Eat the rich avoid Rush
It's understandable that they'd try. What would be useful would be for people to critically think about the issues rather than let themselves be beguiled by slogans and by outright propaganda. One of the questions I like to ask myself about anyone's presentation on a topic is, "what's in it for them?"Originally Posted by loosecannon
"Unbloodybreakable" DCI Gene Hunt, 2008
Senior Member
Well to big Pharma it is a monopoly over the legal drug trade.
Big Tobacco and Big Pharma: same tactics, different chemicals
(much more)Have you ever thought about the similarities between pharmaceutical and tobacco companies? They're striking. Both sell products that kill people when used as directed. The statistics are readily available for pharmaceuticals, which kill around 100,000 Americans each year according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Big Tobacco, which makes tobacco products that are partly responsible for hundreds of thousands of cases of cancer in the United States each year. These are the facts from industry. Industry critics (such as myself) would argue that those numbers are actually much higher.
But let's look at other similarities. Aside from marketing products that actually kill people when used as directed, both industries are engaged in the blatant distortion of scientific evidence in order to mislead regulators and the public.
With Big Tobacco we saw the suppression of studies that said nicotine was addictive, or of studies linking the inhalation of tobacco smoke to lung cancer. In the pharmaceutical industry, we see even worse distortions of clinical studies. We see studies that are designed to minimize the appearance of negative risks associated with these drugs, such as heart attacks, stroke, mental disorders, suicide attempts, and violent behavior. Even after studies are completed, the results are highly distorted as well. Drug companies pick and choose which studies they want to publish. They may do twelve different studies on a particular drug, and if six of them say the drug is safe and effective, while the other six studies say the drug is dangerous and useless from a medicinal point of view, they pick the six they want and bury the others. They forward the six they want to the FDA. The FDA looks at those six and says, "This sure is scientific!", and they approve that drug application. I'm not making this up.
In the late 1990's, drug advertising appeared on television. That is, of course, another similarity between Big Tobacco and Big Pharma: they both use direct-to-consumer advertising to create demand for their products. For many years, tobacco companies sponsored sporting events; in fact, they still attempt to sponsor many sporting events. In the pharmaceutical industry, we see heavy magazine and television advertising, and hundreds of millions of dollars spent lobbying doctors, buying them gifts, trips (to Hawaii, believe it or not), air tickets, and stays in luxurious resorts. All doctors have to do is show up, sign in, and act like they're attending a continuing medical education course. They then can leave for the entire day, and go on the beach, go fishing, go surfing, and do whatever they want. It's an all-expenses-paid vacation.
Some people say, "No, that's ridiculous. That doesn't happen." I've actually been in Hawaii, talking to doctors who were attending such an event. I saw the entire room of about four hundred MD’s, and these people just signed in, then they left to go surfing with me! So I know how the system works, I've seen it firsthand. All the doctors out there who might be listening to this, you know how it works too. A lot of these continuing medical education courses are really just a joke.
I think Big Pharma and insurance are the two big winners in not only our present health care system but the "reforms" that are enacted and being considered.
We now routinely allow big business to just take advantage of people by the millions with legislative licences to steal.
Senior Member
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8BJyyyRYbSk
Can't wait till it comes out.
Juggalo
..............
LOL.
If you attack the Clintons publically make sure all your friends know your not planning on commiting suicide ~ McCain 2008
Happiness is Obama's picture on the back of a milk carton.
Extra Heavy
Having accepted the premise of diuretic's question, I probably should of said, "I think so many Americans are opposed..." My bad.
I am unsure of how you mean "collective or selective" in your question.
Do I understand you correctly then, that you are an American who supports the notion that government coercion has a valid contribution towards establishing one's healthcare options; and that you also support the notion that the government should forcibly take one person's healthcare money and arbitrarily give it to someone else?
If so, then perhaps I'm speaking selectively only for those Americans who think that they and their doctors have a better idea of how to make their own medical decisions than the government and that being bullied into medical options by the government is wrong; and that a person's healthcare money (or beer money) is their own product of their own life and is necessessary to their life and well-being, and taking that person's healthcare money by force is theft, and therefore wrong--even if it's then given to someone else.
You're welcome.
"... whenever any number of men, calling themselves a government, do anything to another man, or to his property, which they had no right to do as individuals, they thereby declare themselves trespassers, robbers, or murderers, according to the nature of their acts." - Lysander Spooner
Extra Heavy
Not this American. Social Security, as it is configured now, is simply theft.
"... whenever any number of men, calling themselves a government, do anything to another man, or to his property, which they had no right to do as individuals, they thereby declare themselves trespassers, robbers, or murderers, according to the nature of their acts." - Lysander Spooner
Eat the rich avoid Rush
That's interesting that you use the phrase, "...being bullied into medical options by the government is wrong..." If that were the case in our system in Australia I would be furious. I'm not because that isn't the case. True there are checking systems to make sure the medical profession isn't ripping off the system by requiring unnecessary and expensive diagnostic tests (MRI for example) but that's a long way from "bullying". Medical decisions are made by the doctor in consultation with the patient and whatever's needed is done.
As for the "healthcare money" - no need to worry about it when there's a single payer system, it's paid by the government (with a co-payment from the patient in some cases). We pay taxes to ensure we all get access to proper heatlh care. Is that a bad thing?
"Unbloodybreakable" DCI Gene Hunt, 2008
Extra Heavy
You should be furious. If you and your doctor agree that you need an MRI, no government bureaucrat has any business preventing you from getting one. If they do, then they are bullying you and your doctor into decisions--decsions that mat not be in your best interest.
In the US, everybody has always had access to proper heathcare, except to the point that the government started making healthcare descisions for us. Access to the best heathcare is a right--getting it is not. These days if I were to need an expensive treatment, I might not be able to get it because I'm paying for someone else to get it, maybe two someone-else's. Those others are stealing from me, plain and simple. If you're accepting money, earned by others and taken from them forcibly by the government; that is a bad thing. Your co-pay might buy off your conscience, but it wouldn't buy off mine.
"... whenever any number of men, calling themselves a government, do anything to another man, or to his property, which they had no right to do as individuals, they thereby declare themselves trespassers, robbers, or murderers, according to the nature of their acts." - Lysander Spooner
Socialism = Poverty
Because, in every country where it is implemented, the quality of health care suffers.
I have relatives in Italy (which has socialized health care) that can attest to that fact.
How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin. - Ronald Reagan
Eat the rich avoid Rush
Nope, not the case. They only investigate obvious over-use that isn't necessary. No-one is prevented from having an MRI or any other procedure if they need it.
Not a question of conscience. I, like millions of other Australians. pay my taxes and contibute to our health care system that way. When I need to use the services of a hospital or doctor, I do. I know that in our country someone who is unemployed or is on some sort of supporting pension can also get heatlh care when they need it because I and millions of other Australians pay taxes. I'm happy about that. I'd have a fit of conscience if I thought someone who couldn't afford medical treatment wasn't getting it simply because they were indigent. To me that's offensive.
"Unbloodybreakable" DCI Gene Hunt, 2008
Eat the rich avoid Rush
Okay - but quality of health care hasn't suffered here. But we don't have a socialised system, we have a single payer system so I suppose there could be a difference. Anyway at least we don't go bankrupt if we get sick.
"Unbloodybreakable" DCI Gene Hunt, 2008
Senior Member
How many Aussies do you have that are just sitting on their asses waiting to get housed and fed by the government and how does your population feel about them?
A nutcase will do nutty things.
Eat the rich avoid Rush
What's that got to do with health care?
"Unbloodybreakable" DCI Gene Hunt, 2008
Senior Member
because those very same people need health care.
A nutcase will do nutty things.
I wanna rock right now
We have a single payer system in certain provinces here, too.
People with certain income levels (high income, no kids) have also recently begun to get taxed heavier on their paychecks in Ontario. This means that the government is now taking more money off their paychecks that is specifically for that individual's health care on top of what is already being deducted for that purpose, and being thrown into the provincial pot, for everyone. A socialized system such as the one in place in Canada can't keep up with population growth as well as an increasing elderly population - the demand is starting to exceed the supply, so to speak. Not too mention waste and mismangement etc, etc.
Last edited by Said1; 05-27-2007 at 11:34 AM.
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