With Sept 11 coming up...

[wendybeth]

Okay, so the next time a senior tells me they can't pay for their meds I'll reassure them that someday the cost will trickle-er, lower, and their descendants will be able to! They'll be in Canada or Mexico before I finish giving them the good news.

[innerSpaceman]

Yes, I was going to (obviously) say the same thing as Wendybeth, and anticipated the as-obvious counter-argument. It's an argument perhaps valid, but so morally repugnant to me that I want to puke.

[Alex]

Assuming its validity, which is preferable:

drugs that will be too expensive for many people or not having the drug at all?

[scaeagles]

Exactly, Alex. It is immoral to develop medicines that are too expensive for seniors to use right now, so therefore they should not be developed at all.

And Alex, you left out the part that the drug will come down in price over time. Of course, the complaint then will be that the lates and greatest is too expensive, and what we were complaining about being too expensive before isn't what we want anymore.

[Alex]

I left it out on purpose as I don't think it bears on the central moral question. Even if prices never changed, is it better for to have a beneficial thing not available to everybody or not to have it at all.

Again, this assumes for the sake of argument that without the profit motive the thing would not otherwise exist. This is not always true.

[innerSpaceman]

Sorry, i don't accept that either-or as valid. Is it better to spend our citizen's collective money on their collective health or on their collective defense ... when our zillion-dollar-a-second army is pretty much frelling useless at it? There are no more nation-states, and Prussia and the Persian Empire are gone.

We simply cannot defeat with antiquated giant military might the modern threats that have successfully arisen to outfox such might.

This is a different world than it was in 1776 and we require a different national agenda for the federal government's usurous tax dollars.

[scaeagles]

Then I would suggest that you start a campaign to change the Constitution.

Of course, that answer in my mind is the collective defense. I am not one to bury my head in the sand and pretend that there are not madmen in the world who wish to harm us, and some of those madmen are in charge of the so called nonexistant nation states.

[Alex]

So you're saying the government fund the profit motive? Or that the government should do all of the research to remove a profit motive? Or am I misunderstanding?

For me, whether the government spends money on defense, and how much, is irrelevant to whether the government can effectively pick of the slack if the current method of pharmaceutical finance and reward were overturned.

[innerSpaceman]

Yes, I'm saying our government - purportedly of the people, for the people and by the people - should fund all medical research, all highways and biways, all assurces of clean water, clean air, and safe food. For starters.

Funny how it does most of the things on that list - not all of them too well - - but I don't hear anybody moaning that the interstate highway system should have been done better for profit, or that safe drinking water and food should be better handled by for-profit corporations.

So why is it that medical health, arguable less important to our health than basic clean water and safe food, can only be successfully handled by private finance? - - and not "socialized" like highways or food safety.


Why is it that no one smears food safety with the derrogatory term "socialist," but some folks don't hesitate to apply that term to any suggestion that health care should also come under the same pervue???







oh my, how totally derailed.

Um, I think this whole thing should come up for a vote.


On September 11th.

[wendybeth]

There is plenty of research and development in countries where profit is not such a huge consideration. It is interesting how much less pharmaceuticals cost elsewhere as well. I'd like to think that there are actually people in the world who want to help others for no other reason than it is the right thing to do- silly, isn't it?

We have a deplorable infant mortality rate, and our health care suckage is starting to seep into the middle and upper classes. Money and a great job with bennies is no guarantee of good care.