quote: For a variety of reasons, it's really hard for doctors to say no to patient requests, even when those requests are unreasonable, wrongheaded and potentially harmful.
For example, Zebley says that several times a week a patient comes in asking for a test that he is 99.99 percent sure would be a complete waste of time. But Zebley will almost always give the patient the test they request, even though he knows it will cost money and time. The main reason: malpractice.
There are three segments. I recommend listening to all three.
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: For those of you that want a single payer system, I would like to know why you personally believe that the government is the best entity suited to running health care. What has the government done in the past that makes you want to entrust your entire well being to their whim?
Didn't you ask this exact same question a couple pages back, and receive a perfectly satisfactory asnwer in terms of a list of govt programs that work very well?
Actually no. You have a choice to go to a National Park, to use interstate roads, or join the military. This is about removing the freedom of choosing your own healthcare and placing it squarely on the government. In some countries where single payer systems are active, it is often illegal to obtain private insurance in addition to the government provided healthcare.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I am more and more convinced that all the data in the world won't be enough to convince those that, in their hearts, really don't feel that other people are worth helping.
I'm willing to help people that are willing to help themselves. I'm not for a nanny state that provides cradle to grave benefits for everyone.
There are changes that need to be made. I don't think there is one person that believes that a terminally ill person should be dropped from their insurance plan. But just because some people can't afford it or have high health costs doesn't mean we should just scrap what we have and just trust that the government is going to take care of us.
Please stop acting like those that don't want a single payer system aren't compassionate and that you have the moral highground.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime. I'd like to give the man a fish once or twice until he is able to catch his own. You'd have everyone else fish and give him some of our catch until we as society decides he isn't worth feeding anymore.
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quote:In some countries where single payer systems are active, it is often illegal to obtain private insurance in addition to the government provided healthcare.
I'm not sure how this is relevant since no on that I'm aware of is proposing to make it illegal in the US to have private insurance or pay medical expenses out of pocket.
You haven't addressed my question about how you envision a system would work where people were not provided with health care unless they are able to pay for it. Under our current system, people get health care they can't afford to pay for all the time. It isn't practical to pay for urgently needed or emergency medical care in advance or check credit record before admitting a person to the hospital. It really isn't a simple problem and I would like you to address it.
Most of the people who declare bankruptcy because of huge medical bills aren't trying to defraud the system. They fully intended to pay their bills but due to a string of bad luck they can't. Is it any wonder that a person who's gone septic or had a heart attack will seek treatment before they go through all the calculations to figure out how they are going to pay for it? Would you want it any other way?
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: In some countries where single payer systems are active, it is often illegal to obtain private insurance in addition to the government provided healthcare.
Really? Such as?
I have relatives in several countries with single-payer systems, and I am unfamiliar with such laws. Of course, I don't claim to know all the countries with single-payer, so I'm curious which countries have this restriction. It's certainly not a part-and-parcel thing, in any case. So like Rabbit, I wonder why this is relevant. But I'm also curious what countries you are referring to.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I am more and more convinced that all the data in the world won't be enough to convince those that, in their hearts, really don't feel that other people are worth helping.
BINGO!
Eta: I honestly feel this is why conservatives think that socialized medicine or anything even remotely like it is all part of some liberal gambit to "control" people*. The idea that you would want people to have the chance to live better lives when you don't even know them, never mind that this would also help you in your own life, is right out as a possibility.
*But somehow fail to map that instinct onto their own political preferences to see if it holds up to the same sort of logic.
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quote:Eta: I honestly feel this is why conservatives think that socialized medicine or anything even remotely like it is all part of some liberal gambit to "control" people*. The idea that you would want people to have the chance to live better lives when you don't even know them, never mind that this would also help you in your own life, is right out as a possibility.
I think that is extremely unfair to a large number of conservatives.
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quote:In some countries where single payer systems are active, it is often illegal to obtain private insurance in addition to the government provided healthcare.
I'm not sure how this is relevant since no on that I'm aware of is proposing to make it illegal in the US to have private insurance or pay medical expenses out of pocket.
You haven't addressed my question about how you envision a system would work where people were not provided with health care unless they are able to pay for it. Under our current system, people get health care they can't afford to pay for all the time. It isn't practical to pay for urgently needed or emergency medical care in advance or check credit record before admitting a person to the hospital. It really isn't a simple problem and I would like you to address it.
Most of the people who declare bankruptcy because of huge medical bills aren't trying to defraud the system. They fully intended to pay their bills but due to a string of bad luck they can't. Is it any wonder that a person who's gone septic or had a heart attack will seek treatment before they go through all the calculations to figure out how they are going to pay for it? Would you want it any other way?
In 6 out of 10 provinces in Canada it is illegal to obtain private health insurance.
I understand that people have issues paying health insurance due to sickness Rabbit. The question is why? WHY are costs for health insurance so high? I know you want to blame the insurance companies. I'm sure they deserve some of the blame. When you look however at the amount of regulation that the insurance, pharmaseutical companies, and even doctors have to go through, is it any wonder it costs so much? You blame inurance companies for dropping coverage and thousands of people die. Well lets look at the FDA. Due to the 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendments, between 1963 and 1999, 4.7 million people died prematurely while the medicines that would have saved their lives were going through manded FCC testing. We saved a few thousand lives with the regulation while letting 4.7 million people die because the treatments that would have saved them were being regulated into oblivion.
And private insurance companies are the bad ones? In 2006 the FTC released a statement as follows:
quote:
For drugs entering human clinical trials for the first time between 1989 and 2002, the paper estimated the cost per new drug to be 868 million dollars. However, our estimates vary from around 500 million dollars to more than 2,000 million dollars [$2 billion], depending on the therapy or the developing firm.
So between half a billion to 2 billion dollars for one drug to go through the approval process. And you wonder why drugs cost so much?
The reason single payer systems operate at a lower cost is because it is a single entity that regulates itself. They make their own rules. If a private company did that you would be in an uproar. If the government does it you are all for it. I find it hard to comprehend. Part of the reason that we spend the most in healthcare is because of the regulation we currently have. The other reason we have highest spending on healthcare? Medical research.
I don't have a catch all solution for covering those that do not have healthcare. I think parts of the health care bill were positive in that it did away with lifetime maximums and covers pre-existing conditions. I don't agree with many other parts of it, but those two were a step in the right direction.
As I said before though. The discussion shouldn't be how to provide healthcare for everyone, but how to make it affordably available to everyone. There are ways to do that without a government take over of healthcare.
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Blayne Bradley
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Without those regulations what if the medicens that end up approved prematurely to make money end up killing 3.6 million people?
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Geraine, Drug companies are just as regulated in the EU and Canada as they are in the US (possibly more so) and yet they manage to sell drugs at a fraction of the US cost in those countries. It has some times been claimed that the US pays for development, but that simply isn't factually accurate. More drugs have been developed in Europe during the past few years than the US.
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Geraine, How much would you say that drug companies spend on marketing in relation to how much they spend on research? This is something that people always seem to mention in terms of drug company spending and you seem to be representing yourself as someone knowledgeable in this area.
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Insurance has also risen because of how much longer everyone is living. Yes you pay premiums longer, but the payout of the insurance is massively back-end loaded and goes on for much longer because of that pesky life expectancy rate.
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quote:Part of the reason that we spend the most in healthcare is because of the regulation we currently have. The other reason we have highest spending on healthcare? Medical research.
As I noted above, these factors do not explain the difference in medical cost between the US and other developed countries. The EU does an enormous amount of medical research. All those countries heavily regulate doctors and pharmaceutical companies. Despite the heavy regulation, pharmaceutical companies in the US are making enormous profits. It hardly appears that they are over burdened by government regulation.
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: In some countries where single payer systems are active, it is often illegal to obtain private insurance in addition to the government provided healthcare.
quote:Originally posted by Geraine: In 6 out of 10 provinces in Canada it is illegal to obtain private health insurance.
*looks at employee benefits booklet, sees coverage for extended healthcare benefits*
Yeah, I think you're jumping the gun a bit over there.
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Blayne Bradley
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"For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who—[63 pages of pure speech]—I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." —John Galt, Atlas Shrugged
This at its core is the GOP principle, never ever under any circumstances help people, but then forget that they are not to be helped in turn and end up using legislation to enrich themselves.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: "For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who—[63 pages of pure speech]—I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." —John Galt, Atlas Shrugged
This at its core is the GOP principle, never ever under any circumstances help people, but then forget that they are not to be helped in turn and end up using legislation to enrich themselves.
Yes, every single Republican I know subscribes to this and never, ever helps other people. Thank goodness you are shining a light on this.
Although to be fair, I once did see a conservative douse a burning homeless man so he could get near enough to light his cigar off of the embers. An exception, to be sure.
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Yes. Blayne exaggerates. On the other hand, we have an example right here who feels no moral obligation to help those less fortunate and another who believed he is capable of deciding who is worthy of help. At least on this topic, it is difficult for me to understand why conservatives are so afraid to believe the data in front of them.
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Blayne Bradley
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Because they think the evidence is liberally biased and that the solution is to completely remove all gov't regulation from the healthcare sector.
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Blayne, I suspect that is an oversimplification.
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Blayne Bradley
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Unfortunately it is not based on my experience on These boards that I was banned from for being "an arrogant liberal".
Reality has a left wing bias indeed, would explain why they are so out of touch with it.
I am 100% serious and that it is a widely accepted "FACT" to them that the answer is to remove all or remove the teeth from all regulation.
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime. I'd like to give the man a fish once or twice until he is able to catch his own. You'd have everyone else fish and give him some of our catch until we as society decides he isn't worth feeding anymore.
Yeah, when applied to the social healthcare debate, this becomes kind of ridiculous. It's like "cure a man's leukemia once and he doesn't have leukemia for .. a day? and .. teach a man to cure his own leukemia, and .. well, uh, they can .. um, .."
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Unfortunately it is not based on my experience on These boards that I was banned from for being "an arrogant liberal".
So you joined a site full of virulent right-wing islamophobes and armchair generalissimos and are using that experience to, essentially, summarize a much larger group?
Ask how many of the conservatives here, for instance, would even waste more than a glance on that site?
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Blayne Bradley
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Tbf I didn't know that much at first, I went in as I was invited by Stuart Slade (author of The Salvation War) and figured would be a great new experience to get to know conversatives who to all appearances were experts in their related fields, analysts, doctors, professional service members etc.
The ban came about rather rudely and suddenly (by Stuart Slade no less) when I complained that my honorable opponents arguments were fallacious.
Of course I must ask the question what do you mean or imply when you say I speak about a "much larger group" where precisely am I accusing conservatism as a whole as being virulent right wing islamophones?
I don't recall making that accusation myself though your observation of that site is hilariously accurate.
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quote:Eta: I honestly feel this is why conservatives think that socialized medicine or anything even remotely like it is all part of some liberal gambit to "control" people*. The idea that you would want people to have the chance to live better lives when you don't even know them, never mind that this would also help you in your own life, is right out as a possibility.
I think that is extremely unfair to a large number of conservatives.
Probably. However I would bet that those it does injustice to are the types who support essentially every tenet of socialized medicine when it is explained to them, and when it is not called "socialized medicine." Those people are just stupid, rather than heartless.
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There's a vast difference between sanctimoniously crying for everyone else to "do something" and stepping in to do (or pay for) something yourself.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: "For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who—[63 pages of pure speech]—I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." —John Galt, Atlas Shrugged
This at its core is the GOP principle, never ever under any circumstances help people, but then forget that they are not to be helped in turn and end up using legislation to enrich themselves.
Yes, every single Republican I know subscribes to this and never, ever helps other people. Thank goodness you are shining a light on this.
Although to be fair, I once did see a conservative douse a burning homeless man so he could get near enough to light his cigar off of the embers. An exception, to be sure.
Yeah, when I see homeless people on fire I usually pee on them.
But only if I'm having a hard time finding a public restroom.
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quote:Despite the heavy regulation, pharmaceutical companies in the US are making enormous profits. It hardly appears that they are over burdened by government regulation.
Receiving excessively high profits is a common symptom of regulation, not a sign of lack of regulation (typical profits in unregulated fields without natural barriers to entry tend to be at most two to four percent, long run). Many regulations take the form of rent-seeking, imposing barriers to entry in a market that current market participants are able to meet, but new market participants would find hard to meet. This creates an artificial oligopoly that raises prices (and profits) above what would normally be seen. There are numerous extant examples.
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Just when I thought John McCain couldn't be any more stubborn, he turns around and holds up the Military Suicide Prevention Bill - a bill meant to provide more resources for suicide prevention to Reserve members). According to McCain, having counselors check up on Reservists is "way overreaching."
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Fugu--Could there also be a faith component in these profits? I don't mean religious faith, but faith in the product.
Right now if a doctor prescribes a medicine I know that it is safe and beneficial. If we did not have the mandated research and testing that people are complaining of, I would not know the medicines would be effective, or even safe. As such I would not rely on them unless desperate.
Look at the state of pharmaceuticals from 100 years ago. Bringing a medicine to market was simple and cheap. You whipped up a batch of whatever in your bath-tub and sold it with any promise you can make. Then you walk away with the profits before the patient died or could sue.
Read "Road to Wellsville" as a good example.
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I think the biggest component contributing to excessive pharmaceutical profits is a body of regulation known as "patent law". Developing new drugs and testing them for adequate safety is going to be very expensive regardless of government involvement.
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there is also the issue of safety testing in general; regulations that mandate testing of drugs make them a very expensive affair in general, and more risky when dangerous drugs get pushed regardless and have to be taken off market.
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Yes, but given the alternative between a drug that had been tested for safety and efficacy and one that hadn't, which would you choose? How much would the price matter? This isn't simply an artificial barrier introduced by government regulations.
In fact, we currently have an entire class of "medicines" (i.e. nutricuticals) that are not required to pass the same FDA tests for efficacy and safety. The existence of this unregulated market does not seem pose any serious competition to the regulated pharmaceutical industry.
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quote:Fugu--Could there also be a faith component in these profits? I don't mean religious faith, but faith in the product.
Sure, that can be a source of partial monopoly power. In simpler terms, it is product differentiation.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Yes, but given the alternative between a drug that had been tested for safety and efficacy and one that hadn't, which would you choose?
I would take the tested route, knowing full well that government acting as an overarching regulator over pharmacological companies has been shown to be vastly superior as an option over getting rid of that and just largely expecting them to regulate themselves.
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quote:I would take the tested route, knowing full well that government acting as an overarching regulator over pharmacological companies has been shown to be vastly superior as an option over getting rid of that and just largely expecting them to regulate themselves.
While there are plenty of good arguments for your position, it has hardly been shown.
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the argument is generally that the businesses, operating on the rational self-interest of not wanting to sell a harmful product, would regulate themselves in order to maintain profitability. In the past few years alone, we've seen numerous examples of how that's nothing that can be used to guarantee even remotely that the major pharmas will not regularly knowingly push hazardous drugs to market and even try to conceal research showing their dangerousness, since there is so much already invested in the drug's research and development. The more passive the FDA is in circumstances like these, as they were for most of the Vioxx and Avandia debacles, the more damage is ultimately done.
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As I said. You've only argued that there would be more harmful drugs released without the FDA. I think that's definitely true. That's not conclusive at all. Some questions are, in a culture where there was no government authority telling people that drugs were regulated for safety, would people be more careful to watch for other consumers' experience with drugs and the certification of consumer-run watchdogs? Would the lives saved and improved of effective drugs' earlier release on the market be greater than the harm caused by the increase in less-checked drugs?
As I said, not shown at all, not even close.
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quote: in a culture where there was no government authority telling people that drugs were regulated for safety, would people be more careful to watch for other consumers' experience with drugs and the certification of consumer-run watchdogs?
given the experiences of the culture of unregulated 'supplements' and complete hogwash like Zicam and the popularity of homeopathy and alternate medicines that are provided to us, the answer doesn't look good.
quote:Would the lives saved and improved of effective drugs' earlier release on the market be greater than the harm caused by the increase in less-checked drugs?
No, because we would be awash in the claims of snake-oil salesmen and the malleability of our medical institutions. More people would come to harm merely out of the fact that the number of people who were bypassing effective treatments for well-marketed but useless alternatives, who now don't even have to mention on their labeling that their claims aren't certified by the FDA.
If people weren't so depressingly gullible when it comes to the promise of medication — and if we didn't have a profound history of that, continuing to this day in countries like China and Germany — I wouldn't personally find it so obvious.
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quote:Given the experiences of the culture of unregulated 'supplements' and complete hogwash like Zicam and the popularity of homeopathy and alternate medicines that are provided to us, the answer doesn't look good.
Yup. This is why I mentioned nutriceuticals earlier. There is plenty of evidence that market forces are ineffective at reducing the number of ineffective and even dangers treatments on the market. Even minor changes to the FDA which made it more closely linked to the pharmeceutical companies have resulted in more dangerous medicines being released.
Furthermore, most of time it takes to get a drug approved is time spent actually doing clinical trials and other needed testing so it is highly unlikely that a company could get a properly tested drug to market significantly faster in the absence of any regulation. Without those tests, a company can not know whether they are marketing a beneficial medicine or harmful snake oil. Even if we could rely on companies to police themselves (which is laughable given the past 5 years), there is no reason to believe it would significantly reduce the cost needed to bring a proven safe reliable drug to market.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: As I said. You've only argued that there would be more harmful drugs released without the FDA. I think that's definitely true. That's not conclusive at all. Some questions are, in a culture where there was no government authority telling people that drugs were regulated for safety, would people be more careful to watch for other consumers' experience with drugs and the certification of consumer-run watchdogs? Would the lives saved and improved of effective drugs' earlier release on the market be greater than the harm caused by the increase in less-checked drugs?
As I said, not shown at all, not even close.
The wonderful think about being a free market advocate is that since no truly free market has every existed, you can claim they have any magical property you desire and no evidence will ever be able to prove you wrong.
When freeing up markets has the effect you predict, you can claim that as proof of principle. When it does not, you can always argue the market just wasn't free enough. It's like a free license to cherry pick the data.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: When freeing up markets has the effect you predict, you can claim that as proof of principle. When it does not, you can always argue the market just wasn't free enough. It's like a free license to cherry pick the data.
Hm. Ironically, the industrialization eras / gilded age being a perfect example of this. It just wasn't free enough, the argument goes, robber barons were a product of government, and no harmful natural monopoly exists etc etc etc
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quote:given the experiences of the culture of unregulated 'supplements' and complete hogwash like Zicam and the popularity of homeopathy and alternate medicines that are provided to us, the answer doesn't look good.
Eh, while they're big business, and some harm is done, the harm is ultimately small potatoes compared to many other harms in the world. For instance, we can fairly easily measure the number of lives that would have been saved or vastly improved had certain ground-breaking medicines been available sooner, and the numbers get up into the tens, maybe hundreds, of millions. How many are being killed by your examples?
Also, keep in mind that the nonexistence of pre-approval doesn't mean there wouldn't be strong anti-fraud laws. Claiming unfounded effects would still be illegal (or maybe even more illegal), for instance.
quote:The wonderful think about being a free market advocate is that since no truly free market has every existed, you can claim they have any magical property you desire and no evidence will ever be able to prove you wrong.
When freeing up markets has the effect you predict, you can claim that as proof of principle. When it does not, you can always argue the market just wasn't free enough. It's like a free license to cherry pick the data.
Since I'm 1) a strong advocate of many kinds of regulation, such as the aforementioned anti-fraud regulation, as a way to help the existence of a free market (which I have repeatedly made clear I do not view as a lack of government regulation; I've come out in favor of carbon restrictions, universal health care, guaranteed minimum income, and more that you'd be hard-put to shoehorn into a radical free market position, so maybe you should listen a bit instead of doing that), 2) not particularly arguing anything other than that the situation is not nearly so clear-cut as has been asserted, 3) giving some simple questions that have been at best poorly answered, here and in research on the question, I think it makes sense to stop and think instead of engaging in kneejerk positions that are founded on disliking things rather than analyzing them.
quote:Hm. Ironically, the industrialization eras / gilded age being a perfect example of this. It just wasn't free enough, the argument goes, robber barons were a product of government, and no harmful natural monopoly exists etc etc etc
You'll never see me arguing that, and anyone who's read my posts and has the least bit of intellectual honesty will recognize that my positions are nothing like that. (And I'm not even sure if my position is for or against regimes like our current one; but I'm able to see the downsides of the current system, and be unsure as to whether the upsides are superior, instead of claiming based on very weak argumentation that the case is closed).
quote:Wasn't the industrial revolution pretty free, and didn't it suck?
Yes and no, and yes and no. Even as we look at many of the side effects of the industrial revolution negatively, such as the atrocious factory conditions, the net effect on quality of life of those factory conditions was pretty definitely positive -- life expectancy shot up dramatically during that period. Many of the things that were tied up in the industrial revolution involved things no free market advocate would countenance, especially fairly extreme coercion. Other things were just things that happened, such as handling carcinogens to paint watch dials. Now we look at the factories and see death traps with insane hours. Most people at the time of the industrial revolution saw jobs with reduced hours, better pay, opportunity for advancement, and demanded more and more. The tricky bit that most people have a problem with is, you don't have to reject one perspective to accept the other.
quote:When freeing up markets has the effect you predict, you can claim that as proof of principle. When it does not, you can always argue the market just wasn't free enough. It's like a free license to cherry pick the data.
Except for, you know, all the times I talk about how there are market failures that need to be handled by the government changing the regulatory structure (establishing limits on carbon output, putting huge populations into single health insurance groups and eliminating pre-existing condition clauses, handing large sums of money to poor people that have been taxed from richer people to reduce human misery and suffering, you get the idea).
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fugu, I'm sorry that post should not have been directed at you. You are not a free market fundamentalist, that is someone who has a unflagging faith in that the free market would solve all problem even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary.
The problem is that I've heard so much total nonsense from libertarian, tea-party style free market fundamentalism over the past few months, I've developed an reflex response to any mention of the virtues of the free market.
Once again, I'm sorry you were the one I hit with it. Although I disagree with your economic philosophy, you are not a free market fundamentalist and did not deserve to be called one.
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quote:Claiming unfounded effects would still be illegal (or maybe even more illegal), for instance.
Walk into a Pharmaca someday and read the labels and the claims on average naturopathic, herbal, and homeopathic medicines. Look at various 'alternate remedy.' Find a scanned picture of Zicam's packaging. Read the label information for HeadOn, which is a stick of wax that gullible people rub on their foreheads to alleviate headache pain. In the millions. Take a look at how many unfounded effects you can claim right now. None of it is illegal!
besides, why make unfounded claims? Just do what Merck had happen with rofecoxib, and what glaxo has done with multiple new drugs: block publication of critical findings during the testing phase and augment those that appear to show no danger. In fact, just run internal tests and cherrypick if there's no real requirement towards regulation and more open testing.
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quote:The problem is that I've heard so much total nonsense from libertarian, tea-party style free market fundamentalism over the past few months, I've developed an reflex response to any mention of the virtues of the free market.
Fair enough . While we approach things from different angles, I suspect we'd be able to agree on a lot of solutions.
quote:Walk into a Pharmaca someday and read the labels and the claims on average naturopathic, herbal, and homeopathic medicines. Look at various 'alternate remedy.' Find a scanned picture of Zicam's packaging. Read the label information for HeadOn, which is a stick of wax that gullible people rub on their foreheads to alleviate headache pain. In the millions. Take a look at how many unfounded effects you can claim right now. None of it is illegal!
besides, why make unfounded claims? Just do what Merck had happen with rofecoxib, and what glaxo has done with multiple new drugs: block publication of critical findings during the testing phase and augment those that appear to show no danger. In fact, just run internal tests and cherrypick if there's no real requirement towards regulation and more open testing.
Yes, yes, all this occurs now, and would probably occur more if there was no pre-approval of drugs. However, that is a far cry from showing that the negative effects (which you still haven't provided a measure of currently) would outweigh the positive effects (which would be demonstrably huge, from even just a few of the most helpful drugs reaching market sooner).
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So we've got the whole thing that there would be more harmful drugs released without the fda; the note that there would be more manipulation of research data by drug manufacturers and anyone they could bribe (thus resulting to a lack of ability for independent consumer advocates to have availability to a culture of independent research that accurately indicates harm of a drug), and we've both noted that okay, yes, there's a huge amount of gullibility and (essentially) fraudulent claims in the existing market for people taking drugs. I mean, removing government regulation of drugs would create a vastly greater degree of susceptibility to false claims and a diminishment of public faith in pharmaceuticals versus snake oil. Personally, do you think that we would be better off without an FDA for drugs? Why or why not?
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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. While we approach things from different angles, I suspect we'd be able to agree on a lot of solutions.
