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Airlines discriminate against science

On your right, you see a miniature horse. Straight ahead, a pig. To your left, a monkey. No, you’re not at the zoo. You’re at the airport, where airlines allow all sorts of untrained “emotional support” animals to fly alongside owners. Yet these same airlines often refuse to transport animals used in lifesaving medical research. Several prominent carriers — including United Airlines, British Airways and Qatar Airways — have yielded to pressure from fringe activist groups and stopped carrying animals for biomedical research. Other airlines have placed severe limits ...

Lozinak achievement award fit for a ‘king’

(Editor’s note: Bob Jubelirer represented Blair County as state senator from 1975 to 2006 and was the Senate’s president pro tempore from 1984-2006). When news broke recently that Altoona Curve owner and my good friend Bob Lozinak would be receiving minor league’s baseball’s highest honor — called “The King of Baseball” — tonight at the annual winter meetings in San Diego, I could not help but take a trip down memory lane. I’m very fortunate to have been quite involved when Lozinak first bought the team and when the Eastern League awarded a franchise to Altoona in ...

Change has been a part of Pennsylvania hunting

Saturday’s sunrise will open the deer season, ending a long custom in Pennsylvania’s outdoors. Since at least the early 1960s, the season has begun on the Monday after Thanksgiving. The board of Pennsylvania game commissioners, responsible for establishing hunting seasons and limits, voted for the switch to stoke more interest in a declining pursuit. Hunting licenses sales peaked at around 1.1 million in the early 1990s. By 2008 the number of adult resident licenses sold had dropped to 671,000, and that trend has continued. Resident adults bought 562,000 licenses in 2018. In ...

Senate drug plan brings death, taxes

The Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act would stall future drug development and deprive Americans of lifesaving cures — all without reducing patients’ out-of-pocket costs. The bill would alter Medicare Part D, the federal prescription drug benefit for seniors and people with disabilities. Today, 45 million Americans receive drug coverage from Part D. Part D is a free market success story. Instead of administering the benefit directly, Uncle Sam subsidizes private insurers who sell plans to beneficiaries. Since these insurers compete for customers, they have every incentive to ...

Protecting emergency care system

The Pennsylvania General Assembly is considering how to address the issue of balance billing. Emergency physicians applaud them for doing so as no Pennsylvanian should worry about insurance at a time of crisis. However, the most recent attempt to address balance billing, HB 1862, would decimate emergency physicians’ ability to effectively care for all Pennsylvanians and devastate already-stressed Pennsylvania hospitals. Under federal law, emergency physicians care for all patients without regard to insurance. HB 1862 mandates that an out-of-network emergency physician accept a ...

Four tips to help manage flu season

You know the signs. The thunderous cough. The pounding headache. The full-body fatigue. It’s the flu. Last fall and winter, influenza sickened roughly 40 million Americans and killed 60,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This year’s flu season is nearly upon us. Here are four tips to stay healthy. 1. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. People should get the flu vaccine early. Every year, this shot prevents up to 6.7 million flu cases, 87,000 hospitalizations, and 10,000 deaths. The vaccine also helps makes the flu less severe for those ...