Immediate "benefits" of the bill. Immediate something. The 2400 pages is a little much for myself.

http://www.dems.gov/blog/the-top-ten-immediate-benefits-you-ll-get-when-health-care-reform-passes

Quote :

"The Top Ten Immediate Benefits You’ll Get When Health Care Reform Passes March 16, 2010 As soon as health care passes, the American people will see immediate benefits. The legislation will: * Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans; * Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool; * Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans; * Lower seniors prescription drug prices by beginning to close the donut hole; * Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage; * Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans; * Require plans to cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26; * Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing; * Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions; * Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs. By enacting these provisions right away, and others over time, we will be able to lower costs for everyone and give all Americans and small businesses more control over their health care choices."

I like the things in bold. Right now. I don't 100% believe they do what they say they do - but to the extent they are not lies, I like them.

3/22/2010 2:17:44 PM

Quote :

"Require plans to cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26;"

That is one of my favs. When I was working full time for several years between under grad & grad school, I had friends without insurance and coworkers waiting for the probationary period to end who relied on the ER for medical needs with no intention of ever paying those bills.

Less gaps for young adults in the high school to work period, or high school to college to work period, or during the probationary periods, or for those having trouble finding work as new & thus inexperienced workers in this economy, is a very good thing imo.

3/22/2010 2:24:26 PM

As a father who is currently dealing with my 1yo's "pre-existing conditions".....there's at least something in there that's nice. I'll probably have it sorted out by the time these rules are actually enforced, though.

3/22/2010 2:25:59 PM

^ and ^^ I don't disagree that they can be good, but I have much less confident that something won't blow up with those.

Regarding children, the same argument applies to say "why wouldn't people avoid buying coverage until they get sick?" And regarding 26-year olds, the ability to get covered by their parents only applies to certain people - those who have reliable and responsible parents. So I think there is a strong populist argument to say that we should provide affordable options for students to get covered period - thus addressing the issue directly.

3/22/2010 2:45:44 PM

I don't follow. Are you saying I shouldn't have had health insurance for my daughter? That really would have hurt when they took her to the hospital in an ambulance when she was 6 months old. The pre-existing condition bullshit is only popping up because she had since switched insurance providers.

3/22/2010 3:16:11 PM

Quote :

"As a father who is currently dealing with my 1yo's "pre-existing conditions"."

The absurdity of someone who has barely existed for much time at all already being tagged with pre-existing conditions I think speaks volumes about how much need there was for health care reform.

3/22/2010 3:26:31 PM

too bad we got insurance "reform" instead of healthcare reform.

3/22/2010 3:29:09 PM

^Care to go into the details of the kind of reform you had in mind?

3/22/2010 3:36:58 PM

We've made plenty of good suggestions in this thread. None of them are in the bill.

3/22/2010 3:38:54 PM

Mind doing a quick bullet point list of the ones not related to health insurance?

3/22/2010 3:42:47 PM

Well the first bullet would be

* attack healthcare costs instead of insurance

which really means a complete overhaul of the system. The goal being that 90% of people pay for their care out of pocket directly to providers and that insurance (public or private) is rare or non-existant.

A while back I posted a thing about healthcare costs varying widely (1500 -80000) for the same prodcedure depending on hospital. This happens because consumers dont care about the costs of healthcare, all they care about is insurance. They would never pay the prices that the high cost hospitals do because its ridiculous. Instead they complain when their insurance company tries to control costs and refuses to pay the hospital. The hospital then says fuck both ya'll and pushes in on the consumer.

Either through price controls or the market you push down those costs of care so that people can pay them out of pocket. For those who cant or for chronic conditions you can have a form of wellfare.

The goal should be to remove insurance entirely. Or atleast have it exist only for freak accidents. Maybe those cases get pushed into homeowners/auto insurance (where they already exist to some degree).

For details you'd have to go back and read the stuff thats already been posted about 100 times. tl;dr: insurance is a stupid way to handle healthcare and simply paying for insurance for the uninsured has nothing to do with healthcare costs.

3/22/2010 4:01:50 PM

^^

-Tax code reform (specifically, allow individuals to receive wages instead of benefits/purchase their own individual plans pre-tax, or make it so employers can't write off benefits on their taxes. I believe this is the #1 thing that must change if we actually want to see prices begin to go down. Employer-provided benefits mask the true cost of health care.)
-Tort reform
-Competition across state lines
-Student loan reform (Yes, the fact that becoming a doctor requires years of school and a huge monetary investment affects health care costs, you shouldn't have to borrow 250k to become a physician)
-Eliminate "minimum services" mandates. The problem we have now is that insurance is used for everything, even maintenance procedures. That's not what insurance is for. Health insurance should be for unexpected events. The insurance companies may be partially to blame for this, but so is the government. We need to work on getting back to a normal system where insurance is used as true "insurance," and routine check-ups or broken fingers are paid for out of pocket. How can we expect insurance to cover everything without insurance premiums shooting through the roof?

And now for a couple other "radical libertarian" points that aren't talked about now but hopefully will be talked about in the future:

-Throw out patents on prescription drugs. It's bullshit that someone can come out with a drug that treats X, and no one can make a generic version for a number of years. Old people are literally dying because they can't afford prescription drugs, and name-brand drugs can be thousands of dollars for a 90 day supply. The market isn't being allowed to work.

-Abolish the FDA. They've proven time and time again that they ban useful substances and approve harmful substances. Let individuals decide what kind of treatment they want, and what they want to put in their body.

3/22/2010 4:05:42 PM

Quote :

"I don't follow. Are you saying I shouldn't have had health insurance for my daughter? That really would have hurt when they took her to the hospital in an ambulance when she was 6 months old. The pre-existing condition bullshit is only popping up because she had since switched insurance providers."

Any plan that accomplishes this I fully support. You should be able to switch providers without pre-existing conditions and if it's not already written in law then it should be. I thought it was, but I could be wrong.

3/22/2010 4:16:07 PM

Granted I know almost 0 about health insurance, but are you arguing that a company should have to provide coverage on someone that they don't feel they can make money on? If that's so, isn't it forcing them to lose money?

Like I said, I don't know much about insurance so please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Edited on March 22, 2010 at 4:18 PM. Reason : .]

3/22/2010 4:17:47 PM

Thats exactly what its doing and exactly why depending on insurance for all costs is so fucking stupid.

3/22/2010 4:19:38 PM

Quote :

"The absurdity of someone who has barely existed for much time at all already being tagged with pre-existing conditions I think speaks volumes about how much need there was for health care reform."

Dude, even I agree wholeheartedly with this statement, and largely due to the same reasons as you (scenarios like a 1-year old, or people losing/changing jobs, etc).

The way it was dealt with is motherfucking retarded, though. I mean, I guess it could've been worse (public option and/or "single payer"), but it's still a big step in the wrong direction.

3/22/2010 4:49:42 PM

Quote :

"Abolish the FDA. They've proven time and time again that they ban useful substances and approve harmful substances. Let individuals decide what kind of treatment they want, and what they want to put in their body."

Are you F-ing kidding me?! That's known as throwing the baby out with the bathwater....


You'd really be happy to take a cancer drug without FDA approval? I mean, it might not be a 100% safeguard, but at least it provides some sort of shield from the worst that could happen...

3/22/2010 4:57:44 PM

At the least the FDA needs more transparency and reform. As it is right now the FDA is just as much as a political arena as it is a "safe guard" for american consumers.

3/22/2010 5:04:03 PM

yea, that doesn't mean we should abolish it

3/22/2010 5:06:10 PM

Quote :

"-Abolish the FDA. They've proven time and time again that they ban useful substances and approve harmful substances. Let individuals decide what kind of treatment they want, and what they want to put in their body."

I work in an FDA regulated field and interface with them daily. The industry as a whole is terrified of the FDA and for good reason. There is a long list of historical incidents that continue today, that continually prove how vital the FDA is to our society. With the melamine scare, even the peanut butter contamination, the FDA acted very swiftly and shut those companies and adulterated products down.

I rarely post in here, but spewing uneducated diatribe like that is harmful.


I absolutely agree, however, that the FDA needs more transparency. There are a number of initiatives that have been passed to grant them the transparency they need. They can now issue warning letters instead of waiting for Form 483's to be responded to, which makes them significantly swifter in imposing criminal investigations.

Please actually read about why the FDA exists and what they continue to do.

Edit: Ah, I just saw the comment was posted by a Political Science student and not someone with actual medical/chemistry knowledge. That comment makes more sense now.

Edit2:

Quote :

"-Throw out patents on prescription drugs. It's bullshit that someone can come out with a drug that treats X, and no one can make a generic version for a number of years. Old people are literally dying because they can't afford prescription drugs, and name-brand drugs can be thousands of dollars for a 90 day supply. The market isn't being allowed to work."

Do you know how many drugs never make it out of the clinical trial phase? If drug companies can't recoup the loses for those products, they would never be able to develop new drugs. Who would invest the billions of dollars it takes to develop one product if there were no patents? Seriously, dude, educate yourself on the process. Its pretty clear you have no idea what the you are talking about.

[Edited on March 22, 2010 at 5:16 PM. Reason : edit2]

3/22/2010 5:10:00 PM

Quote :

"Throw out patents on prescription drugs. It's bullshit that someone can come out with a drug that treats X, and no one can make a generic version for a number of years. "

Did you fall and hit your head?

3/22/2010 5:24:32 PM

Quote :

"Do you know how many drugs never make it out of the clinical trial phase? If drug companies can't recoup the loses for those products, they would never be able to develop new drugs. Who would invest the billions of dollars it takes to develop one product if there were no patents?"

Decouple the two. Make innovating drugs and producing them separate things. Let the people who are good at producing the drugs produce them, and the people who are good at developing the drugs develop them. This requires the removal of patent laws.

Quote :

"Did you fall and hit your head?"

There needs to be another system that cant protect intellectual property without circumventing the market.

Let's say I invent drug X. My "reward" for inventing drug x is monopoly pricing. This means that I have decreased incentive to cut cost, as it's effect on demand is muddied. It also means that market efficiency is not met. We have failed market pricing, this hurts all of us. There must be a better way to encourage innovation while still reducing inefficiency and profit to zero.

3/22/2010 5:53:10 PM

Quote :

"Let the people who are good at producing the drugs produce them, and the people who are good at developing the drugs develop them. This requires the removal of patent laws. "

lolwut?

3/22/2010 6:02:24 PM

I think I know what he's saying. Let the companies that make drugs make them and the companies that create drugs create them.

3/22/2010 6:04:58 PM

1. Remove patent laws
2. Research companies will sell their inventions
3. Protect intellectual property rights by having research companies sue when their intellectual property is illegally violated

3/22/2010 6:05:53 PM

Quote :

"Decouple the two. Make innovating drugs and producing them separate things. Let the people who are good at producing the drugs produce them, and the people who are good at developing the drugs develop them. This requires the removal of patent laws."

Uh....

Not to be a sore sport, but there is no money to be had in innovating drugs. Also, you have to be able to produce drugs on at least a pilot scale in order to proceed forward with clinical trials. The two can not be decoupled until the drug is approved. That requires years of research.

I mean, if you sponsored drug innovation through government grants then yeah, but doesn't that kind of go against the libertarian ideal?

3/22/2010 6:05:56 PM

Well I'm not a liberitarian faggot first off. I believe their is money in innovating drugs, new drugs prove that. I also think that making drugs on a small scale is part of researching them, but it's different than the larger scale production done by companies that produce generics for example.

3/22/2010 6:09:35 PM

Maybe it's time we make the rest of the world respect our intellectual property rights when it comes to prescription drugs, while allowing only American health insurance companies to use generics.

Right now it's the opposite, and in effect we are subsidizing the rest of the world's healthcare by paying for the majority of the R&D.

3/22/2010 6:13:42 PM

I actually just attended an FDA conference and one of the talking points was on generic drugs and approval. Currently, "big pharma" pays a pretty heavy fee to get their drugs examined for approval. These "user fees" are a source of income for the FDA that allows them to have the extra staffing that is required to fully go through each drug application. Generic companies don't have that kind of bankroll, which is why generics take longer to get approved after the patent on a brand name expires. There is also the entirely different discussion concerning biological generic drugs. If a drug is actually a protein, how do you ensure that the generic protein is equivalent? But I digress...

Keep in mind that there is a significant money pit involved in developing new drug entities. A intellectual company would have to sell their inventions for potentially billions of dollars to make up the amount of money it costs to develop. This has little to do with the FDA. Just the fact that out of about 100 drugs innovated, only one will make it to market. With a billion dollar price tag, guess which compaines would be the only ones that had the bank roll to purchase the innovations?

The way the system currently is would not support the removal of patent laws. I'm not sure how to reduce the cost associated with developing new drugs, either. You want to ensure that they are safe, and that requires a lot of time and money.

Quote :

"Maybe it's time we make the rest of the world respect our intellectual property rights when it comes to prescription drugs,"

Yup. My company refuses to give any information about our production to India or China.

[Edited on March 22, 2010 at 6:17 PM. Reason : edit.]

3/22/2010 6:15:36 PM

some pharmaceutical ownage itt

3/22/2010 6:18:11 PM

^^ Serious question, would you know how much of that drug research is done at an academic level instead of at a corporate level?

3/22/2010 6:22:13 PM

Quote :

"Are you F-ing kidding me?! That's known as throwing the baby out with the bathwater.... You'd really be happy to take a cancer drug without FDA approval? I mean, it might not be a 100% safeguard, but at least it provides some sort of shield from the worst that could happen..."

I'd be wary of taking a cancer drug with FDA approval, actually. The approval itself means nothing to me. The actual track record of the drug is of much more importance, along with testimonials and trial results.

Quote :

"I work in an FDA regulated field and interface with them daily. The industry as a whole is terrified of the FDA and for good reason. There is a long list of historical incidents that continue today, that continually prove how vital the FDA is to our society. With the melamine scare, even the peanut butter contamination, the FDA acted very swiftly and shut those companies and adulterated products down."

Gotcha. In other words, "I've worked with the FDA, and good has come from its actions before, therefore we should disregard the harm it has caused, the unconstitutionality of its existence, and the people that die every year because a drug they needed hasn't been approved by a board of bureaucrats yet."

Quote :

"I rarely post in here, but spewing uneducated diatribe like that is harmful."

Yeah, we can't have people being critical of our revered and sacred government regulatory agencies. That kind of thinking is dangerous, come to think of it. It's best to turn a blind eye to the whole thing.

Quote :

"Edit: Ah, I just saw the comment was posted by a Political Science student and not someone with actual medical/chemistry knowledge. That comment makes more sense now."

I don't need any medical or chemistry knowledge to know that the federal government has no authority to involve itself in regulating food and drugs. There are alternatives to the FDA. The states could do it, or the industry could implement its own regulations. In this era of new media, I have no doubt that a company releasing harmful drugs would quickly fall into disrepute. Unless, of course, the FDA approved it, in which case the government would do a top notch job of covering it up and absolving itself of any possible blame.

Quote :

"Do you know how many drugs never make it out of the clinical trial phase? If drug companies can't recoup the loses for those products, they would never be able to develop new drugs. Who would invest the billions of dollars it takes to develop one product if there were no patents? Seriously, dude, educate yourself on the process. Its pretty clear you have no idea what the you are talking about."

I'm fully aware of it. Do you think I haven't made this same argument before, and encountered the same counter-points? You have no clue how many debates I've had with people on this exact subject. You're making the utilitarian, wealth-maximization argument.

Patents, and not just in pharmaceuticals, severely stifle innovation. Proponents of patents and IP in general would argue that patents do the opposite, since R&D is so expensive. If we were to take the route I advocate, R&D would be much cheaper and innovation would flourish like it never could under our current system.

We have to ask the question, why does R&D cost so much more than the estimated revenue the final version of the drug would generate? For one, FDA regulations drive up the price of R&D. The hoops a pharmaceutical company has to jump through makes the process extremely costly. That's why you would want to abolish the FDA and repeal patent laws at the same time.

The patent system causes a number of problems on its own, though. I'll try to hit them all. We see no collaboration between pharmaceutical companies, and that's precisely because of the patent system. It would be too risky to collaborate with another industry leader. They could get the final piece of the "recipe" before your own company, and get the patent, and you'd be out billions of dollars. So, this patent system encourages companies to work in secret and isolation, which clearly hurts innovation. Not only that, but patents (along with FDA regulation) make it nearly impossible for new competitors to enter the market.

Then there's the philosophical argument, which is unlikely to convince you of anything. Why should the government be able to tell someone what they do with their own property? Sure, drugs are easily reverse-engineered, but the only thing the drug company did was figure out how to put naturally occurring chemicals through the proper process. That shouldn't give them the right to tell everyone else in the country what they can or can't do with their own chemicals.

In any case, you may be right. Perhaps we should tell the millions of Africans dying from AIDS that they'll be able to make their own generic drugs...in time. Until then, they can go straight to hell, along with the millions of senior citizens here that can't afford monopoly prices. We need to make sure our pharmaceutical titans get rich first, after all.

Quote :

"Maybe it's time we make the rest of the world respect our intellectual property rights when it comes to prescription drugs, while allowing only American health insurance companies to use generics."

Hahaha. What are we going to do, force them to respect our bought-and-paid-for corporatist system? It's not going to work.

3/22/2010 6:26:28 PM

Quote :

"^^ Serious question, would you know how much of that drug research is done at an academic level instead of at a corporate level?"

Most of it is not done at the academic level. At least the drug discovery phase (have to get that patent)! Most of the reasearch done academically is, I believe, about how a molecule will interact with cells, DNA, and stuff like that. I'm definetly not an expert on it through so its more of an educated guess.

3/22/2010 6:28:51 PM

I missed this one earlier

Quote :

"I believe "national building" would be a more accurate and neutral phrase than "killing people"

Not really, we came in there literally with a list of people to kill. They even put them on playing cards. And when we killed the first one on the list the president put up a big banner saying "mission accomplished" and said "we got him". The justification is being revised now, but at the time, the main purpose was to kill people.

Quote :

"Keep in mind that there is a significant money pit involved in developing new drug entities. A intellectual company would have to sell their inventions for potentially billions of dollars to make up the amount of money it costs to develop."

The software industry used to be very similar, it too found patent laws to be very detrimental to the industry's growth, that's why they revised patent laws for this industry, and we can thank those changes for the rapid growth in that industry we've had over the last 20-30 years.

3/22/2010 6:32:54 PM

What the fuck, did we actually find some common ground?

3/22/2010 6:33:33 PM

I'm kind of surprised too, patent law and NASA are generally the only topics I can agree with libertarians on.

3/22/2010 6:37:03 PM

then why are you surprised

3/22/2010 6:41:52 PM

has this already been mentioned?

10 states line up to sue over health bill

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/22/health.care.lawsuit/

Quote :

"Ten states plan to file a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the new health care reform bill, Florida's attorney general announced Monday. Bill McCollum, the Republican attorney general under fellow Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, told a news conference that the lawsuit would be filed once President Obama signs the health care bill into law. He said he'll be joined by his counterparts in Alabama, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington."

3/22/2010 6:46:56 PM

Quote :

"^^^You'd end up a loser due to the financial penalties for doing that."

how so? the penalty per year is $700 or so right?

I pay well over that now for a policy and I am perfectly healthy. I think I will just drop my policy and wait until I get sick to buy one.

3/22/2010 6:47:48 PM

In light of recent developments, I think I've had a moment of clarity.

Several years ago, I saw an old friend and his family eating lunch in their minivan outside of Wal-Mart on Glenwood. I waved, and they did not wave back.

I don't think I'm gonna blow any minds here, but, yes, they were living in their van. It turns out his mother, the woman who cared for me when my parents weren't around, had fallen ill, and her medical bills bankrupted the family. I eventually got to visit them in their new apartment, but I still drive by the house they lost and remember what a loving home they made for me.

Anyway, I guess I'm finally realizing that this legislation, with all its flaws, was inevitable. People were dying and losing their livelihoods and their homes. I'm surprised we didn't pass this earlier, like in the early 90's under Clinton, but even then, the market had another decade to adapt and serve the unserved and it didn't. Instead, it got worse.

Something had to be done, and if the Republicans really cared, they woulda done something in the 8 years they had control...but instead they blew it on war and the Patriot Act and denying federal funding for needle exchange programs in DC and debating gay marriage...

3/22/2010 6:56:45 PM

Quote :

"I'd be wary of taking a cancer drug with FDA approval, actually. The approval itself means nothing to me. The actual track record of the drug is of much more importance, along with testimonials and trial results."

FDA approval is dependent on trial results, the track record of the drug in clinical trials, and customer testimonials. Do you think that drug companies perform these tests for the hell of it? They perform clinical trials and make the drug track records public because, you guessed it, the FDA requires it. Prior to the implementation of the FDA, these types of rigorous tests were not required.

Quote :

"Gotcha. In other words, "I've worked with the FDA, and good has come from its actions before, therefore we should disregard the harm it has caused, the unconstitutionality of its existence, and the people that die every year because a drug they needed hasn't been approved by a board of bureaucrats yet." "

It isn't simply a matter of black and white or simply a matter of ideas. This is a matter of saving people’s lives and practicality. The FDA was originally formed in response to a Sulfonamide crisis that killed a lot of people. It was decided then that an agency was needed to regulate the flow of products to the American consumer. Enter the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. You talk about disregarding the harm the FDA caused. Can you disregard the harm that would have been caused if people were able to purchase drugs that had not been through clinical trials? Toxicity testing? Rigorous scientific approval? You talk about people that die because the drug hasn't been approved. How many people would have died if a harmful drug was approved? You aren't looking at the entire picture, and frankly it is damaging your case. You don't understand the actual process; you instead look at the results. The process is to KEEP harmful drugs out of Americans mouths. You are talking about molecules and proteins that affect people differently. There has to be a rigorous approval here.

Quote :

"I don't need any medical or chemistry knowledge to know that the federal government has no authority to involve itself in regulating food and drugs. There are alternatives to the FDA. The states could do it, or the industry could implement its own regulations. In this era of new media, I have no doubt that a company releasing harmful drugs would quickly fall into disrepute. Unless, of course, the FDA approved it, in which case the government would do a top notch job of covering it up and absolving itself of any possible blame."

The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 gives the FDA that authority. That passed through the legislative branch. I'm not sure what your argument is. Are you saying it doesn't say in the constitution that the government can't regulate food and drugs? The states could do it, hm? Good luck getting 50 different bodies to agree on food and drugs. The cost of developing a new drug would be multiplied by 50 as pharma companies would not just have to comply to one federal standard, but now 50 different state standards. Impractical. The FDA stops harmful drugs from reaching the market in the first place. Sure, if a company released methyl-ethyl-death as a product they would probably be shut down by the public, but only after killing hundreds if not thousands of people with bad product. The FDA also releases tons of information to the public about how drugs are approved, not sure when they try to shift blame.

Quote :

"I'm fully aware of it. Do you think I haven't made this same argument before, and encountered the same counter-points? You have no clue how many debates I've had with people on this exact subject. You're making the utilitarian, wealth-maximization argument. "

I'm actually not making a wealth maximization argument. I could care less about the wealth that companies make. I'm talking about practicality. R&D would only be cheaper in your system because it increases the potential harm to the consumer. I can't agree with that type of system. Sure, you can cut costs by eliminating the need for rigorous testing and safety analysis, but that’s not really the best route to take in my opinion.

Quote :

"We have to ask the question, why does R&D cost so much more than the estimated revenue the final version of the drug would generate? For one, FDA regulations drive up the price of R&D. The hoops a pharmaceutical company has to jump through makes the process extremely costly. That's why you would want to abolish the FDA and repeal patent laws at the same time. "

R&D costs a lot of money because you have to ensure that 1) the drug works 2) the drug is safe. That isn't just FDA regulations, its good business. You don't want to kill your consumers. Prior to the FDA, well, you know the history. People died. The FDA has recently enacted initiatives to reduce the time to market for drugs, and over the past decade or so it has greatly improved. This has saved companies a significant amount of money.

Quote :

"The patent system causes a number of problems on its own, though. I'll try to hit them all. We see no collaboration between pharmaceutical companies, and that's precisely because of the patent system. It would be too risky to collaborate with another industry leader. They could get the final piece of the "recipe" before your own company, and get the patent, and you'd be out billions of dollars. So, this patent system encourages companies to work in secret and isolation, which clearly hurts innovation. Not only that, but patents (along with FDA regulation) make it nearly impossible for new competitors to enter the market."

I actually agree that patent systems discourage collaboration and can hurt development. I don't see a good way around it. As far as the FDA regulations, again they exist in order to prove that drugs are SAFE.

Quote :

"Then there's the philosophical argument, which is unlikely to convince you of anything. Why should the government be able to tell someone what they do with their own property? Sure, drugs are easily reverse-engineered, but the only thing the drug company did was figure out how to put naturally occurring chemicals through the proper process. That shouldn't give them the right to tell everyone else in the country what they can or can't do with their own chemicals."

I think that is a gross over-simplification of the process.

Quote :

"In any case, you may be right. Perhaps we should tell the millions of Africans dying from AIDS that they'll be able to make their own generic drugs...in time. Until then, they can go straight to hell, along with the millions of senior citizens here that can't afford monopoly prices. We need to make sure our pharmaceutical titans get rich first, after all. "

Appeal to emotion fails. Plenty of pharma companies have donated millions of drugs to those types of countries. Also, without proper regulation, who is to say that company wouldn't make adulterated product and sell it as an AIDS drug? Sure, they'd get shut down. But someone would make a lot of money and you'd have some people dead too. Happens all the time in China right now.

Look, the bottom line is this. I don't think you place enough emphasis that the purpose of the FDA, the purpose of the regulation, is to ensure the safety of drug products to the American people. You might not like the FDA, and I respect your opinion and your ideas, but the FDA is heralded around the world as a model regulatory agency. Yeah, it isn't perfect, but it does a pretty good job of protecting the American citizen. I don’t really care about the philosophical aspects of whether it is constitutional or not. That is the way it is right now, and as it is right now before I put any of my products into someone’s body I have to prove that it’s safe. If people want to change that, then they can try.

Quote :

"The software industry used to be very similar, it too found patent laws to be very detrimental to the industry's growth, that's why they revised patent laws for this industry, and we can thank those changes for the rapid growth in that industry we've had over the last 20-30 years."

Software does not go into peoples bodies. You can't compare a virtual commodity with a drug. I also know that developmental costs for drugs is orders of magnitude greater than that of software. Not sure its a fair comparison. Good idea though.

[Edited on March 22, 2010 at 7:02 PM. Reason : ed]

3/22/2010 7:00:12 PM

[Edited on March 22, 2010 at 7:13 PM. Reason : wrong thread]

3/22/2010 7:13:19 PM

Quote :

"Software does not go into peoples bodies. You can't compare a virtual commodity with a drug. I also know that developmental costs for drugs is orders of magnitude greater than that of software. Not sure its a fair comparison. Good idea though."

I agree, they are vastly different, I'm just comparing the economics problem we have here, which is similar, I think the approach we took of going in and trying different things and modifying patent laws to fit that specific industry proved itself to be a good approach.

As far as the costs, way back in the day, the costs were comparable, inflation adjusted. Nowadays you can build software with a cheap computer and a single programmer, but years ago it took millions of dollars in equipment and lots of programmers and operators and administrators a long time to make even simple programs.

[Edited on March 22, 2010 at 7:15 PM. Reason : ]

3/22/2010 7:14:42 PM

I think it would be good to increase co-development. I'm just not sure that the actual cost of drug innovation would decrease. You'd still basically have the 1 out of 100 to market and you'd still have to prove that the drug is safe and effective.

I'm not saying it isn't worth talking about. The economics of this is something I'll have to raise my ignorance flag on as I have little relevant experience.

[Edited on March 22, 2010 at 7:20 PM. Reason : ed]

3/22/2010 7:17:16 PM

From the recent CNN poll:

Quote :

"The initial top-line shows only 39% of registered voters favoring the bill, to 59% opposing it. However a follow-up question finds that 43% oppose it on the grounds that it is too liberal, while 13% oppose it on the grounds that it is not liberal enough. So another way of looking at the data is that 43% oppose it for being too liberal, 39% favor it, and 13% oppose it for not being liberal enough, with another 3% who oppose it for some indeterminate reasons. The poll also showed that despite the nominal majority opposition to the bill, in theory President Obama and the Democrats were still rated as being superior to the Republicans on the overall issue of health care. Respondents were also asked: "Who do you trust more to handle major changes in the country's health care system - Barack Obama or the Republicans in Congress?" The answer was Obama 51%, Republicans 39% Another question: "Who do you trust more to handle major changes in the country's health care system -- the Democrats in Congress or the Republicans in Congress?" Here the answer was Democrats 45%, Republicans 39%."

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/poll-americas-opinion-of-health-care-reform-is.php?ref=fpa

3/22/2010 7:39:13 PM

Look conservatives, you finally get an opportunity to prove that the free market can fix itself, or that this while thing was a stupid idea. Either they will take the passage of this bill as a giant wake up call, actually start working towards becoming more efficient and working with health care providers to lower costs. Or, they won't, and the healthcare industry will continue spiraling towards collapse which will eventually lead to some form of socialized medicine. Everybody wins!

3/22/2010 7:58:25 PM

so I havent been staying very well informed on the particulars of the bill that was passed, who can summarize how this is going to affect me? (both health coverage and money wise)

right now I have a salary job and have around $350 taken out of my paycheck every two weeks (around $700 a month) that covers health insurance for me, my wife and my daughter. My company used to pay for my health insurance, but almost two years ago when the economy dropped my company stopped paying for the insurance and the employees were responsible for paying for 100% of the coverage if they wanted to keep the policy. At that time I switched to blue cross blue shield insurance, but once my wife got pregnant, I switched back to my companies insurance policy (united healthcare) because it is a much better plan and was marginally more expensive than my BCBS plan wouldve been after my daughter was born and added to my policy.

Will I eventually have some of my health insurance covered by the government and/or my employer, where I wont have to pay so much? Or will I still have the same coverage and premium, but with raised taxes and longer lines when I go to the doctors office?

3/22/2010 8:32:14 PM

^ unless you make over 200k/year your taxes won’t be higher.

And if there will be longer lines, they won’t be seen for another 2 or 3 years.

If you make less than $44k/year, then there is a credit for you to help pay for health insurance.

Other than that, nothing else should change for you.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/2010/03/22/what-is-and-isnt-in-the-healthcare-bill.html

[Edited on March 22, 2010 at 8:35 PM. Reason : ]

3/22/2010 8:35:31 PM

Quote :

"When I was working full time for several years between under grad & grad school, I had friends without insurance and coworkers waiting for the probationary period to end who relied on the ER for medical needs with no intention of ever paying those bills."

so in other words, you had friends who were absolute fucking douchebags and should have been thrown in jail for what amounts to robbery.

Quote :

"You'd really be happy to take a cancer drug without FDA approval?"

Who is to say that a private entity couldn't do as well if not better than the FDA? Is not UL an effective organization?

thank you for your crocodile tears, Bridget. It really added to the discussion

Quote :

"The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 gives the FDA that authority."

Bullshit. If his argument is that the FDA is unConstitutional, then no law passed by Congress would ever change such a fact.

3/22/2010 8:39:53 PM

[Edited on March 22, 2010 at 8:41 PM. Reason : needless snark, sorry]

3/22/2010 8:41:33 PM