Oh, wait...they are men after all. I see your point.

~spidey, who knows some girls who would go to these lengths as well...

I do wonder if their marketing department had any role in the "if it lasts more than four hours" warnings. That complication has given them so much publicity.

Blindness, isn't that an old wives tale similar to the one about guys "growing fur" on their hands?

Seems I may have fallen victim to the drug companies!

Back in August, I was sick due to mold in the office (it was in some potted plants). I went to the doctor with a double ear infection, and got my usual penicillin. I worked from home for two weeks, and got rid of the infections, but started getting sick again just days after I returned to the office (this resulted in the mold being discovered). I went to the doctor a second time, and thinking that there was a possibility that the penicillin didn't get rid of all of the infection, my doctor prescribed Levequin as a precaution.

Well, for the last month and a half to two months, I've had this on and off pain in my left shoulder. I put it off to sleeping on it wrong, because I tend to sleep on my left side at least 80% of the night. This week, with the really cold weather, it has been especially painful, and I've noticed that I don't have as much range of movement as I should. Again, I've been putting it off as sleeping on it wrong...since the last week I was on that stupid air mattress that also killed my back.

So, I'm watching TV this evening, and I see this attorney add for a class action lawsuit regarding Levequin. I go online, and google it (as the ad didn't go into too many details). I find out that Levequin has been associated with ruptured tendons and tendinitis. Rotary cuff tendinitis is specifically mentioned, and has the same symptoms I've been experiencing!

I told my husband I probably need to pay more attention to my shoulder, and go see a doctor now if it continues to be a problem, seeing as I took Levequin only 3 1/2 months ago, and these symptoms started within about a month after that. Part of the reason that health care costs are going up!! 4 months ago, I had a perfectly healthy shoulder, and now I may be faced with medical bills associated with a side effect from a drug that was supposed to help me...a side effect that could end up costing more than the whole initial illness! And it seem that I'm one of many, many who also took this same drug. If it is tendinitis, you can bet I'll join the class action suit against the drug manufacturer, and hope that they have to pay dearly. The drug companies need to be held accountable, or the health care costs will continue to rise, and no public option health care plan will help with that!

That's not good, one of my apartment-mates tore his rotar cuff a couple years ago, made him cry like a little girl and normally pain of any kind doesn't phase him. I've seen him put nails through his body and barely notice t, so it must not have been a fun experience. Took him about a year to get near-full use back but he still can't use it the way he uses his other side.

If it's tendinitis, my options would be surgery or live with it. Considering I'm not a fan of shoulder or knee surgery (have known many people who have had these procedures and ended up worse than they started out), I would probably end up with living with it! Thankfully, it's my left shoulder. However, it is still the principal of the matter! The very thing I've been saying in this thread...what about making the drug companies accountable for the crap that they put on the market without having all of the warnings listed! I read the enclosed documentation, because I had never taken the med before. No where did it say it could cause permanent problems such as this! Now, I face the possibility of additional out of pockets costs, as well as costs to my insurance company (which will contribute them needed to raise premiums, which they have done to us for this next year). I will have co-pays to get it diagnosed, regular Advil or something on the days it hurts more and because of inflammation, etc. Tendinitis isn't something that just goes away!

And my government is trying to tax me more for health care, instead of really going after those responsible for the raising costs. I'm just another victim here!

I say we conduct a plot to assassinate Nancy Pelosi and destroy the healthcare bill, Mwahahahaha!

Ok now I'm going to be serious. Personally I think that Pelosi's healthcare bill has to be one of the worst pieces of legislation known to the US. The bill is both unfair and communist. I don't even understand why anyone in their right mind would let Pelosi write the bill to begin with.

For me the finicky rules and shady taxes of the health care monster aren't really that unusual; they look just like any other system made by our government. The problem I see is the flat out concept of having a government-run health care. This country has moved far away from its roots. Whether that is good or bad is a debatable point, but the place our government has held in the past is changing and a new direction is being decided upon. Not long ago the philosophes that founded our country were working in it as well, advocating low taxes and no economic controls whatsoever. That age had its hypocrisies, we have ours; that's not the point. The health care plan shouldn't worry us citizens half as much as its implications for the gov's place in our lives. US citizens are no longer allowed to merely live their lives out and work for a living. They are slowly being forced about by bureaucracy to dance to the tune of societal justice; the health care plan and global warming laws are perfect examples. Millions of people all about the nation are now paying tens of times more for their new inhalers simply because the old ones used CFCs [this was mentioned before]. That's ridiculous. That's simply the sort of thing that laws like this are going to lead to: the sacrifice of the individual for the good of the society. I don't believe it works, I don't think has ever worked, and I'm pretty sure it is not going to go well at all.

Even as a joke we don't like comments here about offing people, Wraith. You'd better hope the Secret Service don't decide to go sniff you out for that comment. Please restrain yourself in the future.

~spidey

All I can say to what you posted is.....AMEN!!!

You know that most of those laws on global warming are external to the USA and you guys pretty much ignore them right? Personally, my inhalers have gotten *cheaper* since CFC's have been outlawed for use as a propellant. Better manufacturing techniques I suppose.

Mine actually went way up in price. Used to be $7, without insurance having to pick up any of the cost (my co-pay was $10 for generics). Now, it is $40 out of pocket for me (my co-pay for name brand, because apparently there is no longer a cheaper "generic"), and my insurance still has to pick up more than 50% of the actual cost (per the "you saved $___ with insurance" line on my receipt). This change in price came with the change in propellant. That is ridiculous!

It isn't that I'm ignoring the laws...it's that folks like the drug companies are allowed to use the laws and other things as an excuse to jack up prices of meds, and no one is doing anything about it! Add to that the inferiority of many of the new meds that are more expensive than the older ones that worked much better and had fewer side effects which are getting pushed on the population, by the med companies or the doctors (who I'm sure are getting a bonus for X number of prescriptions they write to help promote the med...wouldn't be surprised). Instead of controlling health care costs by going after one of the major sources for the rise in such costs, they target the insurance companies by forcing the people to have insurance and offering what is advertised as a lower cost government run option, and the people by them extra tax if they don't carry insurance! Another idea to lower the cost of healthcare...how about giving a tax credit for gym memeberships or diet program fees (such as Weight Watchers to Jenny Craig) to help motivate people to participate in these things to better their health?

[list=]
[/list]
Yup-yup!!!! It's so much broader and more subtle than most people realize, and that put it perfectly.

According to the bill's summary, if you have demonstrable "hardship" you won't be forced to pay this tax. (There is a link to the full text of the bill lower on the page.)

And also, somewhere in this thread, someone said something about taking funding away from Medicare/Medicade to pay for this, yet the bill specifically says it won't do that, nor will it add to the deficit, according to those proposing the bill. I recall that old chestnut being repeated a bunch earlier this year, by opposing campaign ads on TV, and my old advice to people is: don't trust anything you see on TV. It was probably paid for by someone who will benefit from the bill's failure.

Mine have been 5 and 18 for the last sixteen years at this point. The currency has changed to one of lower worth since then and they're still the same numerical price. I guess the plummeting dollar has something to do with that down the line, but it's still made here so.... *shrug*.

None of these issues are with the Healthcare bill, they're problems with the REST of the system. Get out and do some campaigning instead of complaining that this one bill won't fix every little problem in one go.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... nning-cfcs
The reason the inhaler is so expensive here in the US: patents. Only three options. Only three companies own the patents. It's the price we pay for being the most productive in the pharmaceutical field by a massive margin. That system is not the problem; the government laws that forced all other inhalers off the market is the problem. @the US not complying with most global warming legislation: it's partly because we like being free to mess ourselves up if we feel like it; but mostly becase we're honest and realize the line to be drawn between helpful emission limits and debilitating economic restrctions. The CFC buisiness was an unfortunate mistake.
And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that taking money out of Medicare is something that ought to be looked at in a different light. The war in Afghanistan is costing ~60bill a year and we have already spent over 10 times that much on a bail-out in one year. The biggest hole in the US pocket is domestic spending, and starting a public health care system that will be paid for WITHOUT cutting costs somewhere else isn't going to help us that much. And we just had a resession too.