I like how some folks here think Obamacare was a big bailout for big pharma (like they need it).

All that shit is strictly temporary. The insurance firms and big pharma signed on because they might as well get their money now, instead of no money later, because the stated goal of Obama and leftists everywhere is single payer, and that means big government.

The gov't looks to destroy insurance companies, because they get a big profit and the gov't doesn't.

so you agree with me yet still downvote my comment?
i thought i was being respectful by explaining my downvote,something i am under zero compulsion to do,at all.

and yet you go off on a childish tantrum and systematically downvote about 3 hours of content in my pque...in FIVE minutes! which can lead me to only one conclusion:
emotional reflex response to a negative analysis to a useless and irrelevant video you posted.

you do not understand why this is irrelevant?
i have to admit a certain embarrassment for you that i have to point this out,but ok,take my hand and i will walk you through it so you can better understand:

1.air contains oxygen
2.water is wet
3.everybody poops
4.politicians and governments lie

you had an opportunity here to reveal just how convoluted and deceptive the process had been perverted and corrupted.how back door deals and the greased palms of certain politicians helped fascillitate the passing of obamacare.

how big pharma and the health insurance industry spent 300 million in the first week alone to kill this bill.or how those very same politicians allowed a tax on that health care bill to remain in the bill.

you could have added context to what really transpired and the mafia principle was in full effect.government gets their slice and the health industry continues to be allowed to plunder the american people treasure.

but no.
you posted a 53 second video of a politician caught in a moment of truth.
a truth WE ALREADY KNOW,with the sole purpose of "look!see! governments are bad!

no context.
no backstory.
no nuanced information to give people a clearer picture on just how badly we are all being fucked.
just a 53 second prop so you can get on your soapbox.

so yeah..the video is irrelevant.

unless of course...you think everybody around you is a stupid child and needs you to hold their hands to reveal the underlying truth.if that is the case you have failed miserably.

well,i dont need you to hold my hand.i am quite capable of coming to my own conclusions.

i am becoming quite tired of your temper tantrums.so if my words have angered your tender sensibilities then feel free to go on another targeted downvoting spree..i really dont care.

@blankfist is a die hard libertarian.thoughtful and precise in his arguments (sans the farting cats),and you sir..are no blankfist.

I'm not sure if you meant to say Republicans and Democrats do, more or less, the same things but use different language, or what, but I don't see how this video has no relevance. Relevance to what?


Regardless, Obamacare is indeed a "bailout gimme" to big pharma as you say, so it's really beyond me why the liberals continue to support it.

Maybe they're as "stupid" as Gruber was counting on.

not exactly a secret.
elites by the very definition feel themselves superior to the befuddled herd (actual term used) and therefore feel compelled to "guide" them and "control" them.
this attitude crosses partisan lines.
so on one side you have educated,indoctrinated elites who disdain the masses but use the language of empathy and compassion to manipulate and on the other side of the aisle you have a perverted aynrand/jesus monster to manipulate the masses.

either way....you are being manipulated.

and there aint NO way the republicans are getting rid of obamacare.only the largest bailout gimme to big pharma and the health insurance industry.that would be political suicide.the entire policy was written by the heritage foundation for fucks sake! not exactly a bastion of liberal ideologies.

just as no republican will repeal roe vs wade.
they will use abortion like a battering ram to get their religious base into a frothy frenzy of hate and self-righteousness,but no way would they EVER let go of that boom stick.

this video is stupid and is only being used to create a platform so a certain someone can jump on his soapbox and preach his religion.

fuck that shit.go on a street corner and peddle your wares.this video has zero relevance.

downvote*

UR just a schill for big pharma!
Diet can prevent flu!
It's harmless!

Any more bullshit objections to science?

To your scatalogical expertise, I willingly yield.

To your discernation of scientific analysis...http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/06/david-gorskis-financial-pharma-ties-what-he-didnt-tell-you.html

So, this is a major misconception by the public about where the money actually goes when drugs are developed. Read the link you have there, but with a more realistic eye about where the money is going. Drugs are SUPER expensive, but only because they're super expensive to discover. 'Drug discovery' is a tremendously difficult thing, to the point where it is the wetdream of a professional drug discoverer in the pharma world to discover 1 drug in their 30+ year career. During that time, the team of pharma researchers all have to be paid for their PhD level of expertise, and the human cost in developed countries is quite expensive! If there are 1000 people in one pharma company, and each person makes ~70+ thousand, and benefits cost another 100+ thousand per person each year, then the human cost alone in that rough exercise accounts for 170 million yearly for just 1000 people, and can touch the billion dollar figure per year for very large companies. That is where the money is going in that 1.3 billion dollar figure.

The major problem lies in developing a substance that actually does something, and you know exactly what that something is, including all side effects. To get a statistically valid clinical trial is actually a rather hard thing to do; a poorly designed clinical trial can prove whatever you want it to. Considering your St. John's wort example, the most costly 'drug discovery' component is already finished, it would just need to go through clinical trials as a drug for antidepression. The body of evidence in place may already serve for early phase clinical trials, and it may just need to go through a couple of more trials to prove its efficacy (and determine side effects). It would cost some money, but it would NOT be so prohibitively expensive as starting from complete scratch.

Considering this, the idea that it's 'unfair' to make the supplements world actually prove their product does what it is promised to do (or at the very least, not be harmful) is a bit odd. Quackery is illegal for moral reasons, and hard to argue that what the supplements world is doing is not quackery; particularly with the Dr. Oz zeal, false promises are being sold millions of bottles at a time. It is in the public's interest to get this stuff tested and approved!

Not true, at least not the primary reason.

The reason they're high is because pharmaceutical companies can get away with charging high prices and reaping high margins, because of their strong competitive position, margins some 50% higher in the US than the EU.

Source

See page 12 - Pre R&D margins are 65% in the US to 43% in the EU.

A big reason for this is the lack of a universal public option, only Medicare exists for the elderly, Medicaid for the poor. With a universal public option like in most developed countries, the monopsony buying power of the government for a much larger part of the population would force down margins.

i voted for this video if only to see it dissected for the hack piece it is.

do we really need to point out the infantile logic of using michelle obamas comment of "knuckleheads" and conflate it with a 300$ bottle of water?

come on..seriously? thats pretty dumb.

but obamacare is not a failure.it is performing exactly as it was designed.
written by the heritage foundation.
it is basically a gimme bailout for big pharma and the health insurance industry.
and it is functioning perfectly.

if obama truly wanted a universal health care.we already had a system in place that,as @Yogi already pointed out,would have saved money and the infrastructure was already in place.
single payer would have been an easy implementation.
covered everybody.
and saved money.

but that was never the goal.

socialism for the rich.
capitalism for the poor.

@lantern53
ill agree with the sentiment of your comment if not the wrongful use of certain words.

bush was a big business president.
perma tax breaks anyone?
to use the term "progressive" in describing bush is being inaccurate at best and dishonest at worst.

the bush admin pushed through some of the most extreme expansions of executive powers (thanks addington and woo).they are guilty of war crimes.they are guilty of spying on american citizens.they are guilty of perpetrating an illegal war based on total fabrication.
and all of it.every last bit...retroactive immunity.

now here comes obama.
and while his rhetoric is beautiful and poetic,having a strong populist flavor,the facts remain that not only did the obama admin CONTINUE the bush executive powers,his admin EXPANDED them!

/waves to the NSA

so i do not know where you get this "fundamentally changing" this country when it has been business as usual.
unless you are speaking of oabamacare and i would point out that obamacare is a health care provider bail out.

bush bails out the banks.
obama bails out big pharma and health insurance industry.

and we get to pick up the tab.

the rhetoric may have a progressive tilt but the reality is business as usual.socialism for the rich,capitalism for the poor.

and it bothers me that some people i know who were ultra critical of the bush admin are relatively silent in regards to obama.

One of your problems with relying on published medical reports as the go-to source for medical education is the nature of the beast and her supporting interests (pharma companies, corporate HR concerns) and another is the success or failure of bi-polar self-medication with various chemical cocktails of choice from first-hand experience with sufferers. Depending on the severity of an individual's diagnosed level of manic-depression, some are able to cope just fine with what has always worked, as long as addiction or excess is kept in personal check according to the influence they have in their interpersonal relationships to society.

Have had plenty of friends who were able to cope just fine, others who let themselves go-MOST, have preferred self-medication over the doctor/guinea-pig relationship, but as more data is accumulated and more walking lab subjects are used in experimentation, they'll get better and better or so you'd like believe, as the gods-little-g of the Babylonian medical experiment put more and more problem herd animals into their respective categories and cages of dependency.

Cannabinoids DO work their wonders for bi-polars. As with ALL sufferers of brain chemistry problems, support from loved ones is key.

Yeah, but number-crunchers and bean-counters who work for automobile manufacturers make similar decisions when deciding whether or not to order a recall on dangerous vehicles-At the end of the day, Big Pharma companies decide which facts and figures get the most spin, eh?

Whose to say that nature is not the ultimate winner over human efforts to forestall the inevitable? It's gonna take more than eliminating all disease to get us knuckle-dragging monkeys off-planet. It may very well take humanity as we know it driven to the brink with a number of engineered attempts to preserve life.

Not as simple as everyone playing syringe-roulette kir_mokum, science is not some ultimate panacea-That said, I survived the crap-shoot and will probably never get dip, typhus, or cholera. Whew!

I did however, ingest a Preludin at the age of 18 months thanks to an irresponsible parental unit, early imprints are a MOTHERFUCKER!

I was reading an editorial in the paper just this morning and the writer was stating that the connection between depression (along with other mental illnesses) and brain chemistry may not be as strong as we once believed it to be. The pharmaceutical industry and various mental health organizations were both promoting this, albeit for different reasons, big pharma for the obvious financial gains and mental health groups pushed it because people seem to accept mental health problems better if they believe it's because there is something physically wrong with someone.
I'm not sure how much I believe it yet, but I know from my own experiences that my own depression seems pretty much impervious to anything out there, I do take bupropion though. @shinyblurry, I'll echo many others here by saying that hope is a carrot at the end of a stick that's leading you off a cliff, hope is a sign on a storefront that's reminding you that disappointment will be back in five minutes, for many people with depression, hope is bullshit.
Now, I believe that you meant perfectly well with your thoughts of hope but I do think it's important to know that to many people suffering from depression might see that as a glib statement, implying that we can just turn our suffering on or off like a light switch.
Oh, and my black dog has three heads and is not to be fucked with, he thinks the one in this video looks like a pussy.

Add lawyers and doctors (pharma-nazis) to that criminal class, and you've got what any depression-era grandmother warned you against.....Can you say, "in-cahoots?"

Pharmac (go look it up) here in NZ has a big part to play in our overall lower health costs for medicines.

It's a crown owned entity that works out what drug is the best for a particular purpose and then says, "hey big pharma wanna have all the NZ'ers get cured of shitty disease x with your magic pill number 4? Well then gives us the generic brand and here's what we will pay." And then drives a sweet deal for all us kiwis.

It's that big of a thing that it's upset all the corporate fuckers that are driving the whole Trans Pacific fuck the little guy Partnership.

Then there is the ACC (Accident Compensation Corporation) - It's not perfect by any means. But say for example you are playing football on the weekend and your blow your hamstring, well you rock on up to the local A&E, afterhours or medical centre etc, pay a fee of around $30-50nz, get checked over, if you need xrays/scans these maybe fully subsidised or again you may have to pay up to $50-80, get cheapo drugs from the pharmacy (thanks Pharmac) and go home and put your feet up. You're in the system now buddy!

Now have to put your foot up at home for the next 4 weeks, - what about work? I gotta get paid dog!! Don't worry homie ACC has got your back.

If your claim is approved (they pay first and ask questions later, after all you need to get better) you'll be paid 80% of your income while your at home working on your TV tan! ACC was created for workplace injuries, but falling of the ladder home still gets covered.

ACC works by all employers paying into the scheme via levies based on your wage/salary, also the higher risk of injury the workplace is the higher the levy the employer has to pay.

The pay off for ACC is that no-one is allowed to be sued. The govt will drop the hammer on the company, you get looked after by ACC. This has caused the odd issue here and there but overall. Sweet!

Disclaimer - This may all be a complete bunch of ass, but it's pretty close to the way it is.