Lovin' me some Weiner

Anthony Weiner (D-NY), that is. And Morning Joe, for that matter. Check out this article from The Nation:

"Something rather remarkable happened on Tuesday's Morning Joe. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York pointed out that the health insurance industry has no clothes, and Joe Scarborough, after first trying to spin it some gossamer threads, broke down and said, By God, you're right, this emperor is a naked money-making machine!

Well, he didn't use those exact words, but Joe did seem to finally get that America has granted insurance companies the right to create bottlenecks in the financing of healthcare in order to extract profits out of the suffering of ordinary people--without providing any actual healthcare whatsoever.

"Why are we paying profits for insurance companies?" Weiner asked Scarborough. "Why are we paying overhead for insurance companies? Why," he asked, bringing it all home, "are we paying for their TV commercials?"

Weiner, who recently warned that President Obama could lose as many as 100 votes on a health bill if a public option is not included, really wants single payer--Medicare for all Americans is his goal. What a crazy, way-out, reckless notion, Joe went into their encounter believing. But Weiner asked some simple, direct questions that no politician, much less Obama or HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, has managed to pose:

What is an insurance company? They don't do a single check-up. They don't do a single exam, they don't perform an operation. Medicare has a 4 percent overhead rate. The real question is why do we have a private plan?

"It sounds like you're saying you think there is no need for us to have private insurance in healthcare," Joe asked at one point.

Weiner replied: "I've asked you three times. What is their value? What are they bringing to the deal?"

Scraping the bottom of a seemingly bottomless pit of spin, Joe is repeatedly left speechless, "stunned" and "astounded," he said, by the questions themselves. Indeed, when confronted with unfettered capitalism's massive failures, the right usually has nothing to say. The "free market" is supposed to eternally grow, not crash under its own greed. They're left ideologically crippled."

Weiner goes all the way, to the heart of the matter, something that my favorite compromizer, Pres. Obama, has been unwilling to do (so far). I say it's time to jettison bipartisanship and own this, Democrats. You're not going to get the Repubs on board without making things worse for our health care system. The problem to a large degree IS the health insurance companies. Partly because there is no real competition (I could choose at most between 2 companies, but what's the difference? They both have the right to disown me if it suits their needs), partly because of natural capitalist greed that works for most things we barter and buy, but not health care (or military).

I also must note one of the comments from this article, it's too good & juicy to pass up:

"To all rightwingers trying to subvert The Nation via neurotic nonsensical diversions ...

You didn't rage when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount & appointed a President.

You didn't rage when Cheney allowed energy company officials to dictate energy policy.

You didn't rage when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn't rage when the Patriot Act took away so many of our rights.

You didn't rage when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't rage when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't rage when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't rage when you saw the Abu Grahib photos (except like Rumsfeld to fume that they were ever allowed to be taken).

You didn't rage when you learned we were torturing people.

You didn't rage when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn't rage when we didn't nab Bin Laden.

You didn't rage when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

You didn't rage when we let a major US city drown.

You didn't rage when the deficit hit a trillion dollars.

But you finally start raging when the government decides that people in America deserve the right to see a doctor when they're ill."

Posted by sloper at 08/21/2009 @ 06:18am

Where are the Christians? Wouldn't Jesus say that the poor & sick deserve health care? Where are the farmers who accept gov't subsidies to not grow crops? Where are the potential entrepreneurs who stay working for "the man", 'cause they're the only ones have reasonably priced health care plans? More to come on that....

In the meantime, enjoy the Weiner.

Thanks, China!

StarNewsOnline.com: The Voice of Southeastern North Carolina:

"China's current leaders eventually may kill more people than Mao Tse-Tung. And not just in China. Tens of millions worldwide could die because the Chinese ruined a drug that could have treated a deadly new form of influenza.

Chalk this suicidal stupidity up to the usual suspects: greed and secrecy.

Instead of saving the antiviral drug amantadine for humans, as international guidelines prescribe, the Chinese government told farmers to use it on chickens.

Chinese officials deny it, of course."

The World Health Organization needs to crack down hard on these Chinese farms...

Super Water Kills Bugs Dead

WN: Wired News:

"A California company has figured out how to use two simple materials -- water and salt -- to create a solution that wipes out single-celled organisms, and which appears to speed healing of burns, wounds and diabetic ulcers.

The solution looks, smells and tastes like water, but carries an ion imbalance that makes short work of bacteria, viruses and even hard-to-kill spores.

Developed by Oculus Innovative Sciences in Petaluma, the super-oxygenated water is claimed to be as effective a disinfectant as chlorine bleach, but is harmless to people, animals and plants. If accidentally ingested by a child, the likely impact is a bad case of clean teeth.

Oculus said the solution, called Microcyn, may prove effective in the fight against superbugs, crossover viruses like bird flu and Ebola, and bioterrorism threats such as anthrax."

It's like Star Trak or something! That guy on "House" with the flesh eating virus on his leg could have used this stuff...

Your Drugs are like Bad Medicine

StarNewsOnline.com: The Voice of Southeastern North Carolina

"...The number of prescriptions has swelled by two-thirds over the past decade to 3.5 billion yearly, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical consulting company. Americans devour even more nonprescription drugs, polling suggests....
...
Well over 125,000 Americans die from drug reactions and mistakes each year, according to Associated Press projections from landmark medical studies of the 1990s. That could make pharmaceuticals the fourth-leading national cause of death after heart disease, cancer and stroke....
..."What the drug companies are doing now is promoting drugs for long-term use to essentially healthy people. Why? Because it's the biggest market."

In fact, relatively few pharmaceutical newcomers greatly improve the health of patients over older drugs or advance the march of medicine. Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration classified about three-quarters of newly approved drugs as similar to existing ones.

Confronted with mounting costs, drug makers churn out and promote uninspired sequels like Hollywood: drugs with the same ingredients in a different form for a different disease...."

Yes, medicine is good and we should be happy about all the new drugs that can save people, but when you look at the big picture, we have a problem. Capitalism and medicine are in conflict. What is best for the drug makers' bottom line does not mesh with what is best for Americans' health. How can we overcome this? I'm asking is all....

At last, more drug ads!

You're Getting Sleepy ... - Or are you? What the new sleeping-pill ads don't say. By Amanda Schaffer

...at least these ads won't mention 4 hour erections . Good article with more reasons why drug ads are bad for society.

Getting the Bone

Miss Daisy's Driving - By William Saletan:
"Medicare will cover Viagra and other drugs for sexual dysfunction. Critique: Just when you thought government couldn't get dumber, here comes the boner subsidy. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, will file legislation to ban Medicare coverage of 'lifestyle drugs.' King tells NYT, 'We are promoting abstinence for young people with raging hormones, and yet we are going to ask them to pay taxes for sex-enhancing drugs for seniors?' Defense: Medicare is just following precedent: Insurers already cover 'quality-of-life' drugs for pain or indigestion, and the Department of Veterans Affairs covers Viagra for 150,000 men. Rebuttal: My God, it's worse than we thought. Implication: The distinction between necessary and elective medicine is breaking down."

Great....now, not only do we get the 4-hour erection ads, we now have to watch them knowing that our tax dollars are paying for some guy's wood. Hey ladies....aren't your panti...I mean, shouldn't women be upset that our gov't pays for boners, but not for birth control pills? Women are REALLY getting screwed in this deal ;-)

From the Drug Makers

"In 2003, PhRMA member companies invested an estimated $33.2 billion on research to develop new treatments for diseases - an estimated 17.7 percent of domestic sales on R&D - a higher R&D to sales ratio than any other U.S. industry.

At this level of investment, PhRMA member companies spend more on R&D than the National Institutes of Health and the international pharmaceutical industry."

In 2000, direct to consumer drug advertising cost over 2.5 Billion, with 15.7 Billion spent in total on drug promotion. And these numbers are rising fast since 1996. I think we can fairly extrapolate that 2.5 Billion to 3 Billion, and the 15.7 Billion to 17 Billion to try to get close to 2003 numbers for comparisons sake.
So, the Pharmacy companies do spend more on research and development than advertising. About twice as much. Still, I don't feel much better about that, and the "trends" in increased prescriptions at higher costs is troubling.

John Edwards Blasts Prescription Drug Advertising -- 08/16/2004

John Edwards Blasts Prescription Drug Advertising -- 08/16/2004:

"According to the Kerry-Edwards campaign, pharmaceutical companies more than doubled their spending on advertising and marketing between 1996 and 2001. Advertising and marketing costs rose faster than spending on research and development, the campaign said."

Getting closer....

More Prescription Drugs

"In the U.S., prescription drug spending increased from US $50.6 billion in 1993 to $93.4 billion in 1998, an 84% increase over a five-year period. Four categories of drugs accounted for 30.8% of this increase: oral antihistamines used to treat allergy, antidepressants, cholesterol-lowering drugs and ulcer treatments. These categories include seven of the ten drugs most heavily advertised to the public in 1998. That means that direct-to-consumer advertising could have added more than $13 billion to the US drug bill in 1998. In 1999, two thirds of the increase in spending on prescription drugs in the US was for 25 drugs with the most intensive DTC advertising campaigns"

Click on link for more interesting tidbits. Still trying to crunch some numbers here....

Prescription Drug Commercials

There is no need to advertise prescription medicines. There have been studies that show the ads increase the number of people who go to see the doctor, and they insist that is a good thing, but I'm not so sure.
For instance, one company is now running an ad for the product "Singulair". It's hard to tell what the drug is for by watching the ad, but all the kids at camp sure are enjoing it. At the beginning of the TV spot, there is a bus dropping the kids off at camp. If you look closely you can see the name of the camp on the front of the bus:
"Camp Watchatakin"
(What-ya-takin')
When I went to summer camp (I went to a lot of camps), I can only recall two kids out of hundreds that went to see the nurse for pills daily. One was an epileptic and the other was hyperactive. I wonder what percentage of kids are taking pills daily now? Is there a line out the nurse's door at lunch, kids waiting for their next pill to halt the sniffles or calm them?
I argue that the drug ads on TV are propping up big profit-makers for the drug industry, and a lot of these prescriptions are unnecessary, and the government is happy to go along with it. I am not against drug companies making a profit, but isn't medicine a higher calling? The ads are what I call "comfort drugs", they give you a hug, make grow hair, enlarge your manhood or whatever. Pills that are useful and have a place, but they're not life-saving medicines, they're kinda like add-ons. When the add-ons are the profit makers, where is the incentive to make cures for debilitating or life threatening diseases? Where is the incentive for a cure...if the goal is profit, then drug companies would benefit from making drugs that you have to continue taking for life rather than drugs that you take once and are cured forever. Where is the profit in that?
I have read (but cannot source) that drug companies spend more on advertising than research. That is completely out of whack, and a disgrace to our culture.
I think it's time we take a hard look at the health care system as a whole, and get the best minds together to come up with solutions. Hillary couldn't do it, as a politician she was doomed to fail from the start, this is a fight that needs to be led by doctors and lawyers (ug!)....the private sector needs to take the lead. Health care costs are spiraling upward and it's having a dramatic effect on the economy for average people who pay for health insurance. If the private sector can't police itself better, and provide health care at a reasonable price for all Americans, it's probably in part due to the natural influence of capitalism in the drug marketplace. Maybe the government does need to take a bigger role in policing the health care system.
A easy place to start would be more restrictions on advertising prescription drugs to the public. Could we require drug companies to spend at least 10X more on research than advertising? Could we allow drug companies to run ads that don't mention the product at all, only list symptoms and tell consumers to ask their doctor about drugs? Or are we doomed to have our kids come home from camp asking "Daddy, I want to take pills like Sally, and Jill, and Jimmy, and Alice and....."
Camp Watchatakin. Ug!