Word: cocktails
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Live has a viewpoint, and every viewpoint gets a hearing. Howard Stern may be as influential as Peter Jennings. MSNBC fills its airtime with a corps of interchangeable "contributors" who offer seat-of-the-pants opinions on whatever the big story of the day happens to be. It's cocktail party chat passing for journalism...
What happened? Like those of thousands of AIDS patients, Puck's prospects have been dramatically changed by a new class of drugs called protease inhibitors. Used with a "cocktail" of older antiviral medications, the new drugs have demonstrated that AIDS can be held at bay--at least for a while. Puck began his treatment in August, and his symptoms have already gone into remission. The hope is that AIDS will eventually be transformed into a manageable, chronic disease like diabetes. No one knows yet how long the protease-inhibitor reprieve will last, but its effects have already been far-reaching...
...addition, too many patients who could benefit from the cocktail treatments aren't getting them. The drugs are expensive (annual cost: $12,000 to $20,000) and in short supply. That puts them out of reach for millions of people in the developing world, as well as for large numbers of underinsured patients in the industrial world. Tens of thousands of Americans are scrambling to pay for the drugs any way they can--through private insurance policies, Medicaid payments, sometimes even Visa and MasterCard. One resourceful patient in Georgia collected drugs from the leftover supplies of deceased friends...
Vaughn Pinkett, 33, of Miami, learned firsthand just how debilitating some of the side effects can be. He was riding a bus two weeks after starting the cocktail therapy when his legs began to twitch violently. "I felt like I was plugged into an electrical socket," Pinkett recalls. "It was like someone had two knobs--one heat, one vibration--and they just kept turning up the volume." After a few minutes, he regained control of his legs. Fortunately, the spasms haven't returned, and Pinkett, whose treatment is paid for by Medicaid, has regained both his energy and his appetite...
Patients who aren't covered face a tougher challenge. More than 40 million Americans are uninsured, and some who are insured aren't adequately covered. Some HMOs, for example, consider the cocktail therapy too expensive to offer their clients. To fill at least part of the gap, Congress in 1990 created the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP). Each state administers its portion of the $165 million budget as it sees fit, however. States like New York and California, which supplement the federal money with state funds, are among the most generous, covering more than 50 different medications. Georgia, by contrast...