It's Official - Reconciliation It Is (1 Viewer)

[DadsDream]

Speaking of Reconciliation, President Obama will pitch health care reform on Fox News tomorrow!

Yeah, he's been on Fox before. But this is the first time since the last round of finger pointing and namecalling between the White House and Fox.

FOX NEWS
March 16, 2010 | 1:25 PM ET
Submit Your Questions: Fox News’ Bret Baier to Interview President Obama

President Obama will be sitting down with Fox News’ Bret Baier for an exclusive one-on-one interview Wednesday.

Baier will talk to the president about the latest on Obama's top domestic priority, health care legislation, and also other issues facing the administration. This is Baier’s first interview with the president.

"Obviously they have a pretty big audience share and I think it's safe to say that - a lot of members that are undecided are going to be - they watch and their constituents watch this news, White House Press Secretary Gibbs said in response to a question by New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg.

- Continued -
http://whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com...ews’-bret-baier-to-interview-president-obama/

 

[N.O.Bronco]

To be perfectly honest - it wasnt directed at you -- but thank you - personally its not that important to me -- I dont like the bill for reasons that have little to do with whether conservatives or liberals like it - But to call this a bill that the democrats really are interested in working with republicans on is a little misleading no matter what those points are --

They were interested in so far as they felt they could gain support, thats why the dumped the public option and added 161 total GOP amendments to the Senate bill. There is nothing wrong with that. But what that led to was concessions to the republicans from all areas. The republicans got more than anything the democrats asked for in substantial bills from the past 6 years when they were in the minority.

To say that Democrats were enthusiastic about adopting republican amendments is probably more than wrong. But to say they werent interested in working with republicans is even more obnoxious considering they felt they NEEDED republicans to get over the filibuster and cover their backs.

 

[RazorOye]

Thats because they do. It was the deal with the devil so the Democrats could have an ally in this fight so they werent being hit from every angle by every player in the system that profits from this dysfunctional system. This bill will insure more Americans and increase coverages. Pharm industries stand to benefit heavily from that.

In a perfect world you would reform the pharm industry along with the rest of the system in a manner that would lower prices and regulate them tougher. That is something that was included in the 90s bill but is absent in the current proposal.

As it stands we can only hope that when this bill passes it wont be another 50 years til we see another meaningful reform to the system that will still have problems after this bill passes. And hopefully, in that reform, pharmaceutical reform is part of the language.

do you think that the insurance corps are more to blame than BigPharm?

I'm seriously curious...

As for as pharmaceutical reform... I am not holding my breath

 

[Galbreath34]

There's more than enough blame to go around before and after any bill, but BigPharm has to have the kind of clout that tobacco once had and is to me the 800 lb Gorilla. The insurance companies might be anywhere form a 250 lb to 750 lb Gorilla, but they can't catch up to BigPharm for the biggest slice of the pie.

 

[N.O.Bronco]

do you think that the insurance corps are more to blame than BigPharm?

I'm seriously curious...

As for as pharmaceutical reform... I am not holding my breath

Me personally I think you can make a good case for both. But I guess to me the insurance problems affects people in more ways. So if i had to choose which place to picket first, i'd probably go with the insurance industry.

But i'm open to waffling.

 

[RazorOye]

There's more than enough blame to go around before and after any bill, but BigPharm has to have the kind of clout that tobacco once had and is to me the 800 lb Gorilla. The insurance companies might be anywhere form a 250 lb to 750 lb Gorilla, but they can't catch up to BigPharm for the biggest slice of the pie.

that's where I am, personally - but I don't have data or arguments or facts to really back it up so I am hesitant to advance an argument

but I find it personally disgusting the nature to which that industry is so insulated, so protected

I read an article a while back that examined, briefly, the crisis that BigPharm is facing in terms of new drugs being improved, patents being granted, etc and that they are doing what they can to protect their industry and protect their investors. I don't know if the relative shelter they are enjoying wrt this bill is part of that or not.

But I am biased and very very suspicious of them and their causes and practices.

 

[Galbreath34]

Even more than high-quality high-price specialists our protected Pharm industry is usually bullet point number one for anyone that wants to trumpet our back-breakingly expensive medical costs compared to that demon "socialized medicine". If we treated our Pharmaceutical companies the way Germany, France, Sweden and the UK does theirs, we'd never have minoxidil or Viagra. We'd stifle innovation and key advances in drug therapy.

I'm just happy to be close enough to Canada that in a pinch I could go get a really expensive drug here cheaply in generic form there. Still, for my allergies & what not I pay over $400/month for 5 drugs (was just under half that when I was insured). Get past your 60s and you're a cash cow.

 

[RazorOye]

we'd never have minoxidil or Viagra. We'd stifle innovation and key advances in drug therapy.

is that certain, though?

I've read a few articles that talk about the heavy lifting (research and such) being done by universities and the NIH while the PharmaCorps usually purchase the patents on the compounds and then start the manufacturing - so I don't know to what extent pressing the pharmacorps would actually have on innovation and drug advances

 

[Galbreath34]

To be honest, I haven't done enough leg work to really wade into it in any intelligent way. I can only say that one of the standard straw men I see used for defending regulation or oversight especially regarding prices or weakening patent protection is that it would destroy the great free market that allows for great innovation because only heavy R & D investment and protection makes us the greatest drug manufacturing country in the universe, and only the promise of great rewards stimulates that behavior.

 

[N.O.Bronco]

To be honest, I haven't done enough leg work to really wade into it in any intelligent way. I can only say that one of the standard straw men I see used for defending regulation or oversight especially regarding prices or weakening patent protection is that it would destroy the great free market that allows for great innovation because only heavy R & D investment and protection makes us the greatest drug manufacturing country in the universe, and only the promise of great rewards stimulates that behavior.

Ill have to find it again, but there was a study commissioned that looked at the biggest drug breakthroughs of the last half century and needless to say the findings didnt quite paint the picture the talking points tell you about the private market being the primary reason for drug advances.

 

[N.O.Bronco]

Here it is:

Most of the pivotal research is not done by competitive private companies. In the last 50 years, out of the most pivotal drugs used and introduced to the healthcare system, in the case of 75% of those drugs, public funding was essential and instrumental for their development. Meaning that absent public funding those drugs would never have been developed or at the very least would have taken a much longer time to be brought to market.

http://opa.faseb.org/pdf/2008/nih_research_benefits.pdf



You also have these same companies spending nearly triple the amount on advertising and marketing instead of R&D. Making profits in excess of almost triple what they spend on R&D.

 

[Galbreath34]

What chaps me the most was the lifting of the ban on advertising drugs. The fact that you can advertise a "brand" of drug to drum up business is despicable. If your doctor has a reason to suggest that Lipitor has a particular indication that matches your history that seems better than a generic statin, fine. To run 60 second flashy ads telling you your doctor is holding out on you if he prescribes a generic is utterly disgusting to me. Over those two drugs actually I switched primary care providers because I had such a kickback-marketing-whatever-whore that he actually resisted the idea of switching me to a generic statin (and BTW, my LDL dropped significantly 6 months after switching to the "cheap crummy drug").

Of course, now it'd take 100 times the lobbying to pull the ads that it did to get them to open the pandora's box of pandering to patients directly for business. How about reducing costs by that ad budget hmm?