.

[Spendulus]

....Please stop these ridiculous claims.

Really?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/health/as-drug-costs-rise-bending-the-law-is-one-remedy.html?ref=us

So why is this woman having her Vagifen that she paid for impounded?

http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm194904.htm Is the FDA making a ridiculous claim here?

These facts show there is no "free market" in drugs in the US which needs to be defended.  In fact, you are the first person I have ever heard asserting there was one.  Not only are you delusional - you have no idea of what a "free market" looks like.

The very article you link to proves there is a free market in prescription meds.  It cites a million Americans a year buying their drugs out of country.  It cites one lady who had hers impounded.

Are you claiming because it is technically illegal there is no free market?  A free market is not concerned about legalities.    Constraints to a free market exist when it is CONSTRAINED, as when most of a million users' products are held at the border - not when one person's products are.

Respectfully, you are wasting your time pursuing this argument.  I have talked with US Border Patrol agents about this and have taken prescription drugs across the US Mexican border.  I have imported them from Canada, England, and India for over ten years.  Anybody who chooses to do so can do so.

If I understand correctly, Americans who try to buy their medicines with their own money get charged more than those who pay for the drugs through an insurance policy who in turn are charged more than those whose drugs are paid for by medicare. And the differences are sometimes over 1000% - price gouging rather than marketing differences.

If the prices you pay for your drugs are negotiated for all taxpayers and roughly the same for all, whats wrong with that?

Here in the USA the very reason many of these prices are high is the unholy alliance of lobbyists and politicians in Washington DC.  Give the politicians the ability to "negotiate a price" for drugs - or for anything - and here, you'll have a real disaster in the making.  The result will be high prices, not low prices.

Your statement above I bolded is correct except it is not price gorging by the patent holder, the price differentials occur in the distribution chain.  For examples, by hospitals.  This is the result of medicare and other social insurance services payments' being TOO LOW.  They make up the difference by charging the free market customer.  Therefore if you expand the social insurance, this problem is made worse, not better.

[murraypaul]

This is a problem that is to do with humanity, not ideologies or anything else, we have a very similar problem within the UK where there are a few out there lobbying constantly against the government to force everyone to buy car insurance at ridiculous prices and they all do the usual arguments of how it would mean everyone would go around uninsured and no one would be able to afford repairs etc. it's all lies.

I must be misunderstanding you.
It is already a requirement in the UK to have car insurance if driving on public roads.

[murraypaul]

Are you claiming because it is technically illegal there is no free market?  A free market is not concerned about legalities.    Constraints to a free market exist when it is CONSTRAINED, as when most of a million users' products are held at the border - not when one person's products are.

Laugh.
The free market is constrained by it being illegal.

[Spendulus]

Are you claiming because it is technically illegal there is no free market?  A free market is not concerned about legalities.    Constraints to a free market exist when it is CONSTRAINED, as when most of a million users' products are held at the border - not when one person's products are.

Laugh.
The free market is constrained by it being illegal.

No, it isn't.  The very article quoted above states that the FDA does not enforce this rule for a wide variety of conditions of individual purchase for 90 days or less supply.  I and everyone else order - 90 day supply.

And the FDA rules are not "law" but administrative regulation.

Illegal doesn't even apply in this case.

....
I see, so I should ignore my own actual experiences with the NHS, and instead just accept your blindly parroted philosophical objections?....

No.  You should accept them both as true.  You've had a good experience, he's had a bad one.  And he could have a good one in the future, as could you have a bad one.

This isn't complicated.

[murraypaul]

....
I see, so I should ignore my own actual experiences with the NHS, and instead just accept your blindly parroted philosophical objections?....

No.  You should accept them both as true.  You've had a good experience, he's had a bad one.  And he could have a good one in the future, as could you have a bad one.

This isn't complicated.

And if that was what he had said, I would agree.
It wasn't.
He said nothing about having bad experiences with the NHS, just knee-jerk political philosophy that anything state-run must, by definition, be awful.

[elektibi75]

well it's pretty much what you pay is what you get all around the world...

[Spendulus]

....
I see, so I should ignore my own actual experiences with the NHS, and instead just accept your blindly parroted philosophical objections?....

No.  You should accept them both as true.  You've had a good experience, he's had a bad one.  And he could have a good one in the future, as could you have a bad one.

This isn't complicated.

And if that was what he had said, I would agree.
It wasn't.
He said nothing about having bad experiences with the NHS, just knee-jerk political philosophy that anything state-run must, by definition, be awful.

And in your, and Hawker's comments, is evident a pervasive tone of 'anything state run must, by definition, be GREAT.'

I've had "good experiences" with police in totalitarian countries and communist countries.  Others have not had good experiences with them.  (LOL)

When you try to substantiate your position based on your own experiences, this is called bringing anecdotal experience in as evidence.  It is generally rejected as support for a position in debate.

[Spendulus]

well it's pretty much what you pay is what you get all around the world...

Wait...

You mean we can't get a boat load of free stuff?

I want the free stuff.

[murraypaul]

And in your, and Hawker's comments, is evident a pervasive tone of 'anything state run must, by definition, be GREAT.'

No, just that it will be good or bad, as with most other things.
The contradiction of 'All state-run things are AWFUL' is not 'All state-run things are GREAT', it is 'Some state-run things are not AWFUL'.
Peoples' experiences of the NHS will vary based on where they are in the country, and what services they are using.
I'm in a reasonably affluent suburb, and I have had good experiences. My guess is that those two are correlated, and that if I was in a poor inner-city area my experiences wouldn't be as good.

I've had "good experiences" with police in totalitarian countries and communist countries.  Others have not had good experiences with them.  (LOL)

And some people have had good experiences with police in democratic countries. Others have not had good experiences with them.

When you try to substantiate your position based on your own experiences, this is called bringing anecdotal experience in as evidence.  It is generally rejected as support for a position in debate.

And what is it called when you just parrot political rhetoric?
How does it advance the discussion more than just 'Four legs good, two legs bad'?

[Spendulus]

And in your, and Hawker's comments, is evident a pervasive tone of 'anything state run must, by definition, be GREAT.'

No, just that it will be good or bad, as with most other things.
The contradiction of 'All state-run things are AWFUL' is not 'All state-run things are GREAT', it is 'Some state-run things are not AWFUL'.
Peoples' experiences of the NHS will vary based on where they are in the country, and what services they are using.
I'm in a reasonably affluent suburb, and I have had good experiences. My guess is that those two are correlated, and that if I was in a poor inner-city area my experiences wouldn't be as good.

I've had "good experiences" with police in totalitarian countries and communist countries.  Others have not had good experiences with them.  (LOL)

And some people have had good experiences with police in democratic countries. Others have not had good experiences with them.

When you try to substantiate your position based on your own experiences, this is called bringing anecdotal experience in as evidence.  It is generally rejected as support for a position in debate.

And what is it called when you just parrot political rhetoric?
How does it advance the discussion more than just 'Four legs good, two legs bad'?

So the argument that you call "parroting political rhetoric"....

I am in the crappy UK and the NHS system is seriously messed up here.
It is true : you get what you pay for ! Crap doctors, huge waiting lists, can't do a blood test unless it is "needed" etc.
Healthcare managed by government = total POS; the government ruins everything mate !
I feel sorry for you in the US now you are forced to pay into the public healthcare scam ...

....doesn't fall under the exclusion to your broad sweeping generalization based on your anecdotal experience bolded above?



A big problem with attempting to judge something like a health care system is that - like a person - you don't know it's true nature until it is seriously stressed.  That's when you find out the character of a person.  Or, a health care system....

But please note that this entire thread consists of people in socialist countries with state run health care systems trying to argue the sweeping generalization that socialist health care is "good", and therefore it must certainly be "good" if implemented in the USA.

That is definitely a false statement.

Let me give you one stark example of a possible problem with a state run health care system in the USA.

A)  In most states here, marihuana is illegal.
B)  As part of socialist health care, people get blood tests.
C) Blood tests show clearly who is a user of marihuana.  That info is entered into every single person's database which is held by the Fed.
D)  People are then blacklisted for various jobs, trades and licenses based on their personal life as revealed by the blood test and as collected by the government.

There is nothing abstract or philosophical in that problem.

[murraypaul]

But please note that this entire thread consists of people in socialist countries with state run health care systems trying to argue the sweeping generalization that socialist health care is "good", and therefore it must certainly be "good" if implemented in the USA.

That is definitely a false statement.

I'd say it also consists of people who are convinced that any socialised system (of anything) is "bad"
And the current implementation in the US seems to be a messy half and half system.
If you think that systems like the NHS 'work', a large reason for it is that they are single payer systems.
They cut out the middleman of the HMOs, who add nothing to the actual provision of care, and can achieve levels of discounts that individual smaller payers couldn't. The current US model doesn't really seem to do anything to remove HMOs from the equation, so will continue to be wasteful.

And what I've been saying has very clearly been that I am happier with what I have than with what you have. That isn't at all the same as saying that you should get what I have. You can't simply transplant something between two very different societies, in terms of political views, and expect it to work.
In the UK, the majority of people support the NHS, and believe in the state provision of healthcare, that simply isn't true in the US.
Recent governments in the UK have been increasingly trying to water down the socialist aspects of the NHS and introduce more US-style markets, and polling shows that people disapprove of those changes. I don't think a true socialised system could ever be introduced to the US, firstly for the more cynical reason that there is simply too much money being made in the current system, but at a more basic level because most Americans don't seem to support that level of government provision.
On a different hot-button issue, I'm very glad I live in a country with no right to gun ownership. That doesn't mean I think you could simply ban all guns in the US and get the same result.

[Spendulus]

.....
And what I've been saying has very clearly been that I am happier with what I have than with what you have. ....

....On a different hot-button issue, I'm very glad I live in a country with no right to gun ownership. That doesn't mean I think you could simply ban all guns in the US and get the same result...

You've had a couple generations of government propaganda to help develop the attitude that you should be happy with your NHS.

My knowledge of world reporting on the US is that there are errors and biases inherent in it, which incidentally your positions validate, which nonetheless reinforces the tribal concepts of "we're better than they are".  That's not just Britian but across Europe.

Incidentally you've ignored the fiscal issue underlying the health care, both in Britian and the US, which is curious because nothing exists unless it's funded. 

But don't worry; even if the NHS service funding goes down and deliverable health care shrinks, the propaganda budget will stay solid and probably increase.  And people will continue to be told to believe that they are happy with their health care.

Just as I have noted the fiscal problem as #1, and just as I have noted the dangers of government databases on private behavior, I would note that I and most people in the USA are opposed to government propaganda and shaping of behavior such as is accepted in the UK.

[murraypaul]

You've had a couple generations of government propaganda to help develop the attitude that you should be happy with your NHS.
[...]
I would note that I and most people in the USA are opposed to government propaganda and shaping of behavior such as is accepted in the UK.

As I said:

I'd say it also consists of people who are convinced that any socialised system (of anything) is "bad"

You don't even think it is possible that the NHS could actually be delivering a good service, do you?

[Spendulus]

You've had a couple generations of government propaganda to help develop the attitude that you should be happy with your NHS.
[...]
I would note that I and most people in the USA are opposed to government propaganda and shaping of behavior such as is accepted in the UK.

As I said:

I'd say it also consists of people who are convinced that any socialised system (of anything) is "bad"

You don't even think it is possible that the NHS could actually be delivering a good service, do you?

In the US, we have a long history - and a lot of good reasons - to believe "government is evil, and the larger, the more evil, yet when smaller, still evil, but perhaps a necessary evil."  It is not uncommon for me to confront people who start with the premise that "government is good and benevolent".  The former is universally true, the latter may on occasion be true.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

I would say though, that if in debate I found someone ignored the funding through debt instead of wealth issue, ignored the database and privacy concerns, and ignored the problem of government propaganda, then proceeded to debate using argument by anecdote, sweeping generalizations, and other easily identified logical fallacies, then I would be inclined to explore the premises underlying such behavior, such as the effect of propaganda on the individual in the society.

This is separate from your question of whether the NHS could actually be delivering a good service, of course.  I'm sure your last decade's flood of third world immigrants would agree with you that it was a good service.  They particularly like the fact that it's free for them, along with the other government free stuff.

By the way, don't take me too seriously, I'm just doing this for fun and as an exercise, so my intents and purposes are very different than those who are true believers, or true polemics.

[Hawker]

Are you claiming because it is technically illegal there is no free market?  A free market is not concerned about legalities.    Constraints to a free market exist when it is CONSTRAINED, as when most of a million users' products are held at the border - not when one person's products are.

Laugh.
The free market is constrained by it being illegal.

Spendulus is not going to listen to logic or facts.  He is able to get what he wants by breaking the law so in his mind, that means the system is working perfectly.

If topic is improving health care for people who obey the law, you'd best find someone more sensible to talk to.

[Hawker]

...snip...

By the way, don't take me too seriously, I'm just doing this for fun and as an exercise, so my intents and purposes are very different than those who are true believers, or true polemics.

We don't 

[Spendulus]

...snip...

By the way, don't take me too seriously, I'm just doing this for fun and as an exercise, so my intents and purposes are very different than those who are true believers, or true polemics.

We don't 

Good.  And I never ever take the brainwashed Brits seriously.

LOL...

[MoonShadow]

I'd say it also consists of people who are convinced that any socialised system (of anything) is "bad"
And the current implementation in the US seems to be a messy half and half system.

Truer words have never been posted, but that is not to say that Obamacare is actually an improvement in this regard.  Ironicly, I'm personally of the opinion that, if a static baseline of public health care access is the goal, (as so stated by so many, although not in those words) then a single payer form of health care industry (a la Canada) is as good a solution to the 'problem' as a market based system would be.

The issue here is that we didn't really have a problem, at least not one that couldn't have been made worse by government aid.  The grand 'problem' was never that American's didn't have a reasonable baseline of health care, there are laws that require any public health care facility (hospital) to treat patients regardless of their capacity to pay; and if, in the future, they filed for bankruptcy, they didn't have to pay those bills, ever.  So in the US, even if you were uninsured and unemployed, you could reasonablely expect to receive the same life saving care that the rich guy who crossed the median to hit your 20 year old car with his 2014 BMW would receive, regardless of who the hospital expected to be paying the bills later on.

As of this moment, we have a health insurance reform law that, as implimented, has outlawed about eight times as many existing health insurance policies in Florida alone than the government claims has been able to sign up for subsidized insurance plans via the health care websites across the entire country in three weeks time.

"Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state.  Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent."

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2013/October/21/cancellation-notices-health-insurance.aspx

I'd almost prefer a single payer system myself, over this BS, and that is probably the point of it all.

[Spendulus]

.....
As of this moment, we have a health insurance reform law that, as implimented, has outlawed about eight times as many existing health insurance policies in Florida alone than the government claims has been able to sign up for subsidized insurance plans via the health care websites across the entire country in three weeks time.

"Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state.  Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent."

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2013/October/21/cancellation-notices-health-insurance.aspx

I'd almost prefer a single payer system myself, over this BS, and that is probably the point of it all.

Also, 35 state ran high risk insurance pools, which directly insured the uninsurable with pre existing conditions, have  been terminated.  That's huge in terms of immediate negatives.

Yes, we are talking about something like the US Post office running health care, and this is going to be bad.

The thing is, you are not going to get single payer, because that would mean all those people and companies in the insurance business and associated industries would be out of work.  And that's huge.  You are not even going to get such a thing implemented over a ten year schedule.

Those were key supporters of this krony kapitalist ring of corruption.  It never was about actually supplying health care, it was about power and control and data.

[Lethn]

This is a problem that is to do with humanity, not ideologies or anything else, we have a very similar problem within the UK where there are a few out there lobbying constantly against the government to force everyone to buy car insurance at ridiculous prices and they all do the usual arguments of how it would mean everyone would go around uninsured and no one would be able to afford repairs etc. it's all lies.

I must be misunderstanding you.
It is already a requirement in the UK to have car insurance if driving on public roads.

You are misunderstanding me lobbying is present tense and current, they've succeeded yes but they still need to keep lobbying in order to maintain the monopoly on car insurance

My point is there are groups in our country as well as yours who keep flowing money into government to make sure that they control certain sectors of the economy and all that varies is which ones have successfully come under the control of special interests. They will use all kinds of bullshit arguments to try and scare everyone into thinking they need all of this.