Getting a bit tired of the whining

Post #345,685 by crazy 8/4/11 12:05:24 PM Reply	Getting a bit tired of the whining Hey, I have health insurance. 1st time in 3 years. I have a very odd genetic illness. Won't kill me, but might require an occasional expensive treatment. There was NO way I could afford non-employer provided coverage. The few that would actually cover me would charge many multiples over the standard. And now? All of them HAVE to at least offer it, and then the cost is evenly spread out no matter which one takes me on, since any of them could be assuming the same risk, rather than 90% cherry picking and saying no, and 10% charging huge amounts for coverage. Affordabley, at least to me. So, what do YOU want? Oh yeah, a socialist paradise. And you are PISSED when you don't get it, and blame the 1 guy who actually probably agrees with you, and works within the system to move in that direction. Too slow? Who should he kill to implement your plans? Whiner
Post #345,694 by mmoffitt 8/4/11 2:01:50 PM 8/4/11 2:20:54 PM Reply	Start with bankers, then Wall Street traders. Then corporate boards. Edit: I was going to leave the joke and say nothing more because you can't seem to get it. My position is that no one should profit from some one's illness, least of all accountants, CIEFO's, shareholders and the rest of those who do not in any way participate in the delivery of healthcare, but capitalize on it anyway. In short, I want what virtually every other person living in the industrialized world outside of the United States already has - a right to healthcare not predicated upon the proposition that non-actors in the delivery of my healthcare must profit financially from its delivery. "Socialist utopia" indeed. Nice try. But what I'm really talking about is "reality" virtually everywhere except here. Edited by mmoffitt Aug. 4, 2011, 02:20:54 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #345,706 by crazy 8/4/11 6:08:59 PM Reply	Why not? My position is that no one should profit from some one's illness, least of all accountants, CIEFO's, shareholders and the rest of those who do not in any way participate in the delivery of healthcare, but capitalize on it anyway. Yes, there are levels upon levels of skimming going on. But ya know something? Someone just told me that it should be illegal for companies to make more than 10%. He was referring to the drug companies. He was under the mistaken impression that just because a federally funded school discovered the key element of a new drug, after that all the drug company did was "bring it to market". It can cost hundreds of millions to bring a drug to market. He forgot about that. You wanna tell me who is paying for that? Shall we now have a government board to determine the direction of R&D, and also pays for the testing. Should make it cheaper. Of course, at that point, why do the research? Why take things to market? The only time someone gambles with those type of numbers is when there is a serious payback on the horizon. I have NO faith in any government directed and funded program to make a sustained drug research and production effort. The people in charge spend all there time in CYA mode, and this means they will approve almost nothing for the next step. They have NO incentive to.
Post #345,741 by mmoffitt 8/5/11 8:30:29 AM Reply	You trust bidness? http://www.fda.gov/d...calls/default.htm Good thing the government's looking out for you.
Post #345,760 by crazy 8/5/11 12:12:45 PM Reply	Of course not But you can't have it both ways. Somebody needs to PUSH new drugs through the system. It takes a certain level of crazyness. I don't TRUST these people. That would be stupid. But I TRUST there is an incentive to push the science forward and turn pure discoveries into usable drugs. I TRUST that some of them will kill me, and others might save me. And that is the only way to move forward. Well? What do you want? A protective government that controls all R&D and production and has NO incentive to do anything, or a bunch of crazies, some of which will discover and peddle the cure for cancer, others who will try to sell you snake oil. Remember this saying: You pretend to pay us and we pretend to work? There was a reason the Soviets stagnated, no matter how wonderful the ideal is.
Post #345,771 by mmoffitt 8/5/11 1:12:49 PM Reply	And how many would have died of polio? If it hadn't been for Salk refusing personal profit? Bidness doesn't do anything it can't make money on. It always cracks me up to hear the euphemisms in "Vision Statements" and the like. The only reason any business exists is to make money for the shareholders. Think the government doesn't already fund the majority of drug research? Think again. Google "university drug discoveries" some time. Lilly spends roughly 17 dollars on advertising for every dollar it spends on research. Take government grants to universities out of drug research and see what happens. There are some things the government does that it is uniquely qualified to do. Pure research is one of them. In bidness, you better be damned sure you're going to discover something the shareholders are going to be able to make money on in 10 months. Or you can forget the company paying for your research. We're about to learn a painful lesson about that now that the Big O has decided to "privatize" NASA. Sit back and watch how well that works. Most big discoveries come serendipitously. Bidness won't stand for that, but researchers at universities - with government grants - do it every day. Making a buck is not the only motivation for most people. And personally, I don't want anyone who is driven exclusively by the pursuit of profit making decisions about my healthcare. It should be obvious why, but I'll elaborate: for such a person given the choice between greater profit for them or better health for me, I will lose 100% of the time.
Post #345,773 by Another Scott 8/5/11 1:51:24 PM Reply	Some good points. But NASA does a lot more than LEO. LEO == low earth orbit. http://www.nasa.gov/.../sites/index.html Even if some companies throw stuff up to the ISS instead of NASA doing it itself, that doesn't mean that all of NASA is going away. There's too much cutting edge stuff that companies still aren't going to do (hypersonics, deep space, earth sensing, etc., etc.). Cheers, Scott.
Post #345,946 by mhuber 8/8/11 12:32:18 PM Reply	Vision statements When I was a corporate drone, I used to catch a lot of attitude about the vision statements I wrote. Because they always started (at least the first draft, before I got "corrected") with some variation on "make money by..." Because that is really what it is all about. And a lot of people seem to forget it, both inside and outside the company. Forgetting it outside the company leads to unwarranted trust. Forgetting it inside leads to waste and failed efforts. It is not a fault of corporations that they are there to make money any more than it is a fault of a lion that its function is to kill. It is a fault of the population when it decides lions are cute and cuddly and ought to be kept in the house - i.e. votes Republican. --------------------------------------- Badass! (and delicious)

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