A family physician for 22 years, Dr. John Abramson serves on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. In the first half, he discussed the tangled web of moneyed interests at the heart of the US healthcare system and how Big Pharma relentlessly pursues profits for its shareholders. While he believes in free markets, he noted that certain successful drugs allow pharmaceutical companies to hold a monopoly because they control the patent. Because of this, working people can be extorted over prescription prices, he continued. In the US, the healthcare industry and particularly Big Pharma, is very unregulated compared to other countries. "We've got to put the guardrails back on this industry," he advised.
One step toward regulation would be to instigate a "health technology assessment" made by an independent body, which analyzes new drugs and compares them to older ones, and recommends which ones are most effective or worth the price being charged. Abramson pointed out that new drugs that are often pushed on patients are staggeringly expensive, whereas older (and cheaper) formulations may work just as well. While he's highly critical of the drug companies in general, he thinks they got it right in developing the COVID vaccines on short notice when we faced an unprecedented threat. However, he added, "we didn't make sure the drug companies would do a reasonable job of vaccinating the poorer countries," which may lead to further virus variants that breed in those locations.
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Mark Lerner is well-respected as one of the top experts in Mundane Astrology. In the latter half, he spoke about different astrological cycles and planetary alignments and how they affect us. The outer planet Neptune has been in an oppositional sign from when the US was formed in 1776, which may relate to fluctuations and disturbances over the last year and a half, he detailed. But later this month, Pluto is coming back to the position it was in at the start of America's birth chart, which could herald changes, he announced. Pluto, he explained, is a planet that represents mysteries & secrets, nuclear energy, and government, and this may connect to increased UFO disclosure.
Saturn is returning to the sign of Aquarius, which is where it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, he cautioned. Regarding COVID, Lerner sees an exhaustion in health care professionals who've been overwhelmed by the crisis. On the positive side, he noted that Venus and Mars will be together in the sky for an entire month starting next week, and in the first days of March, we'll see a new moon aligned with Jupiter, which can be auspicious. For more on specific dates, check out Mark's Cosmic Kalendar app.
News segment guests: Larry Connors, John M. Curtis