10 ms·

> The US is effectively subsidizing advanced healthcare for every other country in the world. That's a very misinformed statement.

melling 14y ago
Please provide some data to back that up because it is a common belief that the high cost of producing a new drug is offset by the US consumer.
- coldtea 14y ago
  What high cost? US companies pay more money for advertising than for creating the drug. Add other regulation and inefficiencies, and subsidized research would work with 1/10 the money. Not to mention that because of the commercialization of medicine, tons of research is for BS like Viagra and other such drugs (like the tons of stupid feel-good "energy" drugs, so that your boss can squeeze even more overtime out of you), where far more important but less lucrative stuff is ignored. That's how you get the US sucking donkey's balls in infant mortality rates. As if it was some third world country.
  - adventured 14y ago
    If that were true, the rest of the world would have radically surpassed the US in terms of drug innovation, research breakthroughs, medical device technology and so on. Because their lower investment levels should be producing returns so much higher, that they would quantum leap the US while spending less. That hasn't even remotely happened. Sucking donkey balls on infant mortality? You should become better educated. How about Canada, at 5.22/1000 versus 6.81 for the US. That's your magic line on 3rd world countries and donkey ball sucking? Well Singapore is 1.92, and Japan is 2.6, so Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Britain are apparently 3rd world countries by comparison. Half of the US infant mortality rate is due to high black poverty. Maybe you should become informed on the root causes of problems in America before making bad assumptions.
  - dontstealmyname 14y ago
    Viagra was not initially being developed as an erection pill it was a heart medication (I think) but turned out to be better at causing erections so they ran with that.
    - carbocation 14y ago
      Sildenafil (Viagra) was developed to treat hypertension and angina. It had little effect, but was found to assist with maintaining erections, so it was further developed for that purpose. Later it was discovered to be effective for pulmonary hypertension and is approved for that use, as well.
  - criley 14y ago
    >What high cost? US companies pay more money for advertising than for creating the drug. Misleading stat that doesn't look at the full cost of bringing a NME to market. You're looking at a yearly budget for a company while ignoring reality: drug development isn't yearly, it takes about 8-12 years total. To analyze something on an 8 year cycle using 1 years worth of data is at best ignorant and at worst, intentionally dishonest. They'll spend almost $1,000,000,000 USD to whittle 10,000 drug candidates into what is hopefully a single FDA approved new molecular entity. >That's how you get the US sucking donkey's balls in infant mortality rates. As if it was some third world country. Did you hear that loud crack? It was you smashing your head against correlation/causation. You might want to have that fallacy checked out. Looks bad, man.
- calibraxis 14y ago
  Consider googling it, just as you'd investigate how to fix a bug in software you use. "Common beliefs" should be viewed with suspicion. (http://www.citizen.org/publications/publicationredirect.cfm?ID=7065 http://www.citizen.org/publications/publicationredirect.cfm?...) Just as with the development of computers and the internet, we can thank the US taxpayer and government for subsidizing pharmaceutical innovations. Which is then sold back to us at hilarious rates. Pharmas reap wonderful profits in other countries (otherwise they probably wouldn't operate in them), just not extreme profits they can extract from US people. It's propaganda that high US prices benevolently subsidize pharma for the rest of the world; this narrative increases nationalism, and sets up an entitlement complex. Propaganda's a great way to get your targets to believe in their own fleecing.
  - melling 14y ago
    Consider that when you are making a statement to tens of thousands of people that it would be best to provide supporting evidence so that exercise of "googling" doesn't have to repeated by everyone.
    - calibraxis 14y ago
      I try to spend the time to support my claims with evidence, as such arguments are more intellectually convincing. Once you depart from views frequently repeated in the media, you no longer have the luxury of soundbites, so providing evidence is best. It takes more effort (particularly since you don't want to cite bad evidence), but is necessary. And the issue is, people who want truth gotta dig. Otherwise they'll be doomed to live the rest of their lives believing lies written by some PR flack. (I've known some PR flacks. They eloquently phrase what their bosses want communicated. And even being careful, I'm sure I believe many serious lies and falsehoods, at least to some extent.)
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 14y ago
>What if the European countries had to had to pay for their own defense? The European countries pay big bucks for their own defense, thank you very much. And the US doesn't provide any defense at all. It merely uses its pressure to get the European countries to participate in its inane crusades and wars, from Korea to Iraq, which are for it's own interests. Plus, defense against what? The only thing that brings any trouble to European countries is mostly aligning with US interests in some wars (e.g EU got some terrorist attacks by islamist groups in revenge for this -- few and far between in any case). Not to mention that what the US officially considers "threats" are either lies (like Bush's WMDs in Iraq) or BS third world countries that couldn't harm a duck even if they wanted to (and which could not care less about having any war with Europe) but happen to be rich in oil or other resources.
- electromagnetic 14y ago
  I think when the UK paid 1/20th of the cost to R&D Trident 2, but got 1/5 of the orders, I'd say yeah that was pretty heavily subsidized by the US to have an ally country with stealth-nuclear capabilities. I also think you have absolutely no clue who international politics works by your blatant naivety. There's a lot more at stake than "access to oil". FYI Iraq showed oil reserves far superior to that of Saudi Arabia, and FYI Saudi Arabia has a military far exceeding most European states (UK, France and Germany obviously excluded due to the amount they do spend, but the Saudi Air force exceeds the UK for active combat air planes). Iraq with more money than Saudi Arabia and an intense hatred for the US/Europe would have been a massive fucking deal. Saudi Arabias royal family however is on good terms with the US government, and I'm sure the US didn't want a regional war between Iraq and Saudi Arabia locking down all Middle Eastern Oil production to ever be a possibility. The War in Iraq was less about getting our hands on Iraqi oil, but getting their Regimes hands off of Iraqi oil. Had they been left alone since before the first gulf war, allowed to buy Russian hardware and build a military superior to that of Saudi Arabia, the region would be under their thumb and so would a massive chunk of the western worlds oil supply for military purposes. Not to mention they would have been well within the budget range to develop nuclear weapons without ever having to test like North Korea. The US also didn't sit around and leave Europe high and dry in conflicts like the Kosovo War, because following your logic why should the US be dragged into a purely European conflict. Basically, because the US gives a shit about keeping its allies in place and stable and their enemies crippled and weak, which is what the rest of the world is trying to do too. So when NATO countries have a vested interest in keeping a country down (Iraq) because it developing a military will support an old adversary (Russia), you can bet they'll tell the public whatever they fucking want to justify a situation like the Cold War never gets the opportunity to arise. It's a sad state of affairs that crippling the development of foreign countries is in our own best interest, but personally I enjoy my way of life and the world isn't a John Lennon song.

melling 14y ago

Please provide some data to back that up because it is a common belief that the high cost of producing a new drug is offset by the US consumer.

coldtea 14y ago
What high cost? US companies pay more money for advertising than for creating the drug. Add other regulation and inefficiencies, and subsidized research would work with 1/10 the money. Not to mention that because of the commercialization of medicine, tons of research is for BS like Viagra and other such drugs (like the tons of stupid feel-good "energy" drugs, so that your boss can squeeze even more overtime out of you), where far more important but less lucrative stuff is ignored. That's how you get the US sucking donkey's balls in infant mortality rates. As if it was some third world country.
- adventured 14y ago
  If that were true, the rest of the world would have radically surpassed the US in terms of drug innovation, research breakthroughs, medical device technology and so on. Because their lower investment levels should be producing returns so much higher, that they would quantum leap the US while spending less. That hasn't even remotely happened. Sucking donkey balls on infant mortality? You should become better educated. How about Canada, at 5.22/1000 versus 6.81 for the US. That's your magic line on 3rd world countries and donkey ball sucking? Well Singapore is 1.92, and Japan is 2.6, so Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Britain are apparently 3rd world countries by comparison. Half of the US infant mortality rate is due to high black poverty. Maybe you should become informed on the root causes of problems in America before making bad assumptions.
- dontstealmyname 14y ago
  Viagra was not initially being developed as an erection pill it was a heart medication (I think) but turned out to be better at causing erections so they ran with that.
  - carbocation 14y ago
    Sildenafil (Viagra) was developed to treat hypertension and angina. It had little effect, but was found to assist with maintaining erections, so it was further developed for that purpose. Later it was discovered to be effective for pulmonary hypertension and is approved for that use, as well.
- criley 14y ago
  >What high cost? US companies pay more money for advertising than for creating the drug. Misleading stat that doesn't look at the full cost of bringing a NME to market. You're looking at a yearly budget for a company while ignoring reality: drug development isn't yearly, it takes about 8-12 years total. To analyze something on an 8 year cycle using 1 years worth of data is at best ignorant and at worst, intentionally dishonest. They'll spend almost $1,000,000,000 USD to whittle 10,000 drug candidates into what is hopefully a single FDA approved new molecular entity. >That's how you get the US sucking donkey's balls in infant mortality rates. As if it was some third world country. Did you hear that loud crack? It was you smashing your head against correlation/causation. You might want to have that fallacy checked out. Looks bad, man.
calibraxis 14y ago
Consider googling it, just as you'd investigate how to fix a bug in software you use. "Common beliefs" should be viewed with suspicion. (http://www.citizen.org/publications/publicationredirect.cfm?ID=7065 http://www.citizen.org/publications/publicationredirect.cfm?...) Just as with the development of computers and the internet, we can thank the US taxpayer and government for subsidizing pharmaceutical innovations. Which is then sold back to us at hilarious rates. Pharmas reap wonderful profits in other countries (otherwise they probably wouldn't operate in them), just not extreme profits they can extract from US people. It's propaganda that high US prices benevolently subsidize pharma for the rest of the world; this narrative increases nationalism, and sets up an entitlement complex. Propaganda's a great way to get your targets to believe in their own fleecing.
- melling 14y ago
  Consider that when you are making a statement to tens of thousands of people that it would be best to provide supporting evidence so that exercise of "googling" doesn't have to repeated by everyone.
  - calibraxis 14y ago
    I try to spend the time to support my claims with evidence, as such arguments are more intellectually convincing. Once you depart from views frequently repeated in the media, you no longer have the luxury of soundbites, so providing evidence is best. It takes more effort (particularly since you don't want to cite bad evidence), but is necessary. And the issue is, people who want truth gotta dig. Otherwise they'll be doomed to live the rest of their lives believing lies written by some PR flack. (I've known some PR flacks. They eloquently phrase what their bosses want communicated. And even being careful, I'm sure I believe many serious lies and falsehoods, at least to some extent.)

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 14y ago

>What if the European countries had to had to pay for their own defense? The European countries pay big bucks for their own defense, thank you very much. And the US doesn't provide any defense at all. It merely uses its pressure to get the European countries to participate in its inane crusades and wars, from Korea to Iraq, which are for it's own interests. Plus, defense against what? The only thing that brings any trouble to European countries is mostly aligning with US interests in some wars (e.g EU got some terrorist attacks by islamist groups in revenge for this -- few and far between in any case). Not to mention that what the US officially considers "threats" are either lies (like Bush's WMDs in Iraq) or BS third world countries that couldn't harm a duck even if they wanted to (and which could not care less about having any war with Europe) but happen to be rich in oil or other resources.

electromagnetic 14y ago
I think when the UK paid 1/20th of the cost to R&D Trident 2, but got 1/5 of the orders, I'd say yeah that was pretty heavily subsidized by the US to have an ally country with stealth-nuclear capabilities. I also think you have absolutely no clue who international politics works by your blatant naivety. There's a lot more at stake than "access to oil". FYI Iraq showed oil reserves far superior to that of Saudi Arabia, and FYI Saudi Arabia has a military far exceeding most European states (UK, France and Germany obviously excluded due to the amount they do spend, but the Saudi Air force exceeds the UK for active combat air planes). Iraq with more money than Saudi Arabia and an intense hatred for the US/Europe would have been a massive fucking deal. Saudi Arabias royal family however is on good terms with the US government, and I'm sure the US didn't want a regional war between Iraq and Saudi Arabia locking down all Middle Eastern Oil production to ever be a possibility. The War in Iraq was less about getting our hands on Iraqi oil, but getting their Regimes hands off of Iraqi oil. Had they been left alone since before the first gulf war, allowed to buy Russian hardware and build a military superior to that of Saudi Arabia, the region would be under their thumb and so would a massive chunk of the western worlds oil supply for military purposes. Not to mention they would have been well within the budget range to develop nuclear weapons without ever having to test like North Korea. The US also didn't sit around and leave Europe high and dry in conflicts like the Kosovo War, because following your logic why should the US be dragged into a purely European conflict. Basically, because the US gives a shit about keeping its allies in place and stable and their enemies crippled and weak, which is what the rest of the world is trying to do too. So when NATO countries have a vested interest in keeping a country down (Iraq) because it developing a military will support an old adversary (Russia), you can bet they'll tell the public whatever they fucking want to justify a situation like the Cold War never gets the opportunity to arise. It's a sad state of affairs that crippling the development of foreign countries is in our own best interest, but personally I enjoy my way of life and the world isn't a John Lennon song.