Politics thread (USA Elections 2016) - Page 174

On October 24 2019 07:43 Baalim wrote: And the price of insulin in any normal country with an insuline free market is under $10, the reason it costs $540 in the US is because of the pseudo-socialized healthcare system, if you want $10 insulin just extract the government's dirty hands out of the healthcare business, simple. Its crazy to me that you socialists use these examples as bad capitalism but its precisely government involvment (which you think its good) that causes these problems, you are ironically pointing out pitfalls of left leaning economy. If Sanders had his way, these 3 insulin manufacturers would give the same price to the US government and people would still pay $540 per vial, but they would pay it in taxes or deficit, there's no such thing as "free" anything that the government can provide, they can only pay for stuff with your own money and they are terribly wasteful at it.

the reason drugs are so expensive are because of intellectual property rights, which are laws made because corporations lobby the government to make these laws simply to make more money, -they justify it out saying it incentives research/they need to be paid for the research and development. For some reason you think corporations lobbying for IP laws is a 'pseudo socialist' healthcare system. For ideological reasons you frame it inversely, that the state are somehow forcing corporations into robbing the public. This makes less than zero sense. If the government simply paid for the research instead of granting monopoly rights with IP, then yes they would be very cheap.

Baal why do you keep saying it's more expensive to have universal healthcare
I don't understand?
What data are you comparing
The only major country without universal healthcare is the US
And they are at the top of spending as of % of gdp
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/...HEX.GD.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...x-Universal_Health_Care_july_2018.png

Seriously show me what data you are looking at
opinions are worthless here mine or yours, I'm just confused why you keep saying universal regulated healthcare is more expensive


And here you don't pay anything different between insurance companies
- it's always the same amount the state pays for you if you are on benefits, that you pay if you are self employed or without taxable income or that employer pays for you if you are employed.

And they just compete for the same mandatory pot.

Its contradictory, if it doesn't reach the cap then there is no need for a cap. The problem is that there are 3 big manufacturers with political influence, they can influence the negotations, put a high cap and sell it at the cap price. In a free market you don't get that problem, the insulin will be sold as cheaply as possible, no need for caps, no prone to corruption etc.

Just feels like you're misinformed about how the industry works, think the guys mentioned here

- there are certain drugs that are either under IP (or only a single company has the means to manufacture) as multiple people mentioned that people HAVE TO HAVE, they warp supply and demand as the demand is fixed.
Standard economic principles would work, but people will start dying or have less effective treatment, they can't start using anything else. Look up history of dialysis in the US for example.


- the US system has literally been killing people off, throwing them into debt and making people suffer, while being the most expensive in the world
- but everyone else on the planet benefited from it because of the super high R+D investments companies make, because the unique drugs can charge massive prices because of the warped economics + IP.
Imagine it as a total monopoly every time a unique drug people need hits the market - and the current IP protection is 20 years + you have to add an extra period where other companies need to roll out their products, fight the habits of medical staff used to recommending the drug before anything close to free market economics kick in

Of course the cap system etc. is vulnerable to lobbying, creates inefficiencies and is horrible for R+D.
It's also cheaper in the short run (and arguably more expensive long run as it snuffs investment into research), gives healthcare as human right and protects vulnerable people from the warped economics that will always happen when you have fixed demand.

I'm not saying which one is better, again as I can't know, it's pretty funny how shortsightedly black and white you guys think about complex issues like this one thinking you know the right answer.

All I did is look at actual released widely available data and try to interpret them

On October 25 2019 02:50 Stroggoz wrote: the reason drugs are so expensive are because of intellectual property rights, which are laws made because corporations lobby the government to make these laws simply to make more money, -they justify it out saying it incentives research/they need to be paid for the research and development. For some reason you think corporations lobbying for IP laws is a 'pseudo socialist' healthcare system. For ideological reasons you frame it inversely, that the state are somehow forcing corporations into robbing the public. This makes less than zero sense. If the government simply paid for the research instead of granting monopoly rights with IP, then yes they would be very cheap.

The patent for insuling expired long ago, they bribe through lobbying to game the system making small changes corrupting the patent system and they also play the FDA like a violin, patents require a precise sweet spot in time between profitability that justifies R&D without exploiting the public for too long, they don't work in a system where its easy to bribe the people who set these timeframes/rules.

I dont believe the state forces corporations to rob at all, I believe people will find any exploit they can to profit, goverment intervention in the market creates these opportunities, blaming greed is childish... give a random guy the keys to the bank and then act pikachu surprised face when they steal the money



PS will respond to Lemon tomorrow

lol well i just gave a simple solution to IP- for drugs, and things like textbooks, a very simple solution would be for the government to take away the patents and to pay for all the research and development that corporations do, or do it themselves.

You do realize that'd either bankrupt the government, put massive healthcare tax on everyone or cut out R+D expenditure severely right?
And that's BEFORE the massive inefficiencies government research creates

it's not that simple, the US R+D investment into healthcare is MASSIVE and amazing in the long run for everyone
You move it to model with caps and regulations, you stall that R+D

It's like reverse global warming - people in the US have been dying, suffering and going on debt NOW so future generations could live around the globe for many many years now. For that I am grateful

I'm basing that on the first chart I've seen, maybe I'm wrong, but this is always what I suspected - because of no caps and the way companies get to exploit drugs for so long they are willing to pump loads of money into saving lives etc. and if you take the long term view 100years from now all the treatments and drugs that are researched now will become generic anyways

Baal you can simply check the avg. spent per patient in USD for France,Sweden,Finland, Norway,Germany, Denmark and compare it to the US

Cliff notes:

all of the European ones are between 3 to 5k$ - the US is over 10k$


On the funny side, its also one of Ben Shapiro's favorite arguments to point out that the EU nations mostly spend around 4000$ per patient, but never ever mentions the numbers for the USA. His dishonesty is pathetic.

On October 25 2019 16:12 LemOn[5thF] wrote: You do realize that'd either bankrupt the government, put massive healthcare tax on everyone or cut out R+D expenditure severely right? And that's BEFORE the massive inefficiencies government research creates it's not that simple, the US R+D investment into healthcare is MASSIVE and amazing in the long run for everyone You move it to model with caps and regulations, you stall that R+D It's like reverse global warming - people in the US have been dying, suffering and going on debt NOW so future generations could live around the globe for many many years now. For that I am grateful I'm basing that on the first chart I've seen, maybe I'm wrong, but this is always what I suspected - because of no caps and the way companies get to exploit drugs for so long they are willing to pump loads of money into saving lives etc. and if you take the long term view 100years from now all the treatments and drugs that are researched now will become generic anyways

the amount in taxes is less than what people have to pay for 1000% price increase markups due to patents, that's the whole point, if the government grants research. I don't wan't to be ideological about this, im a leftist and part of what baal says is correct. Patents are government granted monopolies, an intervention in a free market. If we got rid of patents in the medical industry, some indian company could produce the medicine and sell it very cheaply, at market equilibrium prices of complete efficiency. but since companies operating in market equilibrium cannot make profits, they wouldnt be able to spend any money on research and development without going busto. So either the government would have to do the research or they would pay a company to do it. I don't really see any evidence for governments having huge innefficiencies in this, at least compared to what big businesses have. Imo they are the ones that should do the research since in the west they have much less corruption and inefficiency than corporations do, and they are more open to public scrutiny. and im sure many will laugh at that statement, even though it's clearly true.

Let's not celebrate america's great benevolence to the rest of the world, since it's almost non-existent. Without things like TRIPS, trade related intellectual property rights agreement, millions of people wouldnt have died from disease/illness. I don't think people realize how borderline genocidal patents have been in recent history.

On October 25 2019 11:53 Stroggoz wrote: lol well i just gave a simple solution to IP- for drugs, and things like textbooks, a very simple solution would be for the government to take away the patents and to pay for all the research and development that corporations do, or do it themselves.

Or simply overhaul the medical patent laws and it can even be specific to every important new drug.

For example you can get the cost of development (included failed drugs) then set a maximum price markup and then given how much the company spent on R&D thats how long the patent lasts to say you secure a 10x (or whatever is deemed reasonable) profit from the investment.

Calculating R&D costs won't be easy but it seems like a way better system thant he current one and the state run research you propose.

On October 25 2019 17:23 Spitfiree wrote: Baal you can simply check the avg. spent per patient in USD for France,Sweden,Finland, Norway,Germany, Denmark and compare it to the US

Come on guys read my posts...

I just told Drone that the cost doesn't seem to have a linear relation to free-socialized, that something in between could be even worse as we see in the US.

Free market healthcare is cheaper than socialized one, I dont need to post data, its economics 101, the state cannot produce cheaper soda than cocacola, (it can subsidize it to make it seem cheaper only) but the incentives of the free market make coke super-efficient because competition works in a survival of the fittest kind of way businesses, (that doesn't mean that everything is better done by private entities than the state, just more efficiently, efficiently =/= better).

The obvious big downside is that the people who can't afford it are left unprotected, so its a matter of is giving this people healthcare turning the healthcare market state run? I think its absolutely not, I think the overall price problems and inefficiencies of a state run helathcare system far outweights these and in the end it end up costing indirectly far more lives than it saves, the economy, every dollar has an impact in how many people die, a 1% rise on unemployment means like 30,000 more people will die that year, the economy isn't just about quality of lives, but lives themselves.

Also by having a cheaper healthcare system, less taxation and a better economy the % of the population who can't afford it is drastically diminished and that is still a problem that can be solved through charity institution like the red cross who would be a much bigger thing that it is today in a nanny-state world.

Time for some numbers about Chile:


Social mobility:


% of population that donates to charity:


% living in poverty


Wages


Gini coef







So Chile is the country with the least poors, less murders, better wages in latinamerica and has an avg Gini and Loco posts about the protests but doesn't mention shit when in in Bolivia a leftists illegally turns into a dictator by a clear electoral fraud and also brutalizes protesters, I wonder why?


FWIW I think the way the government handled this is immoral and also absolutely retarded

"I wonder why?" you say. Well, instead of jumping to accusations or conspiratorial thinking, how about the simplest explanation:

(1) I'm not obliged to talk about any other thing that happens in the world when I am talking about one thing. I can talk about the brutal repression in Chile and the fact that they are the #1 OECD nation with the worst wealth inequality post-tax, and I can counter to the pro-military propaganda that GoTunk shared without having to add anything else. The implication that I am not allowed to mention those things and that I should have connected them to what's happening in another country is called a red herring fallacy.

(2) I also wasn't aware of it at the time of your initial accusation, it had literally just happened. I only saw talk about the elections there on the next day. I don't talk about something. unless I have gotten some knowledge about it. I need time to learn about something. I can't pay attention to everything, so I don't talk about everything. So even if I was somehow "obliged" to logically connect Chile and Bolivia, I couldn't have possibly done it, unless I had lived in Bolivia and was aware of it on that day before international news picked it up.

Now, I don't owe you a response, and have zero interest in debating this or anything else with you. I'll simply say this on the election: there doesn't appear to be any credible evidence of "clear electoral fraud". When you make those claims you should be providing strong evidence, and you have provided nothing.

I don't get it Baal - what do you mean you don't need to post data - it's right there infront of you?
I show you global statistics on empirical evidence about how regulated universal healthcare is cheaper

And you just say no it isn't, that's economics 101 :D

yeah economic theory works so long as we arn't talking about the economy. check and mate

gg.
anyone one of you from the US not registering as dem and voting for Yang is a terrorist


EDIT: lol imagine 1k UBI/month + legal poker combo hahaha

On October 26 2019 06:01 LemOn[5thF] wrote: I don't get it Baal - what do you mean you don't need to post data - it's right there infront of you? I show you global statistics on empirical evidence about how regulated universal healthcare is cheaper And you just say no it isn't, that's economics 101 :D

Sigh... are you reading my posts? I've said twice that the coorelation between price and socialization isn't linear!.

You are comparing Europe to the US, the US doesn't have a free market healthcare system, its probably the heaviliest regulated healthcare market in the fucking world. In fact many drugs researched in the US are released years before in Europe, for example in the late 90s a heart medication was stuck in the typical FDA bullshit while it was sold in Europe for years, it is estimated that this alone had caused more deaths than all the potentially dangerous substances that weren't approved.

And yes its economics 101, or are you arguing that the state can produce at a lower cost than the free market? are you high?

On October 26 2019 05:24 Loco wrote: "I wonder why?" you say. Well, instead of jumping to accusations or conspiratorial thinking, how about the simplest explanation: (2) I also wasn't aware of it at the time of your initial accusation, it had literally just happened. I only saw talk about the elections there on the next day. I don't talk about something. unless I have gotten some knowledge about it. I need time to learn about something. I can't pay attention to everything, so I don't talk about everything. So even if I was somehow "obliged" to logically connect Chile and Bolivia, I couldn't have possibly done it, unless I had lived in Bolivia and was aware of it on that day before international news picked it up. Now, I don't owe you a response, and have zero interest in debating this or anything else with you. I'll simply say this on the election: there doesn't appear to be any credible evidence of "clear electoral fraud". When you make those claims you should be providing strong evidence, and you have provided nothing.

Loco: The reason I haven't criticized Evo Morales represion is because I didn't know about it

Also Loco: now that I know about it, let me defend this leftist dictator who also brutalizes protesters.

Chile, Venenzuela and Bolivia have virtually the same Gini you dumb cunt, except that the avg Chilean has way better living conditions.

You don't give a shit about inequality, environment, protesters or dictators, you only care about your leftist dogma, if they share it with you, you praise them if not, they are evil, you dont have the slightest shred of intellectual integrity.

what are the reasons why the state can never produce at a similarly low cost as the private sector?