Vin Suprynowicz

Kevin writes in from Buffalo, N.Y., in response to my March 15 column, “Prohibitionists force pain patients to live in agony”:

Mr. Suprynowicz, Thank you for this article. As a chronic pain patient, I find it more and more difficult to get prescriptions for the medication I need to have a quality of life worth living.

“We chronic pain patients do not expect to ever be pain free. We only want to be able to live life without being treated as second class, drug seeking addicts. A few people abuse the system but the chronic pain patient pays the horrible price.

“We are needlessly humiliated on a regular basis. I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating it is to suffer incredible pain knowing that every pharmacy I pass has the medication behind their counter that can help me, yet I am denied access to that relief without having to go through humiliating and sometimes dangerous treatment by the medical community.”

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My Jan. 22 column, “Climate scammers prepare to sacrifice some impoverished asthmatics,” continues to draw mail.

Pat L. writes in: “I have asthma and use inhalers. When I first got my new ‘environmentally friendly’ inhaler, I didn’t think it would necessarily be much different from the old ones. Wrong! They don’t work worth a damn. I get absolutely NO relief when I use the new inhaler — no matter how much I prime it and even when it is brand new. I have had to resort to using my nebulizer, which is a pain in the neck, and obviously not portable.

“I e-mailed both my senators to complain about the new inhalers and didn’t get any response at all. …

“I am not the only one, BTW. When I told my doctor that the new inhalers didn’t work, she ruefully agreed and said she had heard that same complaint from several patients.

“Well, that’s one way of reducing man’s impact on the planet, I guess — kill off all the people who suffer from respiratory ailments.”

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“Hello Vin,” writes in Cassie from Michigan, a self-described fan of “The Black Arrow.”

“While not poor, so I can afford my inhalers, there is one thing you missed. The HFA propellant does not work as well as the CFCs! It’s much harder to use. Consequently, asthmatics may use their ‘rescue’ inhaler more. The necessary drug is not well delivered. Because they have to use more, there are actually pharmacies reporting ‘inhaler abuse’ by patients and contacting their physicians!

“I know — I’m asthmatic, and I work in an industry that tracks whether physicians follow the ‘standard of care for asthmatics’ (among many other things — look up NCQA and then who their sponsors are.)

“The current standard of care is that an asthmatic should not have to use their rescue inhaler very often. Rather, they should be on non-generic, very expensive ‘controller’ inhalers. Guess who benefits? Even those people with Rx coverage have to pay a large co-pay for the controllers as none are generic. Hmm. They don’t help that much, either. They are steroid based. Lovely side effects from those steroids!

“Keep up the excellent work. If only more people were aware.”

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Allan writes in from the Hudson Valley:

“They pulled the main brand, Primatene Mist, off the shelves many months ago. It was an OTC medication that worked for millions of people.

“The manufacturers, we were told, had stopped manufacturing it. Probably true. But now I have to get a prescription so I can buy for $25 what I got for $12 months ago.

“There are Primatene sellers on Ebay, but who knows how long their stocks will last? I bought two packages several months ago.

“There’s a lot of money waiting for the guy who arranges to manufacture a knockoff of Primatene Mist. China is probably not a signatory to that international agreement. Do it there, and sell to the same distributors who are selling hundreds of medications to Americans through Online pharmacies. Our hypocritical government has not been able to stop that practice. If you know of an investor who would back this project, I’ll do the legwork and heavy lifting to set it up. … We would not be breaking any laws, since we would be selling to distributors. What they do with the product is not our concern.”

This column offers no legal or financial advice as to the advisability of such an undertaking.

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Philip responded to my Feb. 8 column, “Ever tried to ‘actively manage’ a 401(k) account?”, as follows:

“Hi, I enjoyed your article in today’s Las Vegas Review Journal. I also lost a third of my IRA in the recent market downturn. …

“Anyway, I do have a fund within the list of my IRA’s available funds that I think would have protected me if I had had the foresight to transfer my assets to that fund in November 2007. That fund is Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund (VMMXX) which shows a one year increase of 2.55 percent, a three year increase of 4.20 percent and a five year increase of 3.99 percent.

“Just to let you know that I think, in my case, it would have been possible to protect yourself from this catastrophe. “I would be interested in hearing any comments. …”

I replied: Hi, Philip —

As ever, let’s start with the important disclaimer that I’m a total amateur, not authorized by any regulatory agency to offer advice on specific investments. That said, “Money Market” funds — generally, investments in short-term paper issued by the federal government in Washington City — are widely advertised as being “better than cash” or (if newfound caution reigns) “the same as cash.”

And U.S. government paper is indeed “safe,” so long as the U.S. government can afford to continue paying its obligations. But paying them in what? If Washington sent you, as interest on your bonds, a paper towel, writing on the back, “We owe you one hundred dollars, payable someday,” would the bank accept that in deposit? Would the clerk at Burger King give you a Whopper for it?

Hilariously enough, the answer is: If one side is green, and the other side bears the picture of a dead president, yes they will — so far. But for how long?

A 3.9 percent return over 5 years is better than a negative rate of return. But a 3.9 percent return over 5 years isn’t even keeping you up with the “official, government-reported” rate of inflation. And the Fed and Treasury have been creating “new money” in recent years at a rate closer to 16 to 18 percent per year.

If you’d buried two dollar bills in a tin can in 1959, those bills — paper bills which would have bought a gallon of milk and three to four gallons of gasoline 50 years ago — would today buy you a QUART of milk and less than HALF A GALLON of gasoline. You would have LOST VALUE, big time.

However, if you’d gone to the bank 50 years ago, exchanged your two dollar bills for two SILVER dollars, and then buried your two SILVER dollars, today they’d be worth at least 25 to 30 current greenbacks, allowing you to buy approximately four gallons of milk and seven or eight gallons of gasoline. Even though you’d have a zero “rate of return,” your “investment” would have held its value and more — which securities denominated in paper dollars almost never do, once we allow the kleptobankers to replace real banknotes “exchangeable in specie” for the legalized fraud known as fiat currency.