The Pub Discussion Board

Christ, tehy will send drugs out under tested that are for erections, or pain relief, but are hyper protective of life saving drugs? The whole unit needs scrapping and all it's duties need to be placed under the Surgeoun Generals administration.

No kidding. Big "Bidness", as the say down here, will never let their claws out of something like the drug approval industry. Maybe a bunch of class action lawsuits will force them into some reform?(Sorry for the typing and spelling errors. I have a new born at home and get not enough sleep.)

well the fda give the drug companies a reason to charge what they do, bt your right eric (almost typed net lol) the drug companies HATE the fda

Yeah, but the FDA is staffed from, and funded by, the Drug Companies themselves. They pay a fee, but they also get a say in who sits on the board. The more you pay, the faster and easier you can slip a drug through like Vioxx or Chantix that do more harm than good. Now the biotech companies that are actually trying to do something good run into the big PharmCo's and can't get their treatments approved. If pfizer had that treatment, it would probably already be widely available, but since it is a smaller company, the FDA screwed everyone. Also, we have to cover big PharmCo's ad expenses telling which drugs we need to tell our Dr we need. That is even more assinine. And someone remind me later on to rant and Rave about the AMA.

They may get MORE health care, but I highly doubt they're getting better health care.

Yes.  The only thing worse than for-profit health care is.... non-profit health care.

Sure, they get "a" medication.  Do they have any chance of being certain that what is actually in the bottle is how its labeled?  No, they do not.  It has been PROVEN FACTUALLY that the drugs imported into the US from other countries often do not even contain the ingredients they are labeled with.  You think they're giving us the bad stuff while they give their people the good stuff?  Not likely.

Yes, our health care system sucks.  It's just the best one in the world, is all.  Sorry, but socializing medicine hasn't worked to the benefit of the patients anywhere it has been tried.  Doctors who are being paid the same as factory workers simply don't give enough of a damn about what they're doing.  Companies that won't make a profit off their product aren't likely to want to spend money inventing new products.

The thing you should all be screaming about is the stock market, actually.  Because once a company goes public, it is OBLIGATED ETHICALLY to make as high a profit as it can for its shareholders; they, after all, gave it the money to get started, and they are, in real terms, the owners of the company.  Only private companies can ethically decide to reduce profits to better serve their customers.

I don't actually see a way out of the mess our health care system has become.  Socialized medicine WILL NOT WORK.  It has never worked anywhere it's been tried; it is plagued with waiting lists for important surgeries, doctors who don't give a shit, and substandard care.  Our system works in a functional way, but is much too expensive for most people.  I know this firsthand, since LAoW and I have mounting medical bills we have almost no hope of paying off.

So, you can bitch and moan all you want, but unless you have a new solution, it's not going to do any good.

The problem with moving med companies off the market is... where are they supposed to get their capital from?  Drug research is highly speculative: there's no guarantee of if or when you will discover anything.  There aren't many people - even billionaires - willing to just throw money at the problem.

And I see no problem with the drug companies advertising, except for the fact that they have to spend an inordinate amount of money on it, thanks to the cable companies and the TV networks... (Don't even get me started on THOSE bastards...)  I'd much prefer to know what my options are than to have to take my doctor's word for it.  My doctor has often as not turned out to be a moron...