The Glade 4.0

In your example, the medical device that delivers the albuterol changed (e.g., different valve technology - see http://www.australianprescriber.com/magazine/22/6/138/9), which meant that the whole thing had to be approved by FDA and other regulatory agencies. As an asthmatic who just had to get a new albuterol inhaler, I feel your pain. I'm sure there was a lot of lobbying by Big Pharma to push the change for inhalers, because they got to generate new patents and new profits. So the research and submission costs paid off.

Anyway, some of the HFA inhalers came off patent in 2009-2010 in the US, but generics have not come out to replace them. It could be that there will not be enough profit in it. (The same reason that some medications have shortages - companies have stopped making them altogether.)

Reformulations of old medications also have to be approved. There are grandfathered medications out there that were never assessed for long-term safety, but these are now getting a new look under current standards to show safety & efficacy. Unfortunately, it sometimes means that we sometimes get crap like this, where a resulting new monopoly means increased prices:

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/ ... 78c22.html
http://scienceblogs.com/terrasig/2007/0 ... gets-toug/

Lastly, I also found this article in Forbes, which has a link to R&D spending over 10 years: http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherp ... -medicine/

_________________
When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

At the risk of derailing the thread, what is wrong with every major fast food chain company (except Yum brands), most major airlines, and many other places that you can only buy Coca Cola products.

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I'm okay with them harshly regulating a compound with which anyone can make meth.

Rori:

Coca Cola is awesome?

Aizle:

All snarkiness aside, my comments were primarily about Minnesota Public Radio and the amount of propaganda is distributes. That said, it has had a demonstrably negative impact on the political thinking in Minnesota.

Here are some big pharma figures: 75% of total big pharma profits are generated in the United States. We're currently subsidizing the entire global pharmaceutical industry. In the majority of the rest of the world, these companies are prohibited from selling their products for anything more than production costs. In some countries, they aren't even allowed to recoup labor or non-materiel costs in their pricing. As such, they have to make the money here or there is no progress to be made.

Don't worry, though, they are corporations and profits are all that matters. They are contractually obligated to provide positive returns for their shareholders, and shareholders by and large don't care about humanitarian endeavors. The process abstracts outcomes too much.

Likewise, the Affordable Care Act and other initiatives in place by our government have very little to do with improving positive outcomes: everything is too focused on the Almighty Dollar, and that Dollar is literally more than an exchange marker for commodified labor. Remember, human beings are fungible goods, but serfdom works just as well.

Complex situations are complex; this topic actually has to do with things like economies of scale, political economy, politics in general, globalist policy agendas, and domestic policy agendas. It's not as cut and dry as I'd really like it to be, but if you want the truth ...

Our government brokers our productivity against the rest of the world, and we're playing the price for it. We subsidize so much of the developed and developing world in non-obvious ways that its staggering. We've born the majority of Europe's defense costs for almost a century now; if we want to quibble, there's a case to be made since shortly before the Spanish-American War on that time frame. We bear the majority of global healthcare costs, and you'd be surprised who our largest ally is on that front (it's Catholic Church, and by you, I mean most people). Europe doesn't help near as much as it pretends to help. And, as much as it scares me, I'm quite afraid that our international obligations, because that's what we have made them, will bankrupt us long before our dysfunctional entitlement and social justice policies bankrupt us on the home-front.

The United States is a toxic country; it is not capable, without serious changes in outlook and behavior, of achieving the delusion it feeds its citizens. It is not a free country in most senses; and, effects it cannot achieve by legal means, it has started to achieve by social and other means. The more time passes, the more we look like Orwell's Burma.

Are pharmatechs giant, greedy, profit driven corporations? Sure. Left, primarily, to their own devices, they're still more effective and more efficient than our government.

The problems with our government have nothing to do with Right or Left, Red or Blue, Republican or Democrat, Moderate or Centrist or Fringe ...

Our government is stupid and the rest of the world laughs all the way to the bank.

_________________

The amounts needed to effectively make any amount of meth are prohibitively large.

_________________

Then keep it behind the counter. That's fine. Requiring me to enter my ID into a database because I might buy more than a 2 week supply like a criminal is a bit ridiculous. Its not like its stopped the influx of meth or usage thereof.


Technically, I can buy 12.5 24hr Claritin D's at a single purchase (they're 240mg). I am committing a felony if I attempt to purchase a month's supply for my allergies.

And yet... there's still a ton of meth around. Go figure. Another ineffectual law causing problems for legit consumers? Yeah.

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

Actually not. I'm of the opinion that regulation of business is required because businesses have proven, over and over and over and over for centuries that they are completely incapable of regulating themselves.

There is no imagination necessary Elmo. All that is required is the smallest amount of historical review.

Government is a business, Aizle. I find it sad that you don't apply your historical review to government or progressive politics, because progressive politics have always proven harmful to humanity; in fact, it's American progressive politics and propaganda that tells the world that social democrats are conservatives.

_________________

Aww Khross sprung the trap before I could.

*sulks and kicks the can down the road.*

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

The difference is that government here has regulation. It's called voters. The fact that many voters don't or are uneducated is a separate problem.

And people vote with their pocketbook and are only forced to by something from supposed evil corps when the Democrats make them

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Well, so much for that business venture :/

We're terrified of meth, but it's a problem that solves itself if we'd let it.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

With a cure, we can finally kill and eat Pamela Anderson!

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

I can disprove your assertion in 3 words: Affordable Care Act.

_________________

You're going to need to show your work on that one Khross.

The ACA was passed using the budget reconciliation process, not an actual vote. So, kindly tell me how we hold those who did not have to risk their seats to the fire for it? There's no accountability for our elected officials. Never mind all the public outcry right? Never mind all the glorious grassroots resistance to its implementation and passage by citizens of the United States.

We're saddled with a bill no one asked for and that Congress didn't read, and the House didn't actually hold a binding legislative vote on the bill we actually got.

So ...

I showed my word, the Affordable Care Act.

_________________

We hold them accountable during the election process. The fact is that we the people have received exactly the people that we voted for. If you don't like it, vote for (and convince enough other people to vote for) a better candidate.

There was a midterm election since the ACA was signed into law using a fraudulent mechanism. The ACA was upheld by a Supreme Court that allowed the DOJ Solicitor who presented arguments to the court to vote on her arguments as a Justice. And you lived in the state wherein Michelle Bachmann's approval rating is between 33% and 40% in her own districts, and yet she keeps getting re-elected. So, please, show me proof that elections hold our government accountable for actions.

Your tautologies won't win you this argument, because history have proven that elections do not check government. Should we start with some social democracy movements in the rest of the world, or are you going to continue to insist that elections substantively affect government behavior? They don't; after all, we went through 4 years of 3 Monkey Republicanism and 6 years of 3 Monkey Democrats only to find ...

Government is continuing along the same trajectory no matter how we vote. Elections are not a check on government, or the ACA would have been repealed.

_________________

That is not holding them accountable.

If a person who is on a 1 year contract at a job steals from company holding them accountable is not not renewing their contract for another year.

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

If McCain had won in '08, do you think the ACA would have passed in the first place?

*ETA: I'm not denying that there's a democratic deficit in our system of government. Some of that is by design and some of it is the result of party polarization, gerrymandering, anti-majoritarian legislative procedures, and a political culture shift toward a more imperial presidency. However, I think it's a huge overreach to claim that elections are irrelevant to the course of government. I would say that elections usually have an incremental effect on the course of government which adds up over time.

McCain didn't win, couldn't win, and wasn't going to win, mostly because the GOP didn't want to win. That said, of course it would have passed.

_________________

You're conflating doing something illegal with doing something you don't like.

Aizle:

He's really not. Replacing a legislator or executive does nothing to change the course of our government's plans or behavior. They government is an entity unto itself, regardless of the individuals that constitute its agents. The Bureaucracies that directly affect every day life are rarely affected in any mechanical or operating sense by a change in ruling party, change in representatives or senators, or president. When they are, it is because of individual actors increasing the fractious nature of the apparent political dilemma. The truth is, however, that the first legitimate shot in almost 150 years of changing how our elected officials behave is universally reviled ... the Tea Party populists.

_________________

Either the first part is complete bullshit, or the last sentence is utterly trivial. Fortunately, it's the former. Replacing legislators and executives changes government behavior on a regular basis.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."