Hurricane Idalia to hit Florida with many still reeling from Ian – National & International News – TUE 29Aug2023

Idalia to hit Florida as hurricane, with many still reeling from Ian.

Medicare to negotiate prices of 10 popular drugs under the Inflation Reduction Act.

UK: “Technical error” grounds flights nationwide, stranding thousands of passengers.

NATIONAL NEWS

Idalia to hit Florida as hurricane, with many still reeling from Ian

The National Hurricane Center is predicting that Idalia, which today reached the level of a hurricane, will hit Florida tomorrow with immense power. As of now, meteorologists are projecting that the center of the storm will move over the “Big Bend” area on the west coast of Florida, which has not experienced a storm of this magnitude since the 1800s. But even coastal areas that won’t suffer a direct hit is likely to see dangerous swells and storm surges as the hurricane moves north. Parts of South Florida are already experiencing scattered flooding with the heart of the storm still hours away.

The storm is also likely to wreak havoc in areas of Southwest Florida which were ravaged by Hurricane Ian last year. Nearly a year later, thousands of families who lost their homes remain displaced. Some remain trapped in a nightmarish limbo with their insurance companies. Others have received insultingly low compensation, as low as $500 for a house that was completely destroyed. Following the devastation of Hurricane Ian last year, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that blocks policy holders from recovering legal fees when suing insurance companies. This bill dramatically increased the barriers for families seeking fair compensation on policies they paid into for years. Incidentally, the insurance industry is a major donor to DeSantis’ campaign war chest.

Medicare to negotiate prices of 10 popular drugs under the Inflation Reduction Act

For the first time, Medicare will proceed to negotiate prices for drugs used by many beneficiaries. Until recently, US law specifically barred Medicare and Medicaid from bargaining directly with pharmaceutical companies, despite their enormous buying power. This changed when Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act last year, one of Biden’s signature infrastructure bills.

The drugs under negotiation will be:

• Eliquis, a blood thinner.
• Jardiance, which helps control diabetes.
• Xarelto, also a blood thinner.
• Januvia, another diabetes medication.
• Farxiga, a drug used in diabetes and to treat patients with heart and kidney disease.
• Entresto, which treats blood pressure and certain types of heart failure.
• Enbrel, which treats autoimmune disorders.
• Imbruvica, used in certain types of cancer treatments.
• Stelara, a monoclonal antibody which treats certain inflammatory conditions.
• Fiasp; Fiasp FlexTouch; Fiasp PenFill; NovoLog; NovoLog FlexPen; NovoLog PenFill, which are all types of insulin.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

UK: “Technical error” grounds flights nationwide, stranding thousands of passengers

About mid-day yesterday, Britain’s National Air Transportation Service (NATS), which is in charge of the nation’s air traffic control, announced that a major technical failure had forced the delay or cancellation of thousands of flights in the UK. Airlines say that it will take days before flights resume as normal due to the knock-on effects of so many cancellations and delays. There’s never a good time for such a calamity, but this one happened to coincide with a holiday and the return of millions of Brits from their summer vacations abroad.

Authorities dismissed widespread speculation that the failure was the result of a cyber attack, but the exact nature and cause of the failure isn’t yet clear. Some are blaming a “dodgy” flight plan filed by a French airline for triggering the failure. As the theory goes, the NATS system, rather than rejecting the faulty flight plan, inputted in, triggering a system-wide meltdown. Even if this is true, it doesn’t say much for NATS’ technical infrastructure if a single faulty filing can can cause such chaos. Either way, Willie Walsh, head of the International Air Transport Association, says the failure is “unacceptable” and that NATS has “crucial questions to answer”.

In January of this year, all flights in the US were grounded for several hours due to an FAA error. This debacle was triggered when an employee mistakenly deleted some files.

If all of this proves anything, it’s that flight management systems are in dire need of an upgrade. 

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