Your Call Is Important To Us (31 page)

119  
Partnership for a Drug-Free America:
See Cynthia Cotts, “The Partnership: Hard Sell in the Drug Wars”
The Nation,
March 9, 1992.

120  
$2.7 billion:
The General Accounting Office issued a report on FDA supervision of DTC advertising in October 2002: “Prescription Drugs: FDA Oversight of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising Has Limitations,” online at
www.gao.gov/docdblite/details.php?rptno=GAO-03-177
.

121  
80 percent of seniors:
See the special section on drugs in
Health: United States 2004,
National Center for Health Statistics, online at
www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus.htm
.

122  
Big Pharma, the most profitable sector:
See Marcia Angell,
The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It
(Random House, 2004).

123  
$500 billion, $800 billion:
See phrma.org, the website of the industry’s advocacy group, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America. Summaries of the industry position on DTC ads, research costs, profits, and so forth are available online at
www.phrma.org/publications/quickfacts/
.

123  
Public Citizen report:
See “Rx R&D Myths: The Case Against the Drug Industry’s R&D ‘Scare Card,’”
Congress Watch,
July 2001; online at
www.citizen.org/congress/campaign/special_interest/articles.cfm?ID=6538
.

125  
New York Times:
See Kurt Eichenwald and Gina Kolata, “Drug Trials Hide Conflicts for Doctors,”
The New York Times,
May 16, 1999.

126  
up to 370:
See the Public Citizen website. They have also launched a new site, worstpills.org, to keep track of potentially dangerous drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex.

129  
Prilosec and Nexium:
For more on the switch from Prilosec to Nexium, see Malcolm Gladwell, “High Prices: How to Think About Prescription Drugs,”
The New Yorker,
October 10, 2004.

130  
SSRIs for kids:
See the FDA page “Antidepressant Use in Children, Adolescents and Adults,” at
www.fda.gov/cder/drug/antidepressants/default.htm
.

132  
global patent debates:
See “Dying for Drugs” series in
The Guardian.
A good place to start is Sarah Boseley with James Atill, “Battle Over Cheap Drugs goes to WTO,” July 16, 2001.

133  
Sarafem:
See Carla Spartos, “Sarafem Nation,”
Village Voice,
December 6, 2000, and Lisa Belkin, “Prime Time Pushers,”
Mother Jones,
March/April 2001.

137  
top ten killers:
See
Health: United States 2004,
National Center for Health Statistics, cited above.

138  
top ten sellers:
See IMS Health, at
www.imshealth.com
.

CHAPTER SEVEN

140  
Spitzer insurance probe:
See “Sins of Commission,”
The Economist,
February 1, 2005.

146  
Premiums have gone up:
For comprehensive health insurance cost data, see the Kaiser Foundation website,
www.kff.org
.

146  
September 11:
See Robert P. Hartwig, “September 11: One Hundred Minutes of Terror That Changed the Global Insurance Industry Forever,” Insurance Information Institute, online at
www.iii.org/media/hottopics/insurance/sept11/sept11paper/
.

149  
Doctors have filed suit:
The Cigna and Aetna court case documents are available courtesy of the law offices of Archie Lamb, the class action lawyer involved with the case. Online at
www.hmocrisis.com/courtdocuments.html
.

149  
state-farm-sucks.com:
See Perry Z. Binder, “Domain Names and Your Company’s Giant Sucking Sound,” online at
www.gsu.edu/~rmipzb/Domainarticle.pdf
.

151  
45 million Americans:
See the page of links on health care and the uninsured at the Kaiser Family Foundation website, at
www.kff.org/uninsured/index.cfm
.

151  
The New England Journal of Medicine:
See Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, and Terry Campbell, “Costs of Healthcare Administration in the U.S. and Canada,” August 21, 2003.

155  
Aetna settlement:
For documents related to Aetna’s court cases and settlements, see Aetna’s legal issues Web page, at
www.aetna.com/legal_issues/index.html
.

156  
CIGNA settlement:
See Tanya Albert, “Judge OKs CIGNA Settlement with Doctors,”
Amednews.com,
February 24, 2003; at
www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2004/02/23/prsd0223.htm
.

156  
Aetna v. Davila:
Documents related to this case are also available on the Aetna website.

157  
patients’ rights legislation:
See Dana Milbank and Juliet Eilperin, “On Patients’ Rights Deal, Bush Scored with a Full-Court Press,”
Washington Post,
August 3, 2001.

157  
Gramm-Leach-Bliley:
See the Financial Markets Center’s in-depth coverage of the GLB, online at
www.fmcenter.org/site/pp.asp?c=8fLGJTOyHpE&b=224816
.

158  
Executive Life:
For more on the Executive Life scandal, see Ellie Winninghoff, “The French Connection,”
Forbes,
September 2001, and “No Assurances,” also by Winninghoff, in
Mother Jones,
January 2002.

159  
Leon Black:
See Bernard Condon, “Black is Back,”
Forbes,
November 2004.

159  
600 million:
See “Accord Near in Suit Over Insurer’s Sale,”
Washington Post,
February 16, 2005.

160  
“passing the trash”:
See Robert Lenzner, “Passing the Trash,”
Forbes,
January 2000.

161  
Spitzer reinsurance probe:
See Thor Valdmanis, “AIG gets subpoenas from SEC, Spitzer,”
USA Today,
February 14, 2005.

CHAPTER EIGHT

164  
Brookings Institution:
See William Fulton et al., “Who Sprawls Most? How Growth Patterns Differ Across the U.S.,” Center for Urban and Metropolitan Policy, July 2001; online at
www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/es/urban/publications/Fulton.pdf
.

166  
six billion square feet:
Figures from the International Council of Shopping Centers, an industry group, online at
www.icsc.org/srch/rsrch/scope/current/index.php
.

169  
$44 billion:
See the Annual Retail Trade Data at the U.S. Census Bureau, available online at
www.census.gov/svsd/www/artstbl.html
.

171  
Liza Featherstone:
See “Down and Out in Discount America” and “Wal-Mart Values: Selling Women Short,”
The Nation,
December 16, 2004, and December 16, 2002. Featherstone has also written a book on the Dukes class action suit against Wal-Mart called
Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart
(Basic Books, 2004).

171  
anti-Wal-Mart studies:
Al Norman’s website,
www.sprawl-busters.com,
is a comprehensive resource for research criticizing Wally World.

172  
$15 billion:
For more on Wal-Mart and the trade deficit, check out
Is Wal-Mart Good for America?
a November 2004 episode of PBS’s excellent
Frontline.
You can watch the show online at
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/
.

176  
more than $400,000:
See Simon Head, “Inside the Leviathan,”
The New York Review of Books,
December 16, 2004.

176  
Occupational Outlook Handbook:
Online at the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
www.bls.gov/home.htm
.

178  
fifty thousand call centers:
See “The Vanishing American Call Center,” commweb.com, September 21, 2004; at
www.commweb.com/customercontact/47900751
.

178  
Call Center Magazine:
See Brendan Read, “Finding a Home for Your Call Center,”
Call Center Magazine,
September 1999; online at
www.callcentermagazine.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=8701482
.

179  
UNICOR:
Check out UNICOR’s service section, at
www.unicor.gov/services/
.

181  
Interactive Voice Response:
IVR gets a whopping 1,500,000 Google hits; voice-mail hell gets a few more, with 1,580,000.

183  
American Customer Satisfaction Index:
The ACSI survey data is available online at
www.theacsi.org/
.

184  
new consumer apartheid:
See Diane Brady, “Why Service Stinks,”
BusinessWeek,
October 23, 2000.

CHAPTER NINE

187  
Project for Excellence in Journalism:
This group, affiliated with the J-school at Columbia, is online at journalism.org. Their report,
The State of the News Media 2004,
is available online at
www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/index.asp
.

188  
decline in hard news:
See Thomas E. Patterson at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, at Harvard,
Doing Well and Doing Good: How Soft News and Critical Journalism Are Shrinking the News Audience and Weakening Democracy—and What News Outlets Can Do About It.
The Center has a lot of research available online at
www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/index.htm
.

189  
Pew Research Center:
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press conducts regular surveys on the news media. Surveys from the last five years are available online at people-press.org/reports/index.php?TopicID=1.

191  
Ben Bagdikian:
Bagdikian has been studying media consolidation since the early eighties, and his latest book is
The New Media Monopoly
(Beacon Press, 2004). He has a website as well,
www.benbagdikian.com/
.

191  
entertainment as news:
See
Changing Definitions of News,
a March 1998 study by the Committee of Concerned Journalists, available online at the journalism.org website, at
www.journalism.org/resources/research/reports/definitions/default.asp
.

193  
September 11:
See two Pew Center surveys for the rise and fall in public trust after 9-11: “Terror Coverage Boosts News Media’s Image,” November 2001, and “Public’s News Habits Little Changed by September 11,” July 2002.

195  
Bush press conference:
Video and text of the April 13, 2004, prime-time press conference is online at
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040413-20.html
.

196  
Jeff Gannon:
See Howard Kurtz, “Jeff Gannon Admits Past Mistakes, Berates Critics,”
Washington Post,
February 19, 2005, and the Gannongate links at the Media Matters for America website, at mediamatters.org/topics/gannongate.html.

199  
fairness doctrine:
There is a good capsule history of the fairness doctrine at the Museum of Broadcasting and Communications website, at
www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/htmlF/fairnessdoct/fairnessdoct.htm
.

201  
James Fallows:
See “Why America Hates the Media,” by Fallows, in the February 1996 issue of
The Atlantic Monthly.

204  
Rathergate:
See
www.rathergate.com/
for links to anti-Rather bloggers.