Things To Do In SW Florida

By Arthur Allen, KFF Health News

On May 13, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., published an open letter to Novo Nordisk on the front page of a leading Danish newspaper, urging the hometown company to live up to its altruistic standards by lowering U.S. prices for its blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs.

What Sanders didn’t realize was that Denmark, a country of 6 million, was enduring its own crisis over how to pay for the Novo Nordisk drugs Ozempic and Wegovy.

Most other developed countries, including Denmark, negotiate down drug costs for their citizens, paying prices that are a fraction of those in the United States. But when a drug is effective and expensive, pharmaceutical companies can play hardball on pricing. And Novo Nordisk did, at least initially, pushing the Danish health system to its limits.

The country’s socialized health system had for years covered Ozempic as a diabetes treatment, but in 2022 doctors began prescribing it for weight loss, too, and soon they “emptied all the money boxes in the entire public health system,” said University of Copenhagen professor Jens Juul Holst, a co-inventor of the drug. read more

By Amy Sorter, Bankrate.com

Not all debts are bad ones. But bad debts can hang heavy around your neck and create long-term financial strain.

Here’s the good news about bad debt: You can reduce it.

When you have a clear view of your outstanding accounts and amounts, you can use the following tips to get out of debt.

1. Re-examine spending habits

Your spending is divided between “need to have” and “nice to have.” “Need to have” means food, shelter, utilities, transportation and clothing. “Nice to have” is everything else.

While whittling down your debt, you can’t slack off on your “need-to-have” expenditures. But you can decrease your “nice-to-have” spending and use that extra toward a credit card or loan balance.

Cancel that gym membership you don’t use. Cut back on meals out or the daily coffee. Get rid of that streaming subscription you don’t use. Eliminating a $15-per-month streaming subscription gives you an extra $180 a year, which you can dedicate to debt.

2. Determine the right payoff approach for your situation

The common approaches to paying down debt are snowball and avalanche. read more

Florida lawmakers likely won’t take action soon to relieve a brewing condominium crisis that could see thousands of owners priced out of their homes.

In a letter to state senators Friday, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, rejected calls to reconvene the Legislature before March to amend new condo safety laws passed in the wake of the Champlain Towers collapse that killed 98 people.

Condominium associations across Florida are facing a Jan. 1 deadline to have an engineer inspect their buildings for safety and figure out how much they need to set aside for repairs.

The repairs could cost the associations millions of dollars. Unit owners would be forced to shoulder the burden with hefty special assessments and higher monthly fees.

Passidomo wrote that she understood owners’ frustration, but that the issue has been “ripe with misconceptions and inaccuracies” about the new laws, which were passed two years ago.

Lawmakers can wait until after the November election to take up the issue, she told senators. read more

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER and MELISSA GOLDIN

Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled her economic agenda in a speech Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The Democratic presidential nominee laid out plans including a proposal for a federal ban on what she called price gouging on groceries, as well as $25,000 in down payment help for certain first-time homebuyers and tax incentives for builders of starter homes. She also spoke at length about lowering drug costs and criticized the platform of her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump.

Here’s a closer look at some of her promises and claims.

The impact of Trump’s proposed tariffs

HARRIS: Trump “wants to impose what is in effect, a national sales tax on everyday products and basic necessities that we import from other countries. … And you know, economists have done the math. Donald Trump’s plan would cost a typical family $3,900 a year.”

THE FACTS: Harris was referring to Trump’s proposal to impose a tariff of 10% to 20% on all imports — he has mentioned both figures — and up to 60% on imports from China. read more