RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-alzheimers-lapse-drug-medicare-premiums-aduhelm-biogen-11664403263?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

President Biden on Tuesday claimed credit for a modest decline in Medicare premiums, but he forgot to mention the reason: His Administration is rationing a novel Alzheimer’s drug.

“This year, the American people won, and Big Pharma lost,” the President said in a speech in which he accused Republicans of seeking to gut entitlements and flogged Medicare drug price controls that Democrats are using to pay for $369 billion in new climate spending. But Democrats are the party slashing Medicare via cost rationing.

He continued: “This morning, we got more even good news about lowering costs. The Department of Health and Human Services announced that the premium for Part B will, in fact, decrease this [upcoming] year,” adding that “for years, that fee has gone up. Now, for the first time in more than a decade, it’s going to go down.”

Mr. Biden wants Americans to believe that drug price controls are reducing premiums. But here’s the deal: His Administration increased Part B premiums by 14.5% this year and blamed the increase on expected high demand for Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm, which the Food and Drug Administration approved last summer.

https://www.commonsense.news/p/how-young-is-too-young-for-sterilization?utm_source=email

“To calm this strife, WPATH could have produced an evidence-based, apolitical document for physicians and others desperately seeking guidance. That’s not what happened. The new guidelines are “a weird amalgam of pseudo-medical speech, and political statements, and fetishistic practices,” said Julia Mason, a pediatrician in Oregon and a clinical advisor to the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. Dr. Mason added that she was dismayed that WPATH rejected the chapter on ethics that had been in an earlier draft, but retained the chapter on eunuchs. (These guidelines see eunuchs not as a deeply tragic part of history but as a “gender identity” which health care professionals should support.)”

What do you do if you are the parent of a child who believes they were born in the wrong body? What if your kid doesn’t fit the stereotypical behavior of their sex—your daughter is a tomboy, your son is effeminate—and a teacher or school counselor suggests they might be transgender? What if your teenager, uncomfortable with their changing body at puberty, says they will harm themselves—or worse—if they are not allowed to medically transition?

A growing number of parents are facing such questions in 2022. Desperate for answers, they are turning to the experts: the doctors, psychologists, and professional organizations devoted to diagnosing and treating gender dysphoria.

Among the most important of these associations is the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). Founded in 1979, it is regarded by many as a premier advocacy group for medical care, education, and research regarding transgender and “gender diverse” people. Though it’s not a medical association—in addition to doctors and psychologists, its ranks include lawyers, educators, students, and electrologists—WPATH’s Standards of Care are considered by practitioners around the world to be the gold standard of recommendations for treating gender-related distress.

WPATH has just released a long-awaited update to those Standards of Care for people seeking “lasting personal comfort with their gendered selves.” This 260-page update— the eighth version of WPATH’s standards—includes several new chapters. One is on the increasing number of nonbinary individuals. A second is on supportive care for “those who identify as eunuchs” and “may also seek castration to better align their bodies with their gender identity” (yes, you read that right). A third, and perhaps the most anticipated, is on the treatment of transgender of gender diverse adolescents—added, writes WPATH, due to “the exponential growth in adolescent referral rates.”