Garment Makers Stumble on Call for Accountability

PARETS DEL VALLÈS, Spain — From a sleek gray distribution center near Barcelona, the global fashion brand Mango ships 60 million garments in a year. Automated conveyor belts whir through the building like subway lines, sorting and organizing blouses, sweaters and other items to be shipped around the world. Human hands barely touch the clothes. Five thousand miles away in Bangladesh, the Phantom Tac factory in the industrial suburb of Savar was a hive of human hands. Hundreds of men and women hunched over sewing machines to produce garments in an assembly line system unchanged for years. Speed was also essential, but that just meant people had to work faster. Last spring, as it pushed forward with global expansion plans, Mango turned to Phantom Tac to produce a sample order of polo shirts and other items. Then, on April 24, the Rana Plaza factory complex collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people in the deadliest disaster in garment industry history, and destroying Phantom Tac and other operations in the building. Now, eight months later, the question is what responsibility Mango and other brands should bear toward the victims of Rana Plaza, a disaster that exposed the murkiness and lack of accountability in the global supply chain for clothes. Under intense international pressure, four brands agreed last week to help finance a landmark $40 million compensation fund for the victims. But many other brands, including Mango, have so far refused to contribute to the...

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Video: AAJ President Discusses Generic Drugs

Today's post was shared by Take Justice Back and comes from www.takejusticeback.com

Nearly 80 percent of all prescriptions in the U.S. are filled with the generic version of a drug.  The price tag can be appealing, but taking a generic drug can also have dangerous consequences because generic drug manufacturers are not accountable for the safety of drugs they produce.Accountability is a key incentive to ensure drug companies monitor and adequately warn patients about the safety of drugs. Despite what many may think, the FDA does not test drugs, but instead relies on testing provided by the drug companies.  FDA approval of a drug does not guarantee safety.  In the above video, American Association for Justice President Burton LeBlanc talks about the accountability imbalance between generic drugs and name-brand drugs and how the lack of accountability can put consumers at risk. “What you may not know is that unlike brand-name manufacturers, generic drug manufacturers cannot be held accountable if their drugs injure or kill Americans. And we all know too well, if no one is accountable, no one is safe,” LeBlanc said. To view the video in its entirety, click here. Here’s where you can help. Join the growing number of over 20,000 consumers who have already signed a petition calling on the FDA to restore accountability. Safety is an issue that can’t be overlooked.

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Clothing Brands Sidestep Blame for Safety Lapses

From a sleek gray distribution center near Barcelona, the global fashion brand Mango ships 60 million garments in a year. Automated conveyor belts whir through the building like subway lines, sorting and organizing blouses, sweaters and other items to be shipped around the world. Human hands barely touch the clothes.

Five thousand miles away in Bangladesh, the Phantom Tac factory in the industrial suburb of Savar was a hive of human hands. Hundreds of men and women hunched over sewing machines to produce garments in an assembly line system unchanged for years. Speed was also essential, but that just meant people had to work faster. 

Last spring, as it pushed forward with global expansion plans, Mango turned to Phantom Tac to produce a sample order of polo shirts and other items. Then, on April 24, the Rana Plaza factory complex collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people in the deadliest disaster in garment industry history, and destroying Phantom Tac and other operations in the building.

Now, eight months later, the question is what responsibility Mango and other brands should bear toward the victims of Rana Plaza, a disaster that exposed the murkiness and lack of accountability in the global supply chain for clothes. Under intense international pressure, four brands agreed last week to help finance a landmark $40 million compensation fund for the victims.

But many other brands, including Mango, have so far refused to contribute to the...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on

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Medicare’s Failure to Track Doctors Wastes Billions on Name-Brand Drugs

Versions of this story were co-published with Digital First Media websites and newspapers, with public radio station WNYC in New York and with American Public Media’s Marketplace. Medicare is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars a year by failing to rein in doctors who routinely give patients pricey name-brand drugs when cheaper generic alternatives are available. ProPublica analyzed the prescribing habits of 1.6 million practitioners nationwide and found that a tiny fraction of them are having an outsized impact on spending in Medicare’s massive drug program. Just 913 internists, family medicine and general practice physicians cost taxpayers an extra $300 million in 2011 alone by disproportionately choosing name-brand drugs. These doctors each wrote at least 5,000 prescriptions that year, including refills, and ranked among the program’s most prolific prescribers. Many of these physicians also have accepted thousands of dollars in promotional or consulting fees from drug companies, records show. While lawmakers bitterly disagree about the Affordable Care Act, Medicare’s drug program has been held up as a success for government health care. It has come in below cost estimates while providing access to needed medicines for 36 million seniors and the disabled. But this seeming fiscal success has hidden billions of dollars lost to unnecessarily expensive prescribing over the program’s eight-year history. The waste is exacerbated by a ...

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Prescription-Drug Coupons — No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

The cost of pharmaceuticals prescribed in workers' compensation claims remains a seriously advancing cost to the system.  Employers blame injured workers for the cause and the demand. Is the actual demand being driven by the pharmaceutical industry? The following is shared from The New England Journal of Medicine www.nejm.org.

Visit nearly any official website for a brand-name drug available in the United States and, mixed in with links to prescribing and safety information, you'll find links to drug “coupons,” including copayment-assistance programs and monthly savings cards. Most offers are variations on “Why pay more? With the [drug] savings card, you can get [drug] for only $18 per prescription if eligible” or “Get a free 30-capsule trial of [drug] with your doctor's prescription and ask your doctor if [drug] is right for you.” Why do manufacturers offer drug coupons? Are they good for patients in the long run? Are they even legal? Commercial drug-insurance plans typically have tiered pharmaceutical formularies to guide prescription-drug use, requiring relatively small patient copayments (approximately $5 to $15) for inexpensive generic drugs and higher copayments (perhaps $25 to $100) for brand-name drugs. Manufacturers use coupons to reimburse patients for this difference in copayments when they buy brand-name medications, so that, for people with commercial insurance coverage, the out-of-pocket costs are the same as those for generic drugs. Drug coupons are implemented through subsidies paid by drug manufacturers. Patients nearly always print coupons off...

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Joseph S. Ross, M.D., and Aaron S. Kesselheim, M.D., J.D., M.P.H.
N Engl J Med 2013; 369:1188-1189 September 26, 2013 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1301993

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