Always Best Care Expands to Charlotte to Serve Seniors with Compassion & Excellence
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Wall Street Journal
3 hours ago
- Wall Street Journal
Why Drug Prices for Some Big Medicines Will Remain High for a Longer Time
Thousands of Medicare recipients will have to wait longer to get some price relief on the expensive cancer drugs they depend on for treatment, while others might not get any reprieve at all. Two little-known provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Trump in July will delay Medicare price negotiations for some of the biggest-selling drugs in the world, including Merck's Keytruda, which is used to treat cancer and had $17.9 billion in U.S. sales in 2024. Other drugs, such as Johnson & Johnson's Darzalex, will be excluded entirely.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
Meet Charlotte, a canine first responder bringing pawsitivity to a Quebec community
Equipped with her customized vest, Charlotte the golden doodle keeps a busy schedule. For the past four years, she's been responding to emergency calls with a paramedic team in Mont-Laurier, Que. The five-year-old therapy dog and her handler Marc Paquette with Les Ambulances Y. Bouchard et Fils have followed ambulances to help deliver death notices, offered support for people with suicidal thoughts and intervened in cases involving autistic patients. Her skill is providing comfort and support, says Paquette. "It often starts with eye contact," he said. "She looks like a big stuffed animal, very harmless, and she's trained to be calm." He says Charlotte's presence has become integral in the Laurentians town of 14,000, and her unique role has allowed the first responders to not only gain trust among patients but also improve crisis management in the field. "Charlotte is an integral part of the pre-hospital care system," said Paquette. "We're available every day, evening or night, to assist the public." In her four years of service with the team, Charlotte's presence in the community has turned her into a quasi celebrity, joked Paquette. She's recently been asked to help provide support in court, to provincial police and residents in care homes. "She's well known and has become part of the fabric of Mont-Laurier," he said. "It's not rare that when I'm walking, people ask me 'Where's Charlotte?'" De-escalating situations Initially, Charlotte started her training with Paquette when she was three months old with the goal of becoming a service dog to support first responders. But Paquette decided to take it further. "To really bring it into the community and to respond to interventions in the field," he said. "We enter people's homes. We defuse crises." Paquette says he knows of other support service dogs working with paramedics in the province, but he isn't sure they're as integral to their team as Charlotte is to his. The main benefit of this program is how she has improved crisis management, says Paquette. When Charlotte approaches an individual in crisis, Paquette says 90 per cent of the time, the individual starts opening up. He says her presence sometimes prevents paramedics from having to bring people into the hospital network because of the dog's ability to de-escalate situations. "Once the crisis has been defused ... we are able to refer them through 811 to other psychosocial resources," said Paquette. "Before, the only place [to] transport was the emergency room." A complex training program Charlotte was trained at Mélanie Boucher's dog school in Sainte-Thérèse, Que., L'AcadémieChien. President and founder of the school, Boucher says the dog's success is not Charlotte's alone, but speaks to the commitment of her handler, who also put in hours of training. The duo had to go through three levels of obedience school and Charlotte had to complete between 160 to 180 hours of training, she says. Charlotte was the first dog the school trained for a team of paramedics. Since then, about 20 have gone through the program to serve with other professionals. The school has trained about 100 dogs for a variety of needs since 2018, she says. It's quite a complicated training process to train dogs to serve in a professional setting. It takes about a year, considering the school is preparing dogs to meet a variety of individuals in less-than-ideal circumstances, says Boucher. "Unlike assistance dogs that we train for individuals ... [Charlotte] has to be able to approach people" she said. "We teach the dogs to go and apply pressure points to bring comfort to people … let's say to lean on them, on their knee, on their chest, wherever the person needs it." Dedicated to the dog's training, Paquette would make the commute from his Laurentians town to the school just outside of Montreal regularly, says Boucher. "I'm proud of Charlotte, but I'm just as proud of Marc [Paquette]," said Boucher.
CNN
17 hours ago
- CNN
Department of Veterans Affairs looks to end certain abortion services for veterans
The US Department of Veterans Affairs is proposing to end certain abortion services to veterans, rolling back a Biden-era move to expand abortion rights. In a proposed rule filed Friday, the department said that it is seeking to revoke access to abortions and abortion counseling for veterans and the beneficiaries of the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs. 'We take this action to ensure that VA provides only needed medical services to our nation's heroes and their families,' the department said in the filing. Under the Biden administration's rule, the department currently provides access to abortions when a pregnant veteran's life or health is at risk if their pregnancy were carried to term, or if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest — regardless of state laws. The proposed rule would allow abortions in cases where 'a physician certifies that the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term,' which, according to the filing, had been permitted even before the 2022 expansion. The Biden-era rule was part of the administration's efforts to expand abortion access after Republican-led states pushed ahead with restrictions in the wake of the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that eliminated the federal right to an abortion. The VA argued at the time that it was necessary to give veterans access to abortions, saying, 'As abortion bans come into force across the country, veterans in many States are no longer assured access to abortion services in their communities, even when those services are needed.' But on Friday, President Donald Trump's VA slammed the Biden administration's rule, calling it federal overreach. 'The stated reason for (the expansion) was a reaction to a Supreme Court decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization … that itself was intended to prevent federal overreach and return to States control over the provision of abortion services,' the filing states. 'Yet, the last administration used Dobbs to do the exact opposite of preventing overreach, creating a purported Federal entitlement to abortion for veterans where none had existed before and without regard to State law.' Twenty states have banned or limited access to abortion. States where abortion is limited report higher rates of maternal and infant mortality, as well as greater economic insecurity. The proposed rule will now be open for public comment for 30 days starting Monday. In his first term, Trump made good on campaign promises and appointed Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade. Since that ruling, Trump has been keen to leave regulations over the issue to state governments. The Trump administration has overall been quiet on the issue of abortion in his second term. However, in June, the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services moved to rescind a 2022 federal guidance to health care providers specifying that people should be able to access an abortion in the event of a medical emergency, even if state laws restrict such procedures. CNN's Veronica Stracqualursi and Jen Christensen contributed to this report.
