out. They would send out a form to those who were uninsured the previous year and tell them that unless they say otherwise it would put the fine toward a health plan for the following year in the form of a down payment. Uninsured individuals would have to check a box to pay the fine instead.


For those who choose not to opt out, the legislation would put their penalty in escrow until the next enrollment period to use for an insurance plan. People also would be notified by the state during open enrollment time and provided with information about how to apply the $700 toward insurance and other insurance options available.


“We believe that this is a way to really encourage these folks who haven’t signed up to do so,” said Stan Dorn, a senior fellow at Families USA who helped develop the plan. “They will have to make the choice of using the money to pay for insurance or have it go to state coffers.”

FAMILIES USA IS A FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL BANKING 1% ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT GROUP=====NOT A REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE GROUP.


Gov. Larry Hogan has not said if he will support the bill but has called the individual mandate “basically a tax.” He has said he is in favor of “incentives” that could help reduce the cost of health care.


Hogan’s spokesman, Doug Mayer, sent YouTube video clips from a January news conference when asked about the governor’s position on an individual mandate. In one video, Hogan announced he would work with leaders of the House and Senate to stabilize the insurance market under the Affordable Care Act. He called the stakes tremendous, noting that thousands of people could lose their insurance and the market could collapse if no solution is found.

HOGAN IS FAR-RIGHT GLOBAL BANKING 1% AS A REPUBLICAN SO YES, HE WILL SUPPORT A CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL HEALTH POLICY.


“These issues are much too important and the impact too far-reaching for us to get it wrong,” Hogan said.
Mayer said Hogan has been meeting with both delegates and senators to come up with solutions and that the meetings have been productive.


Representatives for House Speaker Michael E. Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller said the two lawmakers also were working with people from the medical and insurance industries as well as other legislators on solutions to stabilize the market, but were not yet ready to comment on specific legislation.
There are a dozen or so bills pending in the General Assembly to address the issue. The bills cover a wide range of ways to stabilize the market, including creating a high risk pool and merging the small business and individual markets.


Vincent DeMarco, president of Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative, praised the idea of using the penalty to help pay for insurance. His group is pushing the bill.
“We think that once people know, they will opt for the insurance,” he said.

MARYLAND HEALTH CARE FOR ALL AND MARYLAND CITIZENS' HEALTH INITIATIVE ARE BOTH GLOBAL HEDGE FUND IVY LEAGUE JOHNS HOPKINS FAKE 'LABOR AND JUSTICE' ORGANIZATIONS.

________________________________________

'The American Enterprise Institute has pointed out, that IPAB “emphasizes payment reductions at the expense of real Medicare reform'.

Here is the FAKE RIGHT WING global banking 1% Bush neo-cons pretending they are protecting right wing voters from what is a far-right wing health policy goal.  As we said----IPAB will be made UNITED NATIONS WORLD HEALTH IPAB via TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT------TPP---which all Congressional Republicans support and those same right wing Republicans are the source of FAST-TRACKING POLICY installed a few decades ago.

What we see Republicans doing in fighting to repeal Affordable Care Act is repealing all that does not fit with MOVING FORWARD TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT----which includes public trusts and subsidies for health care for seniors, disabled, and poor. CLINTON/OBAMA doing just the same.


The right wing coining the term DEATH PANELS tied to OBAMA and Clinton neo-liberal health care reform has nothing to do with their own goals doing the same----it is simply a TALKING POINT to the right wing voters----and yes, the IPAB will be illegally denying US citizens access to health care that will cause them to die prematurely.

House Votes To Abolish Obamacare Board That Conservatives Called A ‘Death Panel’

Kerry Picket
Reporter

7:50 AM 11/03/2017

WASHINGTON — The House Thursday voted to repeal a key government board established by the Affordable Care Act that conservatives rallied against during the Obamacare debate seven years ago out of concern that the provision could wind up rationing medical care for patients.

The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), famously called a “death panel” by its opponents, is a 15-member federal agency intended to reduce Medicare without taking away coverage or quality of care. The American Enterprise Institute has pointed out, that IPAB “emphasizes payment reductions at the expense of real Medicare reform. The constraints placed on what the IPAB can recommend were not accidental. The authors of the ACA support restraining Medicare spending, but only with government-imposed payment restrictions, not financial incentives.”


The IPAB can make recommendations about cuts to Medicare sans congressional oversight or input. IPAB proposals use “fast track” protocols and require a three-fifths vote in the Senate for Congress to alter the kinds of cuts to Medicare. Even then, Congress may not change the amount of cuts made. If Congress does not act on the board’s recommendations, they automatically go into effect. Additionally, the IPAB is immune to judicial or administrative review.


Tennessee Republican Rep. Phil Roe introduced two pieces of legislation back in February, to repeal the IPAB. The first, H.J. Res. 51, would enable the Senate to utilize a “fast track” parliamentary mechanism to repeal the IPAB. The second, H.R. 849, is the same bill Roe proposed in the prior Congresses to repeal the board.


Members voted 307-111 to do away with the Board, but the future of the legislation in the Senate is still on shaky ground as it is a stand-alone bill and would need 60 votes to end debate before a final simple majority passage vote. According to The Hill, no appointees are on IPAB presently and budget experts predict that IPAB won’t be triggered until 2021 or 2022.

___________________________________________
Here we see UK having installed these same FAST-TRACKING health policies.  Below we see how US PHARMA and MEDICAL DEVICES have hit the FAST TRACK at a time when tens of millions of citizens are harmed and/or killed by these untested products.

Obama and Clinton neo-liberals LOVE FAST-TRACKING------because it gives the 99% of WE THE PEOPLE no time to organize against policies flying out of CLOSED CORPORATE BOARDS. 

So, like TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT----TPP------the Affordable Care Act pushed fast-tracking ability on this IPAB and RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS love this---it is a FAR-RIGHT WING HEALTH POLICY after all.



'Fast Track - Food and Drug Administration


www.fda.gov/ForPatients/Approvals


/Fast/ucm405399.htm Jan 03, 2018 · Fast track is a process designed to facilitate the development, and expedite the review of drugs to treat serious conditions and fill an unmet medical need'.

EPHA Briefing |

Will fast-tracking medicines improve affordability?

by Yannis Natsis | May 30, 2016 | Universal Access and Affordable Medicines | Strategic Documents, Universal Access and Affordable Medicines Campaign





These fast-track policies created by an IPAB whether national or ONE WORLD UNITED NATIONS WORLD HEALTH----are designed to be installed EVERY YEAR----so health policy would look different every time a citizen needed to access care.



Continuing Care Fast Track assessments – how to get a quick decision
Care to be Different > Articles > NHS Continuing Healthcare >

Continuing Care Fast Track assessments – how to get a quick decision


Posted on July 16, 2012 in NHS Continuing Healthcare
88 Comments


Many families are wrongly told that NHS Continuing Healthcare funding is only available for people who are at the end of their life. Not only is this incorrect, it often means that elderly people with significant health needs are wrongly denied the free NHS care they are entitled to in law.


Continuing Healthcare funding for care fees depends on the extent of your relative’s health needs, not what stage of your life they’re at. Assessments are supposed to be carried out swiftly, no matter what your relative’s degree of health needs. There is, however, a special process that should be used in emergency situations when a person is in a period of rapid deterioration or when a person is in ‘terminal decline’ at the end of their life.


National Framework guidelines, page 32, paragraph 97:
“Individuals with a rapidly deteriorating condition that may be entering a terminal phase, may require ‘fast tracking’ for immediate provision of NHS continuing healthcare.”


Nursing care is provided by the NHS, and NHS care is free – in law. The Continuing Healthcare eligibility criteria are based purely on care needs and NOT on a person’s money, and by looking at the criteria – and at the local authority legal limit for means tested care – it will be clear whether or not a person should receive full NHS funding for their care.


If your relative is in terminal decline at the end of their life or in a period of rapid deterioration, you can insist on them having an urgent Continuing Healthcare assessment. This is done using the NHS Continuing Healthcare Fast Track process (‘Fast Track Pathway Tool for NHS Continuing Healthcare’). Essentially, it’s a fast assessment to get NHS funding in place as quickly as possible.


Here are some of the key points to keep in mind about this NHS Continuing Healthcare Fast Track process:

• It is used if your relative has urgent health needs and/or nursing needs and is rapidly deteriorating and/or in a terminal phase of life. It is also used if your relative’s health is likely to deteriorate rapidly before the next routine Continuing Healthcare review. It is not only for people at end of life.

• It allows a quick decision to be made about Continuing Healthcare funding. As part of this, it allows appropriate end of life support to be put in place quickly by the NHS – free of charge – and it means your relative can have care provided in their preferred location, including at home.

• The Fast Track assessment should be carried out by a registered medical practitioner (the ‘assessor’), such as a GP, consultant, registered nurse, hospice clinician, etc – but this person must have detailed knowledge of your relative’s needs. Unfortunately, families report that GPs and other medics often have little (if any) knowledge of the Continuing Healthcare assessment process, and it can fall to the family to ‘educate’ them in this respect. This can be immensely frustrating for the family at a time when urgent action is required.

• In the Fast Track assessment the assessor makes the decision that person is in a rapidly deteriorating state and/or in a terminal phase and with an increasing level of dependency. This decision should be accepted and acted upon immediately by the NHS.

• There should be no delay in providing free NHS Continuing Healthcare funding just because NHS or local authority staff are arguing or debating how the Fast Track should be used.

 

• Your relative should be moved to his/her preferred place of care and have funding immediately put in place without having to go through the long-drawn-out ‘full’ multidisciplinary team Continuing Healthcare assessment process. The NHS is responsible for this. If your relative is already in a care home, and no longer owns their own home, it may be that the care home will be the best place in which to remain.

• Once Fast Track Continuing Healthcare funding is in place, it should never removed without the NHS going through the proper review process, i.e. a full assessment process carried out by a multi-disciplinary team (MDT). This ‘full’ assessment process uses a form called the ‘Decision Support Tool’ (DST). Only once the Fast Track assessment is complete and funding is put in place should an MDT review process ever be started – and only if this MDT assessment is really necessary. This full MDT assessment process should never delay urgent Fast Track end-of-life funding and care.
• If parts of the Fast Track form have not been completed, or if the assessor does not know how to complete it, or the patient cannot assist in completing it, this should never delay a decision about funding or delay NHS care being put in place.

Essentially, the Fast Track allows for a decision to be made quickly that your relative has a ‘primary health need’, that they have a rapidly deteriorating condition or are in the terminal phase of life, that their needs are more than ancillary to the provisions of accommodation by a local authority, i.e. the care they need is beyond the legal remit of Social Services.



Remember, ask for a Fast Track assessment if you feel your relative should have one. If this is declined, and yet it’s clear that your relative is declining rapidly, put your concerns in writing to the Chief Executive of your relative’s local NHS (Clinical Commissioning Group) and copy it to the Continuing Healthcare Team, the GP, all appropriate consultants, nurses, medics, clinicians, carers and the care home manager (if relevant).


If necessary write to your MP.
If it’s obvious that your relative needs urgent nursing care, you could also refuse to pay (or continue to pay) care fees at this point.


This does, of course, raise a further question: If a rapid decision can be made using the Fast Track process, why can’t all NHS Continuing Healthcare assessments be as quick?

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GLOBAL BANKING 1% ARE ONLY TRYING TO HELP 99% US WE THE PEOPLE

'This, it continues, contradicts the principles of the Commission’s ‘Better Regulation’ agenda. “We are seriously worried about the precedent that such rushed, unscientific and inconsistent proposals would set.”'



FAST TRACKING is now taking all US, UK, and slowly European public policy especially around HEALTH CARE REFORM.  Does a patient told they have no other access want to try experimental medicine?  We have always had that choice.  Using the term FAST-TRACKING in medicine is not about patients gaining RIGHTS-----it is about by-passing all our 20th century regulations and processes in place to protect 99% of WE THE PEOPLE from harm and death.

Below we see CHEMICAL CORPORATIONS are having their guidelines for protecting public health weakened through FAST TRACKING sending chemicals out into the public once banned as harmful----or killing the research and development clinical trials needed to assess harm. 

IF WE ARE ENDING PUBLIC PROTECTION AND ACCESS TO MEDICAL TREATMENT FROM DEVASTATING TOXIC INDUSTRIAL EXPOSURES WE MAY AS WELL FAST-TRACK THE NEED TO RESEARCH WHETHER THOSE CHEMICALS CAUSE HARM.


'However, chemicals and policy officer at NGO ChemSec, Jerker Ligthart, told Chemical Watch that using the fast-track approach is the “right way to go”, due to its focus on consumer protection and the well-known hazardous properties of these classified substances'.

When we have a HEALTH INSURANCE MANDATE----tied to an IPAB making decisions on patient care with the power of telling a patient they HAVE TO USE THIS PRODUCT as it is efficient-----we are open to global medical corporations doing ANYTHING THEY WANT under the guise of providing HEALTH CARE ACCESS.

Global corporate factories are REAL KILLERS.

Fast tracking CMR restrictions sets ‘dangerous precedent’


Textile trade groups ‘deeply concerned’ by plans for 286 substances


30 March 2016 / Children's products, Europe, Priority substances, Textiles & apparel


A group of trade organisations is calling for the European Commission to abandon its proposal to “fast track” the restriction of 286 carcinogenic, mutagenic, reprotoxic (CMR) substances in textiles consumer articles.


Responding to the Commission’s consultation on the proposal, the group of textiles and wider industry associations, which includes Euratex, the Foreign Trade Association, EuroCommerce and the American Chamber of Commerce for the EU, raise a number of concerns in a joint statement.


Among these, it says the use of Article 68 (2) – which sets out the fast-track procedure under REACH – would ignore the importance of the “evidence-based usual restriction process under REACH”.


The fast-track approach, it says, is not appropriate for such a large number of substances, sets a dangerous precedent for bad regulation and could also impact the European economy negatively.


The group says it is “under the impression” that the potential impact of the proposed restriction has not been assessed adequately and that “political motivations are driving the overly ambitious procedure”.


It questions the "appropriateness" of addressing a list of 286 substances in the two-three months, allocated by the Commission.


“Considering the substantial amount of time, work and resources spent in the exercise of responding to the consultation, it is arguable whether the European Commission is willing to support European SMEs, and design EU policies and laws that achieve their objectives at minimum cost and informed by the best available evidence,” it adds.


This, it continues, contradicts the principles of the Commission’s ‘Better Regulation’ agenda. “We are seriously worried about the precedent that such rushed, unscientific and inconsistent proposals would set.”


However, chemicals and policy officer at NGO ChemSec, Jerker Ligthart, told Chemical Watch that using the fast-track approach is the “right way to go”, due to its focus on consumer protection and the well-known hazardous properties of these classified substances.

“It is widely agreed that known and classified CMR substances do not have a place in consumer articles, especially in the consumer textiles product group as it is worn directly on the skin,” he added.


Last month, ChemSec said the proposal should be expanded to cover all CMRs used in the industry, not just category 1A and 1B classified substances.

Consumer groups have even called for the proposed restriction to go beyond just CMRs. European Consumer Organisations, Beuc and Anec, say persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic (PBT) very persistent, very bioaccumulative (vPvB), (neuro)toxic, endocrine disruptors and substances with probable serious effects to human health, such as sensitisers or irritants, should also be included.


They also recommend establishing a separate, product-specific regulation for textiles, which would allow it to address all substances of concern in an “appropriate way”.


In a separate response, textiles trade body, Euratex, proposes that an ad-hoc industry scientific committee is established to support decision making.


This committee, it says, would include a representative panel of industry-appointed experts to discuss with the Commission and advise on the feasibility of restriction, valid replacement options and the impact of decisions.  

The Commission says it is collating responses and will evaluate them in "due course".

___________________________________________
We will end discussion over FAST TRACKING, IPAB as a national vs WORLD HEALTH UNITED NATIONS policy tied to US MEDICARE and by extension all aspects of US public health by revisiting the history behind US CONGRESSIONAL ability to FAST TRACK.

We always shout that FDR creating the status of US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES were restricted to DUTY/TAXES tied to import export.  Back then of course our US economy was mostly domestic so these policies were background in our economy.  It was NIXON-ERA with all that OPENING UP CHINA making global markets take the majority of our US economy and FAST TRACK policies BROADENED from only duty/taxes to all aspects of FOREIGN POLICY tied to trade-----ergo, it is undermining every aspect of our economic and societal structures determined by 300 years of US CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS, 3 BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT CHECKS AND BALANCES----and of course any thought that 99% of WE THE PEOPLE would be involved in public policy. 

So, 1970s expanded the use of FAST TRACK and 1990s super-sized that expansion.  This is why we have CONGRESS trying to fast track TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT----totally killing 300 years of US governance structures.


'Today, the fast track approach of the 1970s is under stress'.

When we speak of HEALTH CARE POLICY we are MOVING FORWARD issues of LIFE AND DEATH-----issues of global boards installing policies actually having a goal of HARM over GOOD. 

WE ARE ALREADY SEEING THIS PREDATORY MEDICINE IN US THESE FEW DECADES NOW GROWING IN AFFORDABLE CARE ACT----IPAB-----We simply need to reverse these expansions as they create illegal MONOPOLY-----they create an illegal circumvention of our US Constitutional rights AS CITIZENS TO LEGISLATE.

Simply REPEAL IT ---VOID IT as illegal ---easy peasy.


Rethinking the Roles of Congress and the President in "Fast Tracking" U.S. Trade Negotiations

Charles Hankla, Georgia State University

In January 2014, President Obama formally requested that Congress grant him Trade Promotion Authority – also known as “fast track” – to speed the negotiation of two treaties that could transform America’s relationship with international markets. The pending Transpacific Partnership would eliminate key trade barriers between the United States and eleven Asian countries, including Japan. Of even greater potential significance, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership would merge the world’s two largest markets, the United States and the European Union, into a single interdependent commercial zone.

If fast track authority were granted, Congress would have to vote on agreements negotiated by the President within ninety days, up or down with no amendments. But opposition erupted right after President Obama made his request. Many in Congress are no longer willing to grant presidents such latitude on trade agreements that impact jobs and worker rights, the environment, and a host of other societal concerns. The current impasse puts in stark relief the challenges faced by the United States government as it seeks to develop a coherent approach to increasingly globalized commerce. Presidential authority is more important than ever, but Congress is no longer willing to step back. New arrangements are needed.

The Origins and Limits of Fast Track

In the eighteenth century, trade policy was considered a source of revenue rather than an instrument of foreign policy, so the U.S. Constitution granted nearly complete authority to Congress. Congress remained in charge for more than a century, setting U.S. tariff levels by direct votes as on any other legislation. Difficulties came to a head with the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, when a series of Congressional logrolls raised U.S. tariffs to extraordinary levels that sparked retaliation from Europe and, as most scholars agree, helped worsen the Great Depression.

In 1934, Congress granted greater authority to the executive branch in the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, for two main reasons:

• To limit interest group pressures that could drive tariffs to dangerous levels. Even if each member of Congress advocated for the protection of only one commodity made in his or her district, the logrolling process could add up to harmful overall outcomes. The President, hopefully, could better represent the national interest as a whole.
  
  
• To enable the President, as the agent of U.S. foreign policy, to use trade concessions as leverage to generate reciprocal concessions from trading partners. 

Patterns of authority established by the 1934 law and its offshoots allowed the executive branch to negotiate U.S. tariff rates on commodities within certain ranges in exchange for concessions from America’s trading partners. The same concept of reciprocity informed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) set up in 1947 to prevent the reemergence of harmful trade blocs. Mid-century arrangements through which Congress delegated authority within limits functioned well until the 1970s, when Congress created a new form of delegation.

By that point, international trade negotiations had moved beyond tariffs into more complex areas where pre-set limits were no longer feasible. In place of the older system, the Trade Act of 1974 created fast track authority, where Congress provides very general guidance on trade policy goals and rules for consultation, and agrees to put any agreement signed by the President to a prompt up or down vote. Overall, this delegates more authority to the executive branch to handle complex, contingent negotiations – yet it also limits the President’s authority to make adjustments after he signs an agreement and sends it to Congress.

The Need for Revisions in Fast Track Authority

Today, the fast track approach of the 1970s is under stress. Newly pressing issues such as intellectual property rights, environmental, health, and labor regulation, and domestic subsidies make it impossible for senators and representatives to remain uninvolved as negotiations proceed. An even stronger role for the executive branch is justified by its technical expertise, facility with secret international negotiation, and ability to speak for the United States as a whole. Yet how can representatives and senators remain uninvolved in discussions of politically salient matters such as labor rights and food safety, or ignore matters of national security that get drawn into trade negotiations (as with the extension of free trade to drug-violence-plagued Colombia or the exclusion of China from the Transpacific Partnership)?

Because it is highly unlikely that Congress will accept anything less than a more complete partnership, here are some ways the fast track approach could be revised and updated:

• Congress could narrow the authority it grants the President by specifying the countries, broad issues, and agreements to which fast track applies, rather than granting this authority for a fixed period of time. Specific guidelines could actually boost U.S. bargaining power, as research has shown that a strong legislature with veto power can toughen a country’s negotiating stance. 
  
  
• Congress could demand more regular consultation according to specific procedures. Given the fluidity of international negotiations, a small number of Congressional members would have to be authorized to meet regularly with negotiators. 
  
  
• Congress could insist on more public access to information during ongoing negotiations.
  
  
• Congress could extend the 90 day voting period and enable amendments supported by supermajorities. Or it could require that Congress approve a draft trade agreement before the President signs it, enabling the revision of points that Congress finds objectionable.
  
  
• Congress can insist on legislation to more fully guide implementation after a pact is approved.

U.S. leadership in trade is critical to prosperity and security. Maintaining that leadership in ways commensurate with our democratic values requires rethinking the roles and relationship of Congress and the President in negotiating and implementing high-stakes trade agreements.

This morning I watched as CNN anchor CUOMO---great big far-right global banking 5% player said THEY KNOW as he introduced a report of RITE AID merging with ALBERTSON'S grocery chain.  We were told SIZE MATTERED now-----with CNN that comment may have been sexual.

When we watch 3 global banking 1% players telling us they will simply start their own global health system having nothing to do with medicine-----we are watching as that GLOBAL IPAB ------is being created.  BUFFET, BEZOS, JP MORGAN are those global corporate executives appointed to IPAB along with those global health corporations fat on US frauds and profiteering from our Federal health programs.

What is another example from CNN today was this-----when our US national grocery chains partner with global PHARMA corporations like RITE AID-----WALGREEN-----CVS------those grocery chains are then controlled by global PHARMA and this is our US food source.  So, Safeway is partnered with Rite Aid because it is ALBERTSON'S. 

All of this DEREGULATION of what used to fall into the category of US PUBLIC HEALTH INSTITUTIONS-----is very, very, very bad-----but tying these global PHARMA to our national food chains will see those food chains raided and thrown into bankruptcy so please don't think your corporation and job is being saved with these mergers which have DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS on the US 99% and access to ordinary health care.

'Safeway Inc., part of Albertsons Companies'

'CVS-Target deal could spur supermarkets to find pharmacy partners
'CVS Pharmacy, Walgreens to anchor CVS Health's new ...'
'Walgreens to close 600 stores following Rite Aid buy'

The point is this------the Obama IPAB we were told would be filled with STAKEHOLDERS----which of course are largely global corporations insuring their employees and global health corporation executives.  Since these IPAB categories are already GLOBAL 1% ------that IPAB will simply become WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION/UNITED NATION global 1% appointees.


When 99% WE THE PEOPLE are supporting all these mergers taking our US health institutions from being local---then regional---then national---then global as these few decades have done ----just to keep a job---we are the ones killing our US MEDICARE----ALL US STRONG PUBLIC HEALTH access. IT'S NOT JUST ANY JOB.

Albertsons Scoops Up Remainder of Rite Aid as Retailers Face Online Threat

The transaction would create a company with revenue of $83 billion and allow Albertsons to go public.

Photo: Getty Images
By
Heather Haddon

Updated Feb. 20, 2018 1:50 a.m. ET


 
Albertsons Cos. plans to buy the rest of Rite Aid Corp. RAD 2.40% that isn’t being sold to Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. WBA 1.63% as retailers of all stripes scramble to respond to a rapidly changing consumer shopping landscape.


The drugstore chain and Albertsons have a combined value of around $24 billion, including debt, the companies said Monday. Rite Aid, which comprises thousands of drug stores and a benefits-management company with millions of members, has a market value of about $2.3 billion and is in the process of selling a chunk of its stores to Walgreens.


Following the proposed cash-and-stock deal, shareholders of closely held Albertsons, owner of Safeway and 19 other supermarket chains, would hold roughly 71% of the combined company, while Rite Aid investors would own the rest, they said.


The transaction would create a company with revenue of $83 billion and allow Albertsons to go public after more than a decade of ownership by private-equity giant Cerberus Capital Management LP. The grocer was on the brink of an initial public offering in 2015 but shelved the plan in the face of a dour profit forecast by rival Walmart Inc.


For Rite Aid, the third-largest U.S. drugstore chain, the deal represents another way to gain heft after the federal government blocked its full sale to Walgreens, which now plans to buy roughly 2,000 of Rite Aid’s stores.


The chief executives of the companies said in interviews Monday that the merger is the best way for them to compete in businesses increasingly threatened by Amazon.com Inc., along with an emboldened Walmart.


Amazon is making a big push into food retail with its purchase of Whole Foods Market Inc. Walmart, in turn, has boosted its e-commerce offerings and the range of goods it sells, through a number of recent deals.


“We know that scale matters,” said Bob Miller, Albertsons chief executive. “We continue to grow to compete with all competitors, not just Amazon.”


John Standley, Rite Aid’s CEO, said the merger will help the company expand its food offerings to stand out from CVS Health Corp., Walgreens and Walmart. It will also expand Rite Aid’s e-commerce offerings given Albertsons’ progress in that realm, said Mr. Standley, 54 years old.


“There is a ton of potential here,” he said.
All three of the U.S.’s biggest pharmacy chains are now pursuing deals in a sign of the threats they face as customers increasingly shop online. CVS has agreed to buy health insurer Aetna Inc., and Walgreens, in addition to the scaled-back Rite Aid deal, is in talks to buy drug distributor AmerisourceBergen Corp. , The Wall Street Journal recently reported.


The S&P index for drug retail has fallen 11% in the past year.
Mr. Standley is to serve as the new company’s CEO, while Mr. Miller would act as chairman. Speculation as to who would succeed the 73-year-old Albertsons CEO had mounted in recent years.


“The truth is I’d like to work forever; I love what I do, but I’m going to be 74 in a month,” Mr. Miller said.
The new company, to be based in both Boise, Idaho, and Camp Hill, Pa., would operate approximately 4,900 stores and 4,300 pharmacies across 38 states and Washington, D.C., with a heavy presence along the coasts. The company’s new name is to be determined upon the deal’s close, expected by the summer, the companies said.


Amazon’s further push into grocery has caused supermarket stocks to tumble and prompted food retailers to search for deals in a sector known for razor-thin profits. A historic drop in food costs also hurt sales last year when it sparked a price war among grocers.


The executives said Monday that the merger will boost food and pharmacy delivery options for customers and help drive repeat sales.


Supermarket shoppers tend to spend more and be more loyal when they shop for prescriptions along with food, the executives said.


Albertsons, owner of roughly 2,300 stores, had made a series of technology plays as sales in physical stores have softened. The company acquired the Plated meal-kit service last year, and is in the process of offering the popular boxes of premeasured ingredients to millions of store customers.


Albertsons reported disappointing sales last month. Executives at the time said they expect improvements this year and to slow new-store development to focus on technology investments.


Mr. Miller said the company hadn’t closed the door on an IPO when the merger discussions began, but that the Rite Aid deal offers more benefits for shareholders and customers.


“This is more about a combination of two great companies that will create great value and grow sales, not just about being a public company,” he said.

The federal government will have to approve the deal. Albertsons and Rite Aid operate in many of the same markets, but have less sector overlap than Walgreens and Rite Aid, the companies said. Rite Aid today does sell food, and Albertsons operates pharmacies in its stores.


Mr. Standley said the company has sought to learn from the failed Walgreens deal, and that it believes the merger wouldn’t stifle competition.

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We took yesterday to review the AFFORDABLE CARE ACT goal of creating massive global health systems consolidated and deregulated controlled by the same global banking 1% that has all other once AMERICAN INDUSTRIES......to see who will be on that IPAB ------what would have been local public health officials and community members has become global corporate executives, global banking executives, and global 1% WORLD HEALTH officials.

OBAMA and Clinton neo-liberals created this capture of all US health policy and pricing phasing not phasing it in until 2020 for the same reason those FAKE $15 AN HOUR laws we are hearing are not being enforced across the US-----are not intact until 2020---2022. The coming economic collapse and handing to IMF/WORLD BANK will see this US IPAB-------become that WORLD HEALTH IPAB.

So, yes, 99% of WE THE PEOPLE want the AFFORDABLE CARE ACT repealed----we want that INSURANCE MANDATE gone-----we want this IPAB structure gone----and we cannot get to MEDICARE FOR ALL----UNTIL we get rid of these global deregulated, consolidated to global monopoly structures.

World Health Assembly

The World Health Assembly is the supreme decision-making body for WHO. It generally meets in Geneva in May each year, and is attended by delegations from all 194 Member States. Its main function is to determine the policies of the Organization.

The Health Assembly appoints the Director-General, supervises the financial policies of the Organization, and reviews and approves the proposed programme budget. It similarly considers reports of the Executive Board, which it instructs in regard to matters upon which further action, study, investigation, or report may be required.
Executive Board

The Executive Board is composed of 34 members technically qualified in the field of health. Members are elected for 3-year terms.

The main Executive Board meeting, at which the agenda for the forthcoming Health Assembly is agreed upon and resolutions for forwarding to the Health Assembly are adopted, is held in January, with a second shorter meeting in May, immediately after the Health Assembly, for more administrative matters.

The main functions of the Board are to give effect to the decisions and policies of the World Health Assembly, to advise it and generally to facilitate its work.

Can you explain the controversy around the IPAB and why it was repealed?

Can you explain the controversy around the IPAB and why it was repealed?

• Louise Norris
• Individual health insurance and health reform authority; broker
• February 10, 2018

Q. Can you explain the controversy around the IPAB and why it was repealed? 


A. The IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board) was created by the ACA (see sections 3403 and 10320 of the ACA for the legislative language that established the IPAB). It would have been a 15-member board, with the board members appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

The idea was that if Medicare per-capita spending growth were to exceed a target amount, the IPAB would have proposed evidence-based recommendations to reduce Medicare spending growth. But Medicare spending growth has been particularly low since the ACA was enacted, and nobody was ever appointed to the IPAB. The program was repealed in early 2018 as part of the budget act.


Board members

The President would have been required to consult with Congressional leaders for at least 12 of the 15 appointments, and the Senate would have had to confirm all of the appointees. IPAB members would have been required to possess expertise in health care, economics, medical research, health coverage and/or third-party administration of employer health plans.


And while medical providers could have been on the board, no more than seven of the 15 members could have been providers. In addition, board members would have had to demonstrate that they didn’t have conflicts of interest, and would have had to give up any other jobs that they previously held, as serving on the IPAB would have been a full-time federal position.


How would the IPAB have worked?

If Medicare per-capita spending growth exceeded a target amount, the IPAB would have been tasked with drafting recommendations for reducing spending growth. Once the recommendations were made, Congress could have voted to implement different cost containment measures that achieved at least as much savings as the IPAB recommendations. But they would have needed a three-fifths majority in the Senate in order to ignore the issue altogether. So the IPAB wouldn’t have had the final say in the matter, but neither could their recommendations have simply fallen on deaf ears.


The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) is a more stripped-down version of the IPAB, and has been in place for more than two decades. But unlike the IPAB, MedPAC’s recommendations can be — and routinely are — ignored by Congress. In order to ignore recommendations from the IPAB, Congress would need a supermajority vote. And if Congress were to fail to pass their own legislation to contain Medicare spending growth, the IPAB’s recommendations would have automatically taken effect.


The text of the ACA specifically notes that the IPAB’s recommendations could not have included increasing Medicare payroll taxes or beneficiary premiums, nor could they have recommended any sort of rationing or increases in beneficiary cost-sharing. But cuts to provider reimbursements would have been allowed as of 2019, which pitted most provider groups against the IPAB.


The IPAB was controversial from the start. It was envisioned as a concrete step towards containing Medicare spending growth, but critics called it a “death panel,” charging that it would effectively result in rationing—despite the ACA’s language preventing direct rationing—and that it would amount to bureaucrats getting between seniors and their health care.


IPAB’s supporters believed that it made sense for a panel of experts using medical evidence to weigh what we should cover and what we should pay for various treatments. But many Americans are wary of “experts” and Republicans are particularly skeptical. Polling shows that when asked about having an independent panel make proposals for Medicare, 59 percent of Republicans expressed a high level of distrust vs. 39 percent of Democrats.

IPAB never convened, and the process was never triggered

Per-capita Medicare spending growth has been much lower than expected in recent years. Between 2000 and 2010, it averaged 7.4 percent per year. But between 2010 and 2016, it averaged just 1.3 percent per year. As a result, the IPAB cost-containment recommendation process has never been triggered. And as of 2017, it was projected that it still wouldn’t be triggered until 2021 (the ACA allowed for the IPAB process to begin as early as 2014, if Medicare spending growth had exceeded targets at that point).



In addition, the board itself has never existed. President Obama never appointed anyone to it, nor did President Trump. So conversations about the IPAB in the early years of ACA implementation were theoretical, rather than practical, as there was no need for the IPAB process to be implemented. But the IPAB remained controversial, even though some fiscal conservatives saw it as a necessity to keep Medicare solvent. Even Democratic lawmakers weren’t particularly fond of it.



IPAB was repealed in early 2018Section 52001 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 repeals the IPAB. The act was signed into law by President Trump on February 9, 2018. As noted above, the IPAB never convened and its process was never triggered, given how low per-capita Medicare spending growth has been since the ACA was enacted. But projections about if and when the IPAB will be triggered are now moot.

_________________________________________

Just as TRUMP is pretending to be right wing conservative in removing US from TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT and pretending to be fighting all those global labor pool 99% immigrants------he is pretending to end this IPAB tied to MEDICARE.  Notice a super-majority of REPUBLICANS today just as a super-majority of DEMOCRATS in 2009 didn't remove that INSURANCE MANDATE-----

TRUMP is super-sizing mergers, consolidations, deregulations just as OBAMA----he is MOVING FORWARD to an IPAB attached to WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION/UNITED NATIONS only his right wing voters would not want to hear that.

THE IPAB IS NOT REPEALED-----IT IS MORPHING INTO THE HANDS OF GLOBAL 1% CORPORATIONS.


IPAB was repealed in early 2018

Section 52001 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 repeals the IPAB. The act was signed into law by President Trump on February 9, 2018. As noted above, the IPAB never convened and its process was never triggered, given how low per-capita Medicare spending growth has been since the ACA was enacted. But projections about if and when the IPAB will be triggered are now moot.

Here we see the propaganda surrounding what should be a REAL LEFT social progressive issue-----repealing IPAB-----repealing INSURANCE MANDATE----breaking up US health consolidation/monopolization.

What we see below are global banking 1% pols both Bush neo-cons and Clinton neo-liberals pretending to end IPAB when they are heavily tied to global health corporations and WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION/UNITED NATIONS waiting to simply install that IPAB----over this US IPAB.

We know this especially for those 'Democrats' because they are tied to HYPER-GLOBAL NEO-LIBERAL US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES-----Oregon, CA, TX---and TN is super-duper global health system.


99% OF WE THE PEOPLE DO NOT WANT WHAT THESE GLOBAL BANKING 1% POLS/PLAYERS HAVE AS A GOAL------WE NEED OUR OWN 99% VOICE---NOT GLOBAL BANKING TALKING POINTS.


'The repeal effort has bipartisan support in Congress, including 49 senators and 219 members of the House, she noted. In the Senate, Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) have introduced both a joint resolution and a regular bill to repeal IPAB, as have Reps. Phil Roe, MD, (R-Tenn.) and Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) in the House. But the biggest problem with Congress has been raising awareness of the issue, Fazio said. "Most members of Congress are surprised to know that the [joint resolution option] is open to them."'



CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have completely deregulated, monopolized, and now handed all control of US health policy and pricing to what will become that ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE WORLD HEALTH/UNITED NATIONS board.


Practice Management > Reimbursement


Healthcare Groups Push to Repeal IPAB by August Deadline


Repeal through a joint resolution would need to happen by Aug. 15

• by Joyce Frieden, News Editor, MedPage Today June 30, 2017

WASHINGTON -- A large group of healthcare organizations is pushing for Congress to repeal the law establishing the Affordable Care Act's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) before Aug. 15, warning that it will get a lot harder after that date.


The IPAB was designed to be a 15-member independent body that would make recommendations on cuts to the Medicare budget; if Congress didn't agree with the IPAB's recommendations, it would have to devise its own plan to cut the Medicare budget by an equivalent amount.


The board has not yet met -- indeed, no one has even been named to it -- and its hypothetical existence has few defenders. Nevertheless, it could become a much bigger focus in the next few weeks if it remains on the books. That's because of the expected release of the Medicare Trustees' Report, an analysis released annually that details the fiscal health of the Medicare program.


The trustees' report will announce whether or not Medicare has met spending targets mandated by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). If the targets are not met -- if Medicare spending is too high -- the ACA's IPAB clause will be triggered. If the IPAB isn't established, or if it meets but fails to devise an acceptable plan, the responsibility of making the cuts would fall to the current Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price, MD.


The IPAB's critics -- who span the ideological spectrum -- say it is a far too blunt instrument to use for cutting Medicare spending. "There are more thoughtful ways to improve the efficiency and quality of the Medicare program rather than this meat axe approach," said Mary Grealy, president of the Healthcare Leadership Council, a coalition of drug, medical device, health insurance, and other healthcare organizations that is spearheading the repeal push.


"It takes time to bend the cost curve in Medicare," said Victor Fazio, a former Democratic congressman from California and now a senior advisor to the Washington law firm Akin Gump, which the HLC has hired to help with the repeal effort. The IPAB "is the impatient approach."


In addition, said Grealy -- who, like Fazio, spoke during an interview at which a public relations person was present -- the law creating IPAB "is very restrictive as to who could be on this board" because of conflict-of-interest issues, "so it would be people with no real-world experience in delivering healthcare."


And the cost-cutting recommendations would likely involve reimbursement cuts for physicians and other healthcare providers, according to Grealy.


"The law requires IPAB to achieve scoreable savings within a one-year time period," the HLC, along with several hundred organizations, wrote in a letter to members of Congress. "Thus, instead of pursuing long-term reforms that may not achieve immediate savings, IPAB is more likely to consider short-term savings in the form of payment cuts for healthcare providers. This was, in fact, the conclusion of the Congressional Budget Office, which stated that IPAB is most likely to focus on payment rates or methodologies for services provided by non-exempt providers."


There are better ways to cut Medicare costs than through IPAB, including greater use of accountable care organizations (ACOs), Grealy said. "There is also a big focus now on chronic care and there are a lot of new tools out there [such as] allowing broader use of telehealth." In terms of reducing the cost of prescription drugs -- an issue that affects the drug companies in Grealy's organization -- the solution involves "increasing competition to lower prices -- get more generics to market quickly, and get more brand-name drugs to market quickly too."


IS GREALY A GLOBAL BANKING 5% PLAYER OR WHAT????  ACOs AND TELEMEDICINE are the goals of FAR-RIGHT WING global corporations.

Although IPAB could be repealed at any time through the regular law-making process, there is a special provision that would allow it to be repealed through a joint resolution -- a "cleaner" process that allows no amendments to the measure -- as long as it is done by Aug. 15. Hence the group's rush to get the repeal done. "We miss that [deadline] and then it would go to a normal legislative process," which would be much more complicated, Grealy said.


The repeal effort has bipartisan support in Congress, including 49 senators and 219 members of the House, she noted. In the Senate, Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) have introduced both a joint resolution and a regular bill to repeal IPAB, as have Reps. Phil Roe, MD, (R-Tenn.) and Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) in the House. But the biggest problem with Congress has been raising awareness of the issue, Fazio said. "Most members of Congress are surprised to know that the [joint resolution option] is open to them."


Although Democrats have been supportive of the ACA, some are not anxious to trigger the IPAB because if the board fails to cut Medicare costs to Congress's satisfaction, the task will fall to Price, a Republican, he noted.


In general, "IPAB has been operating like a ghost ship -- an empty vessel created by Congress that doesn't have anyone on board," Jonathan Oberlander, PhD, chair of the department of social medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, wrote in an email to MedPage Today.


"Many health services researchers still support IPAB as a device to rationalize healthcare spending and Medicare governance," Oberlander said. "But in Congress, Republicans intensely oppose it and Democratic support is wavering. Some Democrats probably still support IPAB for substantive reasons, others as a symbol of the ACA -- they resist repealing any part of the ACA or giving ground to the GOP on any ACA issue. How strong Democratic support actually is for IPAB in Congress right now I don't know."


"There is a good chance that Congress could repeal IPAB, though given the general uncertainty over healthcare reform and the ACA it is hard to predict and its fate remains uncertain," continued Oberlander, the author of a Perspective article on IPAB in the New England Journal of Medicine. "If it survives, the Trump administration could potentially choose not to enforce its spending cuts -- IPAB in that case would essentially become the institutional equivalent of the living dead."
___________________________________________


'Some industry experts think that this could be CVS’ way of gearing itself up to compete against Amazon, which is rumored to soon look to grow its online pharmacy business'.

Here we see BEZOS AMAZON.COM in the PHARMA business ------and we see what is still called a US national PHARMA chain---CVS---hawking itself to another 'health' specialist JP MORGAN----because global banking 1% simply want to take care of its GLOBAL LABOR POOL 99% HUMAN CAPITAL.

BEZOS may be a sociopath----but he is a CEO of a global business so he can be on that WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION IPAB ----as a CORPORATE STAKEHOLDER. CVS may have a bit of a bias on PHARMA policy and pricing as it PROFITEERS its way to global expansion----but it's CEO will have a spot on a WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION IPAB----because it is a STAKEHOLDER.

US 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE and our MEDICARE seniors------not a stakeholder there except we have paid for all that consumption we are now going to be denied. We will see FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT 5% health NGOs pretending to work for the 99% with a person on these boards as with AARP.



Sep 8, 2017 @ 01:59 PM 1,255 2 Free Issues of Forbes

How CVS Is Looking To Further Expand Its Reach

Great Speculations Buys, holds and hopes Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Trefis Team , Contributor

 
After a better than expected second quarter, CVS is taking initiatives to boost its sales even further through the introduction of vending kiosks. The pharmacy giant has decided to put vending machines in areas that experience high traffic, such as airports, college campuses and bus terminals so that busy customers have the convenience of accessing its products through these outlets. It plans on launching 25 such vending machines this fall throughout New York and New England. An additional 50 more machines will be installed in the next phase.


The first kiosk is already operational in the South Station bus terminal in Boston. Through the new CVS Pharmacy vending machine program, the company can reach its customers beyond its traditional brick-and-mortar setups. The machines will carry items that are convenient to pick up for busy travelers. These include deodorant, toothpaste, contact solution, healthy snacks, batteries, lint rollers, and stain removers. The kiosks will be touchscreen and carry more than 70 products.


Some industry experts think that this could be CVS’ way of gearing itself up to compete against Amazon, which is rumored to soon look to grow its online pharmacy business. The convenience of online shopping over brick-and-mortar stores has already made a lot of industries such as apparel and beauty companies make their business models more digitally oriented. Though pharmacy is not traditionally a segment that might be greatly impacted given the regulations of selling most drugs only with prescriptions, other generic healthcare products can easily be bought online. Accordingly, CVS’ recent initiative might be relevant and effective for helping it maintain a competitive edge in the future.
____________________________________

'America's Debt Crisis
Obama's budget would cut heat subsidies for poor

snow_blizzard.gi.top.jpg By Charles Riley, staff reporterFebruary 13, 2011: 10:29 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- President Obama's 2012 budget will propose cutting $2.5 billion from a program that helps low-income people cope with high energy costs in the cold of winter and heat of summer, according to a source familiar with the budget process'.


YES, MERGING US ENERGY CORPORATIONS AND INSTALLING SMART METERS WILL LEAD TO HOME ENERGY AND WATER RATIONING---A PUBLIC HEALTH DISASTER IN WAITING.

We are not going to discuss ENVIRONMENTAL PUBLIC HEALTH DEVASTATION health public policy---we went into great detail about what a CHINESE-STYLE Maryland/Virginia US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE filled with global industrial factories, oil and gas drilling, super-sized roads, rails, and pipeline to carry all these products----will end as the article posted yesterday-----AS CANCER ALLEY. Global 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA are working as hard as they can to make sure US citizens have no health coverage for this soaring disease vectors tied to MOVING FORWARD US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE development.

Now, that 5% FAKE labor union leaders hawking the idea of union jobs------good paying jobs------are not reminding US citizens that all that CANCER ALLEY from Texas and Louisiana came during US PUBLIC HEALTH BENEFITS to treat those disease vectors caused from hyper-industrialization in TX and LA------THAT WILL BE GONE-----NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU.

As well, we always hear these are good paying jobs----oil and gas drilling-----but again, global energy corporations are already installing AUTOMATED AND ROBOTIC drilling rigs and operations seeking to eliminate THOSE JOBS.

THERE IS NO WIN FOR 99% OF US CITIZENS OR OUR GLOBAL IMMIGRANT WORKERS IN ALLOWING MOVING FORWARD KILLING OUR US PUBLIC HEALTH INSTITUTIONS AND FEDERAL MEDICARE AND MEDICAID.

'Precision Drilling Corp.’s quest to automate more of its drilling rigs with new technology helped the company reduce its losses, even as oil and gas prices continued to languish in the third quarter.

The Calgary-based driller’s new technology is still in beta testing, but the company rolled out new process automation controls and other emerging technologies on 20 of its rigs, which drilled 70 wells in the quarter'.


This attack on social subsidy of home energy came with mergers by MARYLAND'S O'MALLEY and policies tied to SMART METERS-----OBAMA and Clinton neo-liberals defunded these social programs. TRUMP is simply MOVING FORWARD as that far-right wing global banking 1% -----TPP does not allow public subsidy----it takes away from corporate subsidy.


Khorri Atkinson Feb 18

Trump seeks to end heating assistance program for low-income people

President Trump's 2019 budget seeks to cut all funding from a program that provides heating assistance subsidies to low-income families in cold-weather states. The administration's argument: the program is marred by fraud and unnecessary, the AP reports.


Why it matters: This is the second attempt by the Trump administration to end the program, and it’s likely the proposal will again face resistance from lawmakers. Last year, Congress ultimately appropriated $3 billion, or 90% of the program's funding. Supporters argue the elderly, disabled and others with fixed incomes desperately need the assistance.

America's Debt Crisis

Obama's budget would cut heat subsidies for poor By Charles Riley, staff reporterFebruary 13, 2011: 10:29 AM ET


NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- President Obama's 2012 budget will propose cutting $2.5 billion from a program that helps low-income people cope with high energy costs in the cold of winter and heat of summer, according to a source familiar with the budget process.
The reduction is steep, and might impact millions of families. In 2010, the program received $5.1 billion in federal funds, which were then distributed to states that have both low average incomes and high energy costs.

The administration is quick to point out that the reduction will bring the funding down to $2.57 billion, which is exactly the same as the fiscal year 2008 level.


Before becoming law, the proposal will have to survive a marathon budget process, but Republicans are also calling for cuts to the program, a fact that increases the likelihood of passage.

It's hard to say exactly how many people would be affected by the reduction in funding.
Before the White House plans, first reported by National Journal, leaked to the press, a coalition of Democrats on Capitol Hill led by Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts defended the program.


The program currently only serves one of every five eligible people, and a reduction would have dire consequences for those already receiving benefits, Markey said.
"Returning to 2008 funding levels ... would mean forcing 3.1 million families nationwide to return to deciding between heating and eating," Markey said.


In Massachusetts, Markey said the program will help 250,000 residents this year. The state received $175 million in 2010.

Markey's estimate of the impact of the proposed cut is in line with one produced by the American Gas Association, an industry group that represents natural gas companies. Based on data collected from state governments, the group predicts 3.2 million households, and 9 million individuals, will be affected by the administration's proposal.


States with extreme weather and high poverty levels would be hit hardest. In 2010, New York received $479 million, the largest amount of aid. Pennsylvania received $282 million, while Michigan and Illinois both got $233 million.


In all, 15 states received in excess of $100 million.
Members of Congress from those states are sure to fight the cuts. On Friday, a bipartisan group of 31 senators wrote to Obama's budget officials urging them to reconsider.

"To cut this critical funding during one of the coldest winters in recent memory would not only be devastating for the individuals who rely on LIHEAP to keep their families safe and warm, but would serve as a threat to our national economic recovery," wrote Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who was joined by Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine.