Hello. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Cheddar News
. I'm, I'm a time for our good to
know headlines. Let's start with some important news for
seniors. A study published yesterday in Jama found that
one in five adults, over 65 skipped or delayed
medication in 2022 because of costs. Back in 2016
, only one in seven seniors had the same issue
marking a sharp increase in the past six years.
The study cited both high inflation and rising prescription drug
cost for the issue and found that even among those
who did not skip medication, 8% cut down on
necessities like gas or groceries in order to afford it
, the study was looking at older people, but
the lead author noted the younger people also struggle to
afford medications like insulin. And we know the drug
cost of insulin is typically so much higher than the
cost of making these drugs for the labs. Which
is part of the reason why you saw with the
most recently passed inflation reduction act, the cap on
insulin at$35 which is huge because now you have
all these drug makers now in tandem. Now capping
the insulin. Exactly. But on top of that
, some of the other big provisions of the Inflation
reduction Act, which allows a lot of the declining
costs for prescriptions to go into effect won't take into
effect for years, at least a couple of years
down the road. So this is why you're seeing
, as you mentioned, 8% of seniors not putting
food or gas in their house. Uh you know
, to, to pay for their drugs, four
or 5%. I remember that same study said that
they go into debt just to not just to pay
for a lot of their medications as well. This
is just this continuing problem that we have in this
country where the drug costs, especially when Medicare is
not able to sort of negotiate with a lot of
these manufacturers to bring down those costs is so high
. And as a result, you're seeing so many
seniors and younger people be impacted or people that don't
have the income to be impacted here yesterday. By
the way, we told you about Montana becoming the
first US state to ban tiktok that because concerns about
the security of the Chinese owned app while already the
state's creators are now fighting back yesterday. Five content
creators based in Montana filed a lawsuit claiming that that
law was unconstitutional and an infringement of their free speech
. The creators include podcaster and Cosplay or Lady Dried
Knot and Mountaineer. Lady Alice held who both have
over 200,000 followers. In addition to the creators named
in the suit, some of the big names on
tiktok are based in the state, including author Pink
Green, who has over seven million followers and home
renovation experts. Those drywall chicks who have over half
a million followers. One tiktok user said we have
terrible roads in Montana, but don't worry, we're
banning tiktok but some creators who rely on their income
, one, you know, making tons of money
off of this, have no idea where now they're
gonna get their money. So they, one was
quoted in the Guardian is basically saying, I'm just
gonna continue to keep going with this until the state
of Montana. And Tik Tok tells me or tell
my talent agent tells me otherwise. Um But this
is why the State of Montana is basically saying,
you know, it's all still full steam ahead with
this with this lawsuit, even though there's no real
way to keep an eye on this for the state
. And, and we're just gonna add to that
. People are gonna start using VPN S now as
a result. But the problem is, is then
you get, you're vulnerable to cyber attacks as a
result. And you and I talked about this yesterday
, we knew these lawsuits were coming. It was
a matter of time and it literally happened just hours
after. But with that said, we know many
uh state governments, they're thinking of taking tiktok off
their state employees phones. So this is one of
the first cases where we heard that if this is
statewide when it comes to people citizens. So now
the question is what other states are considering this move
? And do you then as a result, see
tiktok have to accelerate plans to get a US buyer
to store any of this data even though they say
none of the data is being used or viewed by
the Chinese government. Do you see that accelerate because
there's gonna be all these other states potential. And
during the hearing, they said they are willing to
move the data back to.