Thanks M2K for that list of things in the bill. I know i've seen something similar but couldn't find it. Im sharing that with some of my co-workers. It's eye openeing for most of em.

I may not always agree with the way you present your thoughts, But I do appreciate your insight and the homework you put into your posts.

Here is the problem, the bill DOES have some good points... but it also has some VERY bad points as well. LIAB sees some good which signals change and the rest of us see us giving up rights and these good things put into a very bad structure. I personally don't think giving up what the bill will require us is worth the positives it DOES bring.

It begs the question, why can't we have an ALL positive bill?

I see a bill that causes the hire of tens of thousands of additional IRS auditors, and immediately I see waste and unnecessary govt. spending.

i see a government that has a proven track record for failure in managing anything to do with our money, except spending. Now they've proven they won't even listen to the people that put them in office, and you want me to believe that they're gonna do better now? Bull crap it's time for a political revolution.

Remove the traitors that have done this to the American people, and send the foreign born "Fearless Organizer" packing with an impeachment. This is ridiculous, wake up America!

I'm with you on this one, for sure. It is my plan to find out exactly how the politicians voted on this bill, and make sure to tell EVERYONE I possibly can to vote against them in the coming elections. Any one of these idiots who caved, put in pork, brokered a side deal, or generally ignored the will of The People needs to be sent a vicious message....

GET THE HELL OUT!!! DON'T COME BACK!! PRAY I DON'T FIND YOU!!!

Well said..

and when exactly was the last bill that was all positive???


It kind of reminds me of this old saying "You can't please everyone" (especially 300 million everyones)

While you "can't please everyone" it is amazing that legislation does in fact get passed in Congress where EVERYONE (or damn near everyone) would agree that shouldn't be so. The cornhusker kickback, lousiana purchase, (and unrelated "the bridge to no where") etc. would have lost a general election by some 90%, yet it is still in there... That should never happen.

Im with you on this one. from now on I vote incumbent only. Time for some REAL change...not the imaginary kind.

Er, how is voting for the person already in office going to change anything? Not understanding this....

I haven't really said anything on this, as I've been reading and trying to understand more about the details. But one thing I've heard here and other places that really bothers me is this notion that pharmaceutical companies should have their profits limited. What most everyone is failing to realize is that these companies spend millions, and sometimes billions of dollars in R&D for new drugs, when the vast majority don't make it through all the testing, and even then sometimes drugs that pass testing don't make it through FDA approval. I believe it was 2008 that there were no new drugs approved by the FDA.

The background on this is that I'm currently in the MBA program at Duke, and we have one of, if not the best Health Sector Management programs in the country. We talk about health care companies all the time. Many of the pharma companies come here to recruit, and their financial data is provided so people can see how much they actually spend. The ones that do make big profits are when they hit on a really successful drug. Just like any other company that creates a successful product and receives the spoils of "victory".

The reason why this is all relevant is that pharma and health care companies in particular are going to have their profits reduced by the new health care bill. Just yesterday the Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that the goal is to reduce drug company profits by $90B over the lifetime of the bill! That's huge. Start taking away that money, I can virtually guarantee that companies will not have the money to invest in R&D and we'll see fewer and fewer new drugs coming to market. This is a real loss for all of us. Modern medicine is poised to make some pretty big jumps, as more and more is understood about the human genome. We are not too far removed from conceivably being able to have medicines prescribed to us that are linked with out specific genomic sequence, and can thus more directly fight our health issues. But if you cut back on the profits for these companies, they won't have the money to invest in the literally thousands of trials and failures it takes to find the ones that do work. It's a sad state of affairs that so many seem to be unable or unwilling to think about things and instead just demonize the pharma industry as the "bad guys".

LIAB, here's a question for you: If this healthcare bill was so good, why did Congress exempt themselves and their staff from having to participate? Makes you wonder, huh?

The pharma industry only has high profits because of government protection via the FDA. The FDA is not the enemy, but rather the ally of big pharma, because it significantly reduces competition.

You already alluded to this, but to get a drug past the FDA, you have to spend millions of dollars and years/decades in testing. This actually helps the companies because it limits the amount of potential drug companies that can enter the market.

These artificial barriers to entry (FDA testing) create an oligopoly in the pharma industry which profits are higher than they should be and the consumer gets screwed over.

Get rid of the FDA, drug prices will fall, profits will fall, more companies will enter the market and newer and better drugs will appear.

The retort to this line of reasoning goes something like: "But wait Blueskies! Many people will die without the FDA keeping our drugs safe!"

Not true. The companies themselves would have incentive to keep their drugs safe, because if they released an unsafe drug, no would ever purchase anything from them again, and they'd go under. Additionally, the FDA's delaying of drugs causes the deats of millions of people who needed the drugs to live.

From what I've heard, pharma piggybacks on university research and then sweeps in and takes over when there's a sure-fire money winner.

See: pet food scandal. Apparently the incentive for short-term profit overrides the incentive for long-term reputation, with occasionally disastrous results. Friedman's gang never seems to get that.