Re: Sicko Video Released on Torrent...

In article <GEAdi.14914$RX.9015@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
<Hawki63@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Sean C" <redhawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:180620071420260498%redhawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Now, like most Canadians, I believe that our system is superior in
many respects to the U.S. system, but it is a system that staggers
under the burden of serious design flaws. Far from sharing Mr.
Romanow's complacency, I am deeply worried about the long-term
sustainability of our health care system, and I think that we have much
to learn from countries that ranked much higher than either Canada or
the U.S. in the World Health Organization rankings." In other words,
countries with *real* nationalized medicine, unlike Canada, which
consistently rank at the top. Canada is a predominantly privatized
system with public financing--arguably not the best solution.

yes I did...what I gather from that...CAnadians are NOT happy either...so
WHY are we continually using them as a system for us to emulate??


Very few people are completely happy with anything, let alone something
like medical care. We are not aiming for a perfect system, but simply
the system that utilizes resources the most efficiently and which
produces the best results using objective measures, and which is
feasible, given our political and economic realities. Differences in
patient satisfaction in surveys can be the result of differences in
culture: The French and Irish are far bigger complainers and more
likely to resist what they don't like than Americans are, for example.
Attitudes of satisfaction can also be influenced by propaganda. Many
Americans have been brainwashed into thinking we have the best system,
know nothing of other systems, and therefore, may feel that however bad
their care is, they are getting the best possible.

With the exception of non-profits, private companies usually need
profit to motivate them to produce, the question is: How much?
Pharmaceutical companies often make outrageous profit margins of as
high as *1000 percent* on some drugs (that wasn't a typo).

do more research...

pharmeceutical companies also LOSE money on the large majority of products
that never make it to market....

The price of failures is included in the cost of new drugs, as are all
other expenses and costs incurred by the pharmaceutical industry.
"Profit" is what is left after those costs have been deducted.

As for the cost of developing new drugs, while I don't doubt there are
*some* dugs that may cost $800 million or more to develop, based on the
drug industries own figures, included in a report by Public Citizen,
the *average* cost per new drug in the '90s was no more than $71
million, and possibly as low as $57 million, including the cost of
failures. The widely touted figure of $500 billion per drug in the
'90s--now inflated to $800 billion--is grossly overestimated and
includes among other things the "opportunity cost of capital," which is
not an actual cost but the amount of money theoretically lost by not
investing the capital in a better venture elsewhere. It excludes tax
deductions and government subsidies. Since there is no industry as
profitable as the pharmaceutical industry, it is hard to imagine that
money invested in it entails any opportunity cost at all.

http://www.citizen.org/print_article.cfm?ID=6538

to the profit of Wall Street Investment banks, which have profit
margins below 15 percent. Think about that. Do they really need to make
that much money? Could a CEO of a health insurance company maybe eke
out a living on slightly less than a $1.6 billion compensation package?
(That wasn't a typo, either).


that I believe is the issue...CEO of any "public interest" industry should
be making in the neighborhood of what CEO is other industries make

WHYYYYY do Americans continually ignore the outrageous salaries we allow our
"celebrities" to make??

do you think Brad Pitt or George Clooney or Michael Jordan or DR
Phil...should be making 5 million a year..or 15 million a picture??
yikes...where are our priorities??


Are you sure you're not a socialist in disguise? :) One of the primary
arguments used against the free market is that it does not allocate
resources efficiently in the economic sense. Thus we see baseball
players and movie starts being overpaid and professions that are
essential to our society, such as garbagemen and teachers, being
underpaid.

The reason George Clooney gets paid so much is simply supply and
demand. There is a limited supply of George Clooney, there is a huge
demand for him. This means he can charge a lot for his services, even
if they are not as intrinsically valuable to society as a teacher or
garbageman is. Any movie that has him in it can expect to rake in tens
if not hundreds of millions more than it would otherwise, so he is
worth the money, as far as it goes.

The argument those of us who favor the mixed economy would make is that
while the free market stimulates innovation and economic growth, it
does indeed fail to allocate resources efficiently (or fairly) by
funneling so much money to luxuries like movies, diamond rings and
inflated CEO salaries, and not enough into stuff we really need, like
better health care, living wage jobs or a renewable source of energy.
So the solution is to raise taxes on luxuries and George Clooney and
put some of that money into where it can do more good for society,
though it is of course naive to imagine that this money will be used
that way without strong democratic oversight, which we lack in this
country.

But if you favor laissez-faire capitalism, you have to accept that
George Clooney is a prime example of the free market at work and not
gripe about it. The only alternative is evil SOCIALISM and we don't
want that.

--Sean C
.

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