There is something else I read (but forgot about) and just heard again from an investigative reporter whose work I trust: Greg Palast.

Before the conservative right starts dissing anything he says on behalf of him being a partisan liberal (which he isn't), please read this first:

Greg Palast is against the health care reform if the drug company bargain deal cuts in.

What concerns him specifically are behind-closed-doors negotiations with drug companies. The article I read had something to do with drug companies suddenly supporting the health care reform efforts in exchange for some shady deal.

In essence Obama allegedly agreed to stop trying to legalize importing drugs from countries and the government will be barred from bargaining prices.

Link to the interview: http://www.gregpalast.com/Podcasting/09_08_20_palast.mp3

(The interview is rather long, but the relevant stuff is mentioned in the first five minutes.)

Quite disturbing and another motive to oppose the reform as long as that deal stands.

Was this topic highlighted prominently anywhere in the media?

I have felt (since young adulthood) that ANY deal that can't stand the light of day:

1. Is probably corrupt.

2. Has some shameful and/or criminal element/activity involved with it.

3. Should be exposed by any/every legal OR illegal means possible.

4. The conspirators/knowing parties to the activity be prosecuted without a shred of mercy.

5. The Constitutional Amendment (The Eighth Amendment) forbidding "cruel or unusual punishments" not hold true for politicians and others conspiring against humanity of any nationality.

Okay I didn't get to finsih that post since I had to go to class. But what it means for americains is simple. It means the wait times you see in Canada in the opposiion's scare tactics is simply just that scare tactics for the problem they are pointing is not a problem of the Canadian healthcare system but one cause by their neighboor.

Also you shoud point out how much more money your wasting on doctor salaries: http://www.worldsalaries.org/generalphysician.shtml Lower more reasonable salaries woudl have mean't cheaper healtcare and thus more people would have been able to get covered by the private insurance compagnies, MAYBE.

As for being unetical to ask for a raise, your only taking nto account a US system once more as in other contries that is also mostly free. I would also mention that even here in Canada should a Doctor want to pay a private school for children they can easyly. A boat is also a very commond thing. Basicly their isn't a Canadian doctor should envie to a US doctor in terms of qualaty of life except for the bigger pay check. US doctors become millionaires. Canada theya re the wealtiest people that recive a paycheck.

Those of us opposed to UHC and those of us who favor it should be very skeptical of the PhRMA deal.  It doesn't pass the smell test.

Well pharmaceudicals have always been over pricing their medication. The biggest fraud in the whole of the healtcare system in every contry is the Pharmacedical Compagnies. Now there is something that will requirer a world effort to look into, investigate and regulate the pricing. Also I would point out that the majoraty of medication pharmacedicals research and produce are medicationt hat will not cure you, but rather keep your healty as long as you keep taking the medication. Why because they can make more money on you if you need to take a pill for the rest of your life instead on takign 20 and being cured.

To find real cures that will truely cure you it's gorvenement funded labs that find and develop them. Even those those gouv labs are much fewer in number to private labs they find more REAL cures then private labs. Hell I wouldn't be surprised at all if we would one day discovered that a rpivite lab found a cure to a deasseas but instead created a treathment you need to take forever. I dunno but to me the more I look into how the healtcare works on a private for profit system the more I see that we are gettign ass fucked by it.

And yet, all and every Doctors' public Education (as in College, University, etc) isn't free either in Canada.

We simply ship 'hem out to the US after investing costly knowledge into their upcoming carreers all trained & qualified ready for highest paid jobs.

Now, that's ethics. Gift-wrapped.

You're welcome.

There are so many things wrong with this post I simply don't know where to begin.

In most of the world, drugs are artificially cheap. You simply are not paying the full cost of R&D, and are stiffing the US for it. You sure don't seem to mind benefitting from our research, but you don't pay for any of it. Drug companies do not make excessive profits considering the risks they take on in going about their business. I earlier mentioned that researching a new drug may cost half a billion dollars; that was in no way an exaggeration.

Not only that, for every drug that makes its way to market, there are dozens of other blind alleys the researchers explored. Those are slightly less expensive, but still tack on untold millions in R&D costs. Failures generally cost less becaause they can stop researching them if they find an obvious problem. They still aren't free.

I don't know about how the Canadian system of public research funding works (poorly, I assume) but in the US public grant funding is probably the most wasteful way of funding research known to man. I work at a university, and see the logistics behind grant funding first hand. You would not believe how much money gets spent on computers, office furniture, unnecessary equipment, etc simply because the money goes away if they don't spend it before an arbitrary deadline. I kid you not, I've seen a professor buy an iPod with federal grant money. It was billed as an "80gb mobile media presentation device". (In his defense, he *did* use it as a mobile hard drive to carry around powerpoint presentations and stuff.) One got so much money from No Child Left Behind (and other similar programs in earier administrations) that he handed out laptop bags, T shirts, coffee mugs, etc instead of buisiness cards at events. Ironically, looser controls on how money is spent from federal grants would result in more of the money getting spent on what it was intended for.

The only possible legitimate point you have is the possibility of suppressing cures in favor of treatments. Good luck proving something like that, though.

A couple points from the article I posted, which either no one read or no one felt worth commenting on:

For fun, let’s imagine confiscating all the profits of all the famously greedy health-insurance companies. That would pay for four days of health care for all Americans. Let’s add in the profits of the 10 biggest rapacious U.S. drug companies. Another 7 days. Indeed, confiscating all the profits of all American companies, in every industry, wouldn’t cover even five months of our health-care expenses.

That's from page three. This is from page 4:

Consider the oft-quoted “statistic” that emergency-room care is the most expensive form of treatment. Has anyone who believes this ever actually been to an emergency room? My sister is an emergency-medicine physician; unlike most other specialists, ER docs usually work on scheduled shifts and are paid fixed salaries that place them in the lower ranks of physician compensation. The doctors and other workers are hardly underemployed: typically, ERs are unbelievably crowded. They have access to the facilities and equipment of the entire hospital, but require very few dedicated resources of their own. They benefit from the group buying power of the entire institution. No expensive art decorates the walls, and the waiting rooms resemble train-station waiting areas. So what exactly makes an ER more expensive than other forms of treatment?

Perhaps it’s the accounting. Since charity care, which is often performed in the ER, is one justification for hospitals’ protected place in law and regulation, it’s in hospitals’ interest to shift costs from overhead and other parts of the hospital to the ER, so that the costs of charity care—the public service that hospitals are providing—will appear to be high. Hospitals certainly lose money on their ERs; after all, many of their customers pay nothing. But to argue that ERs are costly compared with other treatment options, hospitals need to claim expenses well beyond the marginal (or incremental) cost of serving ER patients.

In a recent IRS survey of almost 500 nonprofit hospitals, nearly 60 percent reported providing charity care equal to less than 5 percent of their total revenue, and about 20 percent reported providing less than 2 percent. Analyzing data from the American Hospital Directory, The Wall Street Journal found that the 50 largest nonprofit hospitals or hospital systems made a combined “net income” (that is, profit) of $4.27 billion in 2006, nearly eight times their profits five years earlier.

Just some food for thought.

The full article is here. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care

Please note I don't support his conclusions at the end, but at least he has some idea of how we got here, and what the issues we need to address are.

So you're saying that american pharma corporations are too inefficient to face the challenges of a free market?

Well, I'm glad that we reap the benefit of a Canadian taxpayer-funded education. Perhaps your system is flawed then, hm?

No, all he's saying is that developing life-saving drugs is expensive and time-consuming.  Currently the free market does exist for pharmaceuticals; several companies compete in the market for drugs.

Yup. Definitely in the same League (LOL). You need to recheck the dosage or whatever.

Melchiz....you happen to be one of the few worth the effort.

 You are a sweetie.

Also, here's something we should consider:

If this year's attempt at reform fails, what happens? What would a reform bill need to contain in order to pass? Keep in mind that the Democrats could easily pass reform themselves. This isn't a "Republicans aren't cooperating *grumble*" issue.

No, that's not ALL I'm saying. Although that part is true as well; until you've worked in a research environment you have no idea how expensive research is.

The European/Canadian style drug plans are based on extortion, pure and simple. A government enters "negotiations" with the drug companies in which the starting position is "We know what your drug is and how to make it. If you dont' agree with the price we are willing to pay for it, we simply won't respect the patent you have on the drug and we'll make our own."

As a result of this, the Europeans and Canadians pay about what Americans pay for the generic version of a drug; that is, what Americans pay for the drug after the patent runs out. This price never reflects R&D costs because the company making the generic never spent anything for R&D, and the company who *did* has to compete with the generic price.

This is why reimportation schemes scare the living shit out of drug companies, and any patient that can tell their ass from a hole in the ground. Canadians should be opposed to reimportation; if it passes, it will mean the end of all private drug research in the US. It will simply not be possible for research to *ever* turn a profit, because the company doing the research won't be able to set prices high enough to cover the expense. You benefit as much from US research as we do, you should be seeking to protect our industry as much as you can (while continuing to screw it as you currently are. Yeah, that makes no sense but it's the best course of action FOR YOU).

Then I think I'll just stay in San Francisco where I can get universal health care (provided my income is less than 52k if I'm single). Yeah, it's called Healthy San Francisco.

Oh, did I mention it only costs 3% of the cities annual expenditures, while covering 45k/60k uninsured people...regardless of immigrant status? (san francisco requires businesses with 20 or more employees to provide health care to their workers: an extra $1-2/hr -- assuming no health insurance is already being provided -- is payed by the employer to the city where the employee can then use that money on insurance, or buy into the healthy san francisco system at a 75% reduced cost) http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/health/2009/03/19/simon.health.san.francisco.cnn?iref=videosearch

What's cooler than that? Oh, the fact that it has a 94% satisfaction rating. Contrast that with health insurance. It has a 64% satisfaction rating. (you can also look at is as health insurance having six times as many unsatisfied persons on a per person basis) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/26/BAB719DL29.DTL ; http://ifawebnews.com/2009/08/07/health-insurance-plans-rank-ahead-of-cable-tv-service-in-survey/

And of course, San Francisco is one of the most diverse cities in the country: http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/mocd/demoprofile.pdf (look at page 3)

Actually, nevermind, San Francisco is crazy, right?

What do you guys opposed to government control think of Healthy San Francsico? Is a government health care plan as a sub-national level acceptable?