5 ms·

Pharmacist says he has filled Alzheimer's prescriptions for members of Congress (2017)

76 points by hammock 3y ago

simonswords82 3y ago
The average age of the 118th Congress is 58 years old. The average age of the Senate is 64 years. Source: https://fiscalnote.com/blog/how-old-118th-congress https://fiscalnote.com/blog/how-old-118th-congress For most people with Alzheimer's — those who have the late-onset variety — symptoms first appear in their mid-60s or later. Source: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/what-are-signs-alzheimers-disease#:~:text=For%20most%20people%20with%20Alzheimer's,30s%2C%20although%20this%20is%20rare https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/what-are-signs-alzheimers-dis.... So, yeah. Of course there are individuals in Congress on Alzheimers drugs. Edit: Oh, and Mitch has frozen up for a second time: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-66663389 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-66663389. There really should be a baseline health test that people in public office must pass.
- hammock 3y ago
  One quarter of Congress is over age 70, the highest portion ever. Chart: https://twitter.com/thisisinsider/status/1569785511388262400 https://twitter.com/thisisinsider/status/1569785511388262400
  - esotericimpl 3y ago
    [dead]
- Vicinity9635 3y ago
  [dead]
- lepus 3y ago
  The idea of a health test keeps getting tossed out a lot as a solution, but it has the issue of all qualification tests for office -- the loss of perceived legitimacy of representatives if it was seen as a biased tool that's open to manipulation at worst, or functionally useless by being too narrow at best. I can't think of another trait besides maximum age to use that would be seen as fair, and good luck getting any constitutional amendment done in our political climate right now.
- munificent 3y ago
  > There really should be a baseline health test that people in public office must pass. It's called an election. The problem is that people either don't bother to show up and vote, or vote for candidates purely by party affiliation or campaign marketing dollars.
  - the_snooze 3y ago
    >The problem is that people either don't bother to show up and vote, or vote for candidates purely by party affiliation or campaign marketing dollars. The first part leads directly to the second. Primary elections are low-turnout affairs, but the extremes of each party are far likelier to participate in them than moderates. We get bad choices in general elections because we abdicate nomination power to nutsos by not voting in primaries.
  - oliwarner 3y ago
    > The problem is that... People only get one choice, so view it as a binary choice on party lines. Give people a transferrable vote and you'll see parties putting more than one candidate forward with different focuses. Voter's might actually stand a chance of getting what they want rather than voting against something they don't like.
lusus_naturae 3y ago
Would people change their opinion about someone if they knew or would they just vote along party lines? In some districts it wouldn't matter. The younger generation is not any better, they're entrenched in the same ways of thinking, re foreign policy. The underlying, foundational way of thinking is the same and it's all pretty dismal so having someone old enough to have alzheimers is not any different.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  No, but they may vote differently in the primaries. (assuming incumbents have competition)
- im3w1l 3y ago
  Maybe part of the reason they vote along party lines is that the party line was specifically designed to be appeal to them though.
bell-cot 3y ago
Cynical Reaction: So what? I've heard plenty of stories, over decades, about how every congressman (who isn't permanently retiring from politics) is far too busy fundraising and talking to lobbyists and trying to get media coverage and {other not-in-our-interest political crap} to pay attention to what they are voting on. If we are lucky, the bill was mostly written by junior congressional staff, who still retain a few small fragments of "for the voters" idealism. If we're unlucky, the bill was written by whichever lobbyist wrote the fattest check. Either way, it hardly matters to us if Senator Slime-Trail needs an aide to rescue him when he can't find the urinal in the Lady's Room.
- Clubber 3y ago
  When Trump got elected, I remember hearing lots of stories about how it took him forever to fill his cabinet seats. https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/23/politics/trump-cabinet-vacancies-apprentice/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/23/politics/trump-cabinet-vacanc... https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/11/politics/temps-and-vacancies/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/11/politics/temps-and-vacancies/... https://time.com/4703304/why-president-trump-struggling-to-staff-government/ https://time.com/4703304/why-president-trump-struggling-to-s... The machine runs itself. I wonder how much ability any elected official has to move the machine in one direction or the other. Probably not much, at least in any meaningful way.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    Congress absolutely has a lot of power over things. Congress controls the budget and legislative direction for the country. With the passage of a law, it can shut down entire departments. With the inability to pass say, a budget, entire swaths of the government shut down. The President also has a fair amount of power, over seat appointments, usage of Executive Orders, and one we haven't seen since President Andrew Jackson, the ability to willfully ignore things that the President is suppose to do (President Jackson famously ignored the outcome of Worcester v. Georgia to the peril of the Cherokee). That said, thanks to the Pendleton Act (and subsequent reforms)[0] one thing the President can't due is wholly fire and hire rank and file members of the federal government based on political patronage. Thats why even with those empty cabinet positions the government didn't grind to a complete halt. What is unfortunately very common, is goals / mandates set by cabinet heads means alot of departments have lots and lots of frequent changes in what guidelines / department rules are and are suppose to be followed. That said however, core mandates of departments can't be wholly dismantled based on the presidency at any given moment, so even with changes in the heads of the departments by incoming administrations, there is still a relatively limited amount of things they can do that will affect the day to day. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform...
barryrandall 3y ago
The only requirements for serving in congress are meeting an age minimum, some number of years as a U.S. citizen, and residency in the state you represent for some period of time. The historical makeup and achievements of this body reflect these requirements.
Bystander22 3y ago
Published Oct. 2017. Also, a rather important update tacked to the bottom: > After this story went viral, the pharmacist interviewed provided an additional statement clarifying his remarks. “I am not aware of any member that actually has Alzheimer’s and would certainly not disclose any such information if I did know.” He added, “patient privacy is a very serious matter that I am committed to upholding.” > He said that he was “[s]peaking very broadly about disease states that the general American population have and that it also applies to everyone including members of the U.S. House and Senate since they are also people just like you and I.”
- bglazer 3y ago
  Honestly, it sounds like he's trying to (rather weakly) backpedal from releasing private information about some of the most powerful people in the U.S. It's an interesting question whether this is ethical. On the one hand, representative democracy requires competent representatives, and knowing they have cognitive impairment is really important information for the whole country. On the other hand, I absolutely don't trust a random pharmacist to decide which personal, extremely sensitive information is important enough that they should be able to non-consensually share it.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Powerful people should not enjoy the same privacy guarantees that regular citizens do. They are there to represent us, and we deserve to know if they are incapable of doing that, whether because of health reasons or because they are in the pocket of lobbyists. Agreed that a random pharmacist, with unknown motivations, should be disclosing any of this. The doctor who prescribed the meds should be (a) encouraging the representative to resign; (b) disclosing it to a proper authority; (c) disclosing to the news media if nothing is done.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - nonameiguess 3y ago
    It was pretty customary up untli the last few cycles of 80 year-olds being the major party nominees for presidential candidates to release all of their medical records. There is no law forcing this, but ethically, if you believe yourself to be qualified to set policy for and lead the most powerful hegemon to ever exist in the nuclear age, I think you owe it to the world to let them evaluate you on all fronts using all possible information. You no longer deserve privacy. Your tax returns, medical records, all non-classified communications, should be an open book. There have to be tradeoffs. If you still want privacy, have it, but then you get to stay just a normally wealthy, powerful person and can live out your days sipping mai tais on tropical beaches and doing hookers and blow every night, but not being put in charge of a military with the power to glass half the planet if it wanted to.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Congressmen haven't been any of the following in many decades: * Drafters of legislation * Debaters of policy * Thought leaders for the nation at large, or for any subset of it, including rather perversely, Congress * Experts of any sort on issues that matter at a national level So basically, there is no reason Alzheimer's medication is incompatible with their job duties.
- jimrob4 3y ago
  They farmed it all out to think tanks and said "Give me something I can vote on."
  - drewcoo 3y ago
    How are the mental faculties of the think tanks and PACs?
    - Vicinity9635 3y ago
      [dead]
- Vicinity9635 3y ago
  [dead]
mannyv 3y ago
Feinstein apparently had no idea that she was out of the Senate for medical reasons for months. I wouldn't be surprised if she's in the first class cabin of the dementia train. Maybe she should have been taking her meds.

76 points by hammock 3y ago

The average age of the 118th Congress is 58 years old. The average age of the Senate is 64 years. Source: https://fiscalnote.com/blog/how-old-118th-congress https://fiscalnote.com/blog/how-old-118th-congress For most people with Alzheimer's — those who have the late-onset variety — symptoms first appear in their mid-60s or later. Source: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/what-are-signs-alzheimers-disease#:~:text=For%20most%20people%20with%20Alzheimer's,30s%2C%20although%20this%20is%20rare https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/what-are-signs-alzheimers-dis.... So, yeah. Of course there are individuals in Congress on Alzheimers drugs. Edit: Oh, and Mitch has frozen up for a second time: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-66663389 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-66663389. There really should be a baseline health test that people in public office must pass.

hammock 3y ago
One quarter of Congress is over age 70, the highest portion ever. Chart: https://twitter.com/thisisinsider/status/1569785511388262400 https://twitter.com/thisisinsider/status/1569785511388262400
- esotericimpl 3y ago
  [dead]
Vicinity9635 3y ago
[dead]
lepus 3y ago
The idea of a health test keeps getting tossed out a lot as a solution, but it has the issue of all qualification tests for office -- the loss of perceived legitimacy of representatives if it was seen as a biased tool that's open to manipulation at worst, or functionally useless by being too narrow at best. I can't think of another trait besides maximum age to use that would be seen as fair, and good luck getting any constitutional amendment done in our political climate right now.
munificent 3y ago
> There really should be a baseline health test that people in public office must pass. It's called an election. The problem is that people either don't bother to show up and vote, or vote for candidates purely by party affiliation or campaign marketing dollars.
- the_snooze 3y ago
  >The problem is that people either don't bother to show up and vote, or vote for candidates purely by party affiliation or campaign marketing dollars. The first part leads directly to the second. Primary elections are low-turnout affairs, but the extremes of each party are far likelier to participate in them than moderates. We get bad choices in general elections because we abdicate nomination power to nutsos by not voting in primaries.
- oliwarner 3y ago
  > The problem is that... People only get one choice, so view it as a binary choice on party lines. Give people a transferrable vote and you'll see parties putting more than one candidate forward with different focuses. Voter's might actually stand a chance of getting what they want rather than voting against something they don't like.

lusus_naturae 3y ago

Would people change their opinion about someone if they knew or would they just vote along party lines? In some districts it wouldn't matter. The younger generation is not any better, they're entrenched in the same ways of thinking, re foreign policy. The underlying, foundational way of thinking is the same and it's all pretty dismal so having someone old enough to have alzheimers is not any different.

bdcravens 3y ago
No, but they may vote differently in the primaries. (assuming incumbents have competition)
im3w1l 3y ago
Maybe part of the reason they vote along party lines is that the party line was specifically designed to be appeal to them though.

bell-cot 3y ago

Cynical Reaction: So what? I've heard plenty of stories, over decades, about how every congressman (who isn't permanently retiring from politics) is far too busy fundraising and talking to lobbyists and trying to get media coverage and {other not-in-our-interest political crap} to pay attention to what they are voting on. If we are lucky, the bill was mostly written by junior congressional staff, who still retain a few small fragments of "for the voters" idealism. If we're unlucky, the bill was written by whichever lobbyist wrote the fattest check. Either way, it hardly matters to us if Senator Slime-Trail needs an aide to rescue him when he can't find the urinal in the Lady's Room.

Clubber 3y ago
When Trump got elected, I remember hearing lots of stories about how it took him forever to fill his cabinet seats. https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/23/politics/trump-cabinet-vacancies-apprentice/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/23/politics/trump-cabinet-vacanc... https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/11/politics/temps-and-vacancies/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/11/politics/temps-and-vacancies/... https://time.com/4703304/why-president-trump-struggling-to-staff-government/ https://time.com/4703304/why-president-trump-struggling-to-s... The machine runs itself. I wonder how much ability any elected official has to move the machine in one direction or the other. Probably not much, at least in any meaningful way.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  Congress absolutely has a lot of power over things. Congress controls the budget and legislative direction for the country. With the passage of a law, it can shut down entire departments. With the inability to pass say, a budget, entire swaths of the government shut down. The President also has a fair amount of power, over seat appointments, usage of Executive Orders, and one we haven't seen since President Andrew Jackson, the ability to willfully ignore things that the President is suppose to do (President Jackson famously ignored the outcome of Worcester v. Georgia to the peril of the Cherokee). That said, thanks to the Pendleton Act (and subsequent reforms)[0] one thing the President can't due is wholly fire and hire rank and file members of the federal government based on political patronage. Thats why even with those empty cabinet positions the government didn't grind to a complete halt. What is unfortunately very common, is goals / mandates set by cabinet heads means alot of departments have lots and lots of frequent changes in what guidelines / department rules are and are suppose to be followed. That said however, core mandates of departments can't be wholly dismantled based on the presidency at any given moment, so even with changes in the heads of the departments by incoming administrations, there is still a relatively limited amount of things they can do that will affect the day to day. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform...

barryrandall 3y ago

The only requirements for serving in congress are meeting an age minimum, some number of years as a U.S. citizen, and residency in the state you represent for some period of time. The historical makeup and achievements of this body reflect these requirements.

Bystander22 3y ago

Published Oct. 2017. Also, a rather important update tacked to the bottom: > After this story went viral, the pharmacist interviewed provided an additional statement clarifying his remarks. “I am not aware of any member that actually has Alzheimer’s and would certainly not disclose any such information if I did know.” He added, “patient privacy is a very serious matter that I am committed to upholding.” > He said that he was “[s]peaking very broadly about disease states that the general American population have and that it also applies to everyone including members of the U.S. House and Senate since they are also people just like you and I.”

bglazer 3y ago
Honestly, it sounds like he's trying to (rather weakly) backpedal from releasing private information about some of the most powerful people in the U.S. It's an interesting question whether this is ethical. On the one hand, representative democracy requires competent representatives, and knowing they have cognitive impairment is really important information for the whole country. On the other hand, I absolutely don't trust a random pharmacist to decide which personal, extremely sensitive information is important enough that they should be able to non-consensually share it.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Powerful people should not enjoy the same privacy guarantees that regular citizens do. They are there to represent us, and we deserve to know if they are incapable of doing that, whether because of health reasons or because they are in the pocket of lobbyists. Agreed that a random pharmacist, with unknown motivations, should be disclosing any of this. The doctor who prescribed the meds should be (a) encouraging the representative to resign; (b) disclosing it to a proper authority; (c) disclosing to the news media if nothing is done.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nonameiguess 3y ago
  It was pretty customary up untli the last few cycles of 80 year-olds being the major party nominees for presidential candidates to release all of their medical records. There is no law forcing this, but ethically, if you believe yourself to be qualified to set policy for and lead the most powerful hegemon to ever exist in the nuclear age, I think you owe it to the world to let them evaluate you on all fronts using all possible information. You no longer deserve privacy. Your tax returns, medical records, all non-classified communications, should be an open book. There have to be tradeoffs. If you still want privacy, have it, but then you get to stay just a normally wealthy, powerful person and can live out your days sipping mai tais on tropical beaches and doing hookers and blow every night, but not being put in charge of a military with the power to glass half the planet if it wanted to.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

Congressmen haven't been any of the following in many decades: * Drafters of legislation * Debaters of policy * Thought leaders for the nation at large, or for any subset of it, including rather perversely, Congress * Experts of any sort on issues that matter at a national level So basically, there is no reason Alzheimer's medication is incompatible with their job duties.

jimrob4 3y ago
They farmed it all out to think tanks and said "Give me something I can vote on."
- drewcoo 3y ago
  How are the mental faculties of the think tanks and PACs?
  - Vicinity9635 3y ago
    [dead]
Vicinity9635 3y ago
[dead]

mannyv 3y ago

Feinstein apparently had no idea that she was out of the Senate for medical reasons for months. I wouldn't be surprised if she's in the first class cabin of the dementia train. Maybe she should have been taking her meds.