Impossible to tell isn’t it.
How many are Tory stooges. How many are Putin Bots…
The problem, to my mind, isn’t so much the level of antisemitism, its the level of denial within the leadership.
As it is to any sane mind. Another indication of his weak / non-existent leadership and a perfect example of, however much you may want it he, in particular, and hence Labour are unelectable.
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Your.
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Did you read the last line, at all ?
Yer
Maw.
Toolbox.
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My wife works with pharma both here and in the US and I put this to her, her take
Medicine costs money, here we pay higher taxes and expect a good free health provision. In the US they expect to pay less tax and have to pay for their health care as a result
Despite the increased tax there’s a cost to us, we miss out on a good deal of the available treatments because our health service isn’t prepared to pay for them. Some may be rubbish however many offer a great deal of benefit.
In the US they get 100% of available treatments. Most good jobs come with comprehensive healthcare plans that do cover all costs and all the treatments are available. Outside of workplace the healthcare cover is available but it’s expensive, you pays your money you take your chance (and you paid less tax)
For every new drug that comes to market that company has likely had as many duds that looked good and went through the process costing $100 millions to bring to market before being canned. The one that makes it likely cost into the billions before it’s licensed. The patent for the compound is granted at the start of the process meaning by the time something comes to market there’s usually less than 10 years before the generics can copy. The pharma company therefore has only a few years to make a profit and cover the cost of the failures.
It doesn’t excuse the fact there are many examples of shitty behaviour in pharma and medicine but that’s the model we use to bring medicines to market and a broad example of why new medicines are expensive (as I understand it).
It costs money and somewhere along the line we all pay for it
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Thanks for the post.
I used to work for a couple of US companies and, ironically, my last company changed their healthcare plan to drop family members off it due to the cost and therefore it only applied to the employee.
Working at Ford for many years (as a contractor) I know their healthcare plan in the US covered paying medicine costs to employees in to retirement and was costing huge amounts of money, but this was something that the unions fought for, as far as I was aware and not down to the good nature of the corporations.
Of course there was nothing corrupt about any of the unions (ahem)
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This is true. However it omits quite a few critical practical differences.
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How effective the risk-spreading is. A state-run healthcare system is essentially insurance (national insurance), insurance being what we take out to spread otherwise potentially catastrophic risk. In a state scheme there tends to be little discrimination so all the risks are covered and they’re very widely spread. Everyone is in the scheme and everyone pays their fair share (‘fair’ being decided by the details of the tax system). In a private system the insurers’ interests, as is the case with any business, are primarily the interests of the shareholders, and secondarily (not unimportantly, but still secondarily) the interests of the customers. This is what leads to people with pre-existing conditions, or with expensive ones, or who are at higher risk (like being poor, or having the wrong genes, or having the ‘wrong’ behaviours) being excluded from cover. I lived in the US as a pre-existing type 1 diabetic. I learned how this works. Private insurers don’t pay for your healthcare out of altruism. There could be an upside to this. Fear of being shut out could make people look after themselves better. But there are lots of people in the US who don’t, so it’s clearly not what always happens.
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How much of the funding is diverted away from making sick people well and towards making rich shareholders richer. This is just the really basic ‘slices of the pie’ point.
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The economic pressure on the medics to over-treat or to offer treatments which are expensive rather than just effective. Mrs VB and I go to the same dentists’ practice. For one reason and another I’m an NHS patient and she’s private. Boy do the same people faff around in her mouth a great deal more than they do in mine.
There are probably half a dozen more examples of the differences. The US is spending a great deal more on healthcare than anyone else and it’s not just because they’re a great deal sicker to begin with or because their health is, as a consequence, a great deal better than everyone else’s.
VB
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Last time I looked the costs boiled down to £3.5k/person in the UK and double that in the US with 40 million people not receiving health care.
Fuck that system.
Assuming (for ease) the cost of care is the same, that difference is the profit for the healthcare firms. They are some of the most profitable firms in the world…
Off on a tangent but have you seen the adverts for 23andme who are now providing medical reports based on genetic markers to identify if you are a carrier of certain health conditions, whether you are a high risk for diseases or even your general health risk.
Could you imagine if the health insurers got access to that database what would happen to peoples insurance then.
Ah too late, looks like it has already started…
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In the USA big pharma spends more on marketing than they do on R&D.
I agree that medicine is expensive to make, but the prices charged have no relationship with the cost of development.
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The issue is extortion of seriously ill people. This kind of thing
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Isn’t he now doing serious time?
Yes but for securities Fraud…Lovely guy
Managed 6 minutes before switching it off.
Guy comes across as a bitter and twisted narcissist or generally just a cunt.
Cunt is a laughable understatement.
Thiola price hike controversy
In May 2014, Shkreli had difficulty accessing public markets for capital, but received a $4 million series A funding round and a PIPE deal valued at $10 million underwritten by Roth Capital Partners.[47] After obtaining the financing, Shkreli was able to acquire rights to market tiopronin (brand name, Thiola), a drug used to treat the rare disease cystinuria and Chenodal and subsequently raise the price of each drug substantially, with Thiola subsequently being marked up about 20 fold, from $1.50 to $30 per pill (patients must take 10 to 15 pills a day),[48][49] and Chenodal about fivefold.[ citation needed ] Retrophin did not lower the price of these drugs after Shkreli’s departure.[50]
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