(Untitled)

[thepowerbroker]

watching the news these days makes me really wish i wasn't so ridiculously knowledgeable about public policy and economics. that way, it wouldn't be so frustrating seeing everybody missing the point or being stupid. let's see what i'm talking about by looking at three stories getting a lot of play these days.

1. the flu vaccine. this is always

Comments

[incendiarymind]

#1 is an extremely interesting way to look at things. I think with something like the flu vaccine, there is still incentive to get it regardless of how many people get it. The reason is that while more people have it and will not get sick, if anyone does get sick, you are still unprotected. Pandemics can still occur in the entire unvaccinated population. I don't think anyone even considers the effects on society, they want to protect themselves on Maslow's first level.

#3 The perception of the world is important to take into account here. No one is going to go, "hey we should help out then." They are all going to freak out and react as they have been reacting. They will see it as yet another slap in the face.

[reddawn]

#2-I'm not going to get into specifics here (you can press me for details if you feel like it), but I spent the last year working around this issue and feel fairly confident in saying that you've swallowed a lot of drug company misinformation.

First of all, the myth that higher prices in the US subsidize lower prices in other parts of the world is bullshit. Sure, that might be the case with countries like South Africa where we're sending AIDS drugs over to deal with epidemics of disastrous proportions (not to say that the drug companies aren't making bank on those deals, either . . .) but when you're talking about the savings people get by buying their drugs in Canada you're talking about price caps set by negotiations between the government and the drug makers. These are prices that are more than within an acceptable profit margin for drug makers or else they wouldn't exist. We can't have these lower prices simply because the pharmaceutical industry gives millions of dollars in contributions to US politicians (69% of that went

What's Enron?

[reddawn]

"In 2002, PhRMA member companies invested an estimated $32 billion on research to develop new treatments for diseases - an estimated 18.2 percent of domestic sales on R&D - a higher R&D to sales ratio than any other U.S. industry

Re: What's Enron?

[poogus]

when one does research, they don't do it for shits and giggles. They want to look at numbers to prove their biases.

PhRMA is the anti-christ

[reddawn]

Alright, this damn thing just erased a long response I'd just finished so I'll give you the short version: you're wrong

[ankh_f_n_khonsu]

Greetings,

Stumbled upon your LJ via mutual interests.

1) The US medical system is a sham. The last congressional accounting of merit showed that more than 70% of all medical proceedures are not proven to be effective. More than 100,000 people die every year, just like clock-work, from properly proscribed medications. That doesn't take into account all the horrible complications resultant from the flawed paradigm