Report Says Medicare to Go Broke by 2019

[Tony]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040323/D81G7NOG0.html ...full article



WASHINGTON (AP) - Medicare will have to begin dipping into its trust fund this year to keep up with expenditures and will go broke by 2019 without changes in a program that is swelling because of rising health costs, trustees reported Tuesday.

Social Security's finances showed little change, and its projected insolvency date remained 2042.

The deteriorating financial picture for the health care program for older and disabled Americans is a result, in part, of the new Medicare prescription drug law that will swell costs by more than $500 billion over 10 years, according to the annual report by government trustees.



Now all I have to do is wait for people to demand that the government be given more power to correct a mess that it created in the first place.

[Tmy]

Look agian. Its the damn drug costs that are breaking the bank. Thats an easy fix, cept the drug company lobbists have Congress in their back pockets.

Why do you think people are getting drugs from Canada?? THey cost 1/2 as much up there.. Its such a scam..

Dont believe the "research costs" hype. THey spend more in marketing than in research.

It boils my blood dammitt.........wheres my high blood pressure pills!!!

[Tony]

Originally posted by Tmy
Look agian. Its the damn drug costs that are breaking the bank. Thats an easy fix, cept the drug company lobbists have Congress in their back pockets.



Do you have proof of this? I doubt it is so simple, although I'd like it to be.

[Charlie Monoxide]

Originally posted by Tmy
Look agian. Its the damn drug costs that are breaking the bank. Thats an easy fix, cept the drug company lobbists have Congress in their back pockets.

Why do you think people are getting drugs from Canada?? THey cost 1/2 as much up there.. Its such a scam..

Dont believe the "research costs" hype. THey spend more in marketing than in research.

It boils my blood dammitt.........wheres my high blood pressure pills!!!
The truly sad thing is that the drug companies are charging us for their marketing costs, namely those Lipitor, Viagara, and Nexium ads that inundate the newscats.

Charlie (hmmm, I meant "newscasts" but "newscats" works better) Monoxide

[Tmy]

Originally posted by Tony



Do you have proof of this? I doubt it is so simple, although I'd like it to be.

How hard woudl it be for the Feds to control drug prices??? I readthatthe drug co's charge difft amounts in difft countries by using some poverty formula.

Even wh/o using govt power Medicare should be able to score good prices based on the volume of people they cover. Many states are doing this now, negotiating favorable prices for your more common drugs.

[Tony]

Originally posted by Tmy


How hard woudl it be for the Feds to control drug prices??? I readthatthe drug co's charge difft amounts in difft countries by using some poverty formula.

Even wh/o using govt power Medicare should be able to score good prices based on the volume of people they cover. Many states are doing this now, negotiating favorable prices for your more common drugs.

So I take it you have no evidence?

[Tmy]

Ive read articles here n there about the new med plan being a boon to drug compainies when it fully kicks in. Seen a news stories on the subject.

I dont have any links if thats what your askin.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Tmy
Why do you think people are getting drugs from Canada?? THey cost 1/2 as much up there.. Its such a scam..

Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that the Canadian government put a price cap on drugs, now, could it?

Dont believe the "research costs" hype.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/01/business/01DRUG.html?ex=1080190800&en=9a8c9d04c99e97ba&ei=5070

A new round in the national debate over prescription drugs opened today with a study from researchers at Tufts University estimating that the average cost of developing a new drug has more than doubled since 1987, to $802 million.

Dr. Kenneth I. Kaitin, director of the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, which issued the report, said, "Bringing new drugs to market has always been an expensive, high-risk proposition, and our latest analysis indicates that costs have continued to skyrocket."

Dr. Joseph A. DiMasi, the principal author of the study, attributed much of the increase in the cost of drug development, beyond inflation, to the rising costs of testing new drugs in humans.

The Tufts researchers said it cost an average of $231 million to develop a new drug in 1987. If the cost had risen at the pace of inflation, they said, it would have reached $318 million in 2000.

Typically, the researchers said, the cost of developing new drugs is spread over 10 to 15 years. On the average, Dr. DiMasi said, 12 years elapse from the time a new chemical compound is synthesized until it is approved by the government for marketing in the United States.

The Tufts study included the costs of developing and testing drugs that never reached the market. The number of such drugs far exceeds the number approved for sale. Dr. DiMasi said the study also included some of the cost of capital — what could have been earned if investors had put their money in securities of equal risk, rather than in pharmaceutical research and development.

So it's not just the cost of the individual drugs; they also have to make back the costs of the drugs they developed that the government won't let them sell.

THey spend more in marketing than in research.

Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that they need to market that much in order to have enough sales to offset the amount they spent in R&D, now, could it?

[Tony]

Why has the cost of R&D gone up so much over the last 15 years?

[Mr Manifesto]

Originally posted by Tony
Why has the cost of R&D gone up so much over the last 15 years?

Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Looking God in the Eye"

From the video game, "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri".

[shanek]

Originally posted by Tony
Why has the cost of R&D gone up so much over the last 15 years?

Simple: more government regulations. They stopped or at least severely restricted consideration of tests performed in other countries, they've added on all sorts of other requirements, all of this stuff takes time and costs money. So not only do they have the costs of additional testing, they also have to wait longer for the drug to come to market so they can recoup the costs in just the few short years left until the patent runs out. And, as I mentioned above, they also have to recover the costs spent on drugs that aren't approved; that just goes up as new requirements and restrictions are added because more drugs end up not getting approval.

Government regulations are exactly what's killing health care across the board in this country, stifling innovation, and sending prices through the stratosphere.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Mr Manifesto
From the video game, "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri".

What you're ignoring is that each step of technologial process generally makes the production costs fall instead of rise. Look at the computer industry; with almost no government regulation, computers are becoming more and more powerful at lower and lower prices. That technology, too, follows the iterative process you mentioned; yet costs across the board (no pun intended) are going down, not up.

[Mr Manifesto]

Originally posted by shanek


Simple: more government regulations. They stopped or at least severely restricted consideration of tests performed in other countries, they've added on all sorts of other requirements, all of this stuff takes time and costs money. So not only do they have the costs of additional testing, they also have to wait longer for the drug to come to market so they can recoup the costs in just the few short years left until the patent runs out. And, as I mentioned above, they also have to recover the costs spent on drugs that aren't approved; that just goes up as new requirements and restrictions are added because more drugs end up not getting approval.

Government regulations are exactly what's killing health care across the board in this country, stifling innovation, and sending prices through the stratosphere.

Good Lord, you mean someone tries to make sure the drugs are safe before they're allowed on the market? :eek:

[Tmy]

Drug compaines marketing staff has jumped 59% while R+D staff has shrunk 2% sicne 95.

They also dont have to reveal marketing costs although therer are bills right now trying to get this info our of them. http://rxpolicy.com/studies/bu-rxpromotion-v-randd.pdf


These compaines were all over the superbowl! You know how much taht costs alone for those commericals. To sell a product that you can even buy wh/o a doctors permission..

These guys are legal drug dealers and they are trying to turnus allint addiicts. Funny thing is that illegal drugs are cheaper to get.

[Tony]

Originally posted by Tmy
Funny thing is that illegal drugs are cheaper to get.

No government regulations.

[Mr Manifesto]

Originally posted by shanek


What you're ignoring is that each step of technologial process generally makes the production costs fall instead of rise. Look at the computer industry; with almost no government regulation, computers are becoming more and more powerful at lower and lower prices. That technology, too, follows the iterative process you mentioned; yet costs across the board (no pun intended) are going down, not up.

Fair enough. We'll put it down to the government regs, then.

[Tony]

Originally posted by shanek

Government regulations are exactly what's killing health care across the board in this country, stifling innovation, and sending prices through the stratosphere.

If it's that simple, why don't they just get rid of or streamline the regulations?

[shanek]

Originally posted by Mr Manifesto
Good Lord, you mean someone tries to make sure the drugs are safe before they're allowed on the market? :eek:

According to a study done by Robert Goldberg of Brandeis University, the FDA has resulted in the deaths of over 200,000 people by denying them access to medication that would have saved their lives; far more lives than the FDA can claim to have saved. And according to Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, who spent a dozen years as a pharmaceutical research scientist, notes the following in Chapter 6 of her book Healing Our World:

Did these additional tests save us from drugs that were ineffective? Apparently not! Studies suggest that consumer waste from purchasing ineffective drugs changed little after the additional studies were mandated in 1962. (24) Evidently, patients and physicians are usually able to tell if a drug has the desired effects and will stop using it if it doesn't work. Companies desiring the positive feedback of profit quickly find that they must please their customers.

Did the 1962 regulations save us from more side effects? Apparently not: the percentage of newly approved drugs taken off the market in the United States was the same as in Great Britain, which did not substantially change its licensing procedures in the immediate aftermath of thalidomide. (25)

While the British continued to enjoy many new drugs to treat their illnesses, only half of these were available to Americans, and only after many more years of waiting. (26) One of these new drugs denied to Americans was propranolol, the first beta-blocker to be used extensively to treat angina and hypertension. In the three years between introduction into the United Kingdom and the United States, approximately 10,000 Americans died needlessly every year, (27) because it was against the law for their doctors to treat them with propranolol. Even in 1968 when propranolol became available in the United States, it was approved only for minor uses. Advertising propranolol as a treatment for angina or hypertension was illegal until 1973 and 1976, respectively, so countless other Americans died because their doctors hesitated to prescribe the drug for a use that was still unapproved by the FDA. When the FDA finally gave approval, it was criticized by a congressional committee for exposing the American public to a drug with potential side effects! (28) Since every drug has side effects in some individuals, asking the FDA to license only drugs that are completely safe is asking them to approve no drugs at all!

Our aggression, applied to this single drug, cost at least 30,000 American lives. Britain also practices the aggression of licensing laws, but to a lesser extent than the United States. Thousands more lives might have been saved if no aggression were present at all.

Sources cited:

24. Sam Peltzman, Regulation of Pharmaceutical Innovation (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1974), pp. 44-45.
25. William M. Wardell, "Introduction of New Therapeutic Drugs in the United States and Great Britain: An International Comparison," Clincial Pharmacology & Therapeutics 14: 773-790, 1973.
26. Peltzman, pp. 13-18; Wardell and Lasagna, pp. 57-59.
27. Arthur D. Little, Inc., Cost-Effectiveness of Pharmaceuticals #7: Beta-Blocker Reduction of Mortality and Reinfarction Rate in Survivors of Myocardial Infarction: A Cost-Benefit Study. (Washington, D.C.: Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, 1984), p. I-5.
28. Louis Lasagna, "Congress, the FDA, and New Drug Development: Before and After 1962," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 32: 322-343, 1989; William M. Wardell, "Rx: More Regulation or Better Therapies?" Regulation 3: 30, 1979.

Glib jabs are one thing; the truth is another.

[Tmy]

You know the FDA does not run the world. These compaines also sell all over the planet. So you cant hang it all on US govt regulations. Even if they haveto wait to sell in the US they still are making money elsewhere.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Tony
If it's that simple, why don't they just get rid of or streamline the regulations?

What's their motivation to?

[Mr Manifesto]

Originally posted by shanek


According to a study done by Robert Goldberg of Brandeis University, the FDA has resulted in the deaths of over 200,000 people by denying them access to medication that would have saved their lives; far more lives than the FDA can claim to have saved. And according to Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, who spent a dozen years as a pharmaceutical research scientist, notes the following in Chapter 6 of her book Healing Our World:


The regulations are preventative as well as regulative. That is, drug companies don't try to market Snake Oil X as the guaranteed cure-for-cancer, because they know it won't get FDA approval. So, there's simply no way you can say the FDA has cost more lives than it has saved- unless you have some sort of supernatural ability to look into alternate realities and tell me what happens in universes that don't have FDA regulations.

edit: Clarity.

[Tony]

Originally posted by shanek


What's their motivation to?


The desire to do good for the country, to be good public servants, to advance the cause of prosperity.

But really, what is stopping people in government from ending the regulations that force drug prices to go up?

[Tmy]

The supplement market can skirt the FDA. Look what happens there. People dropping dead from diet pills. (which are still expensive by the way).

Imagine all these potent drugs not having to go thru the FDA??

[shanek]

Originally posted by Tmy
You know the FDA does not run the world. These compaines also sell all over the planet. So you cant hang it all on US govt regulations. Even if they haveto wait to sell in the US they still are making money elsewhere.

But elsewhere they aren't facing the fantastic regulations they are here. Also, many other countries (I mentioned Canada above) have price caps so they can't make it back there anyway.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Mr Manifesto
The regulations are preventative as well as regulative.

Did you actually read my post?

That is, drug companies don't try to market Snake Oil X as the guaranteed cure-for-cancer, because they know it won't get FDA approval. So, there's simply no way you can say the FDA has cost more lives than it has saved- unless you have some sort of supernatural ability to look into alternate realities and tell me what happens in universes that don't have FDA regulations.

Don't need a parallel universe. Read the whole of Chapter 6 of Healing Our World and you'll see for yourself:

http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/chap6.html

[Mr Manifesto]

Originally posted by shanek


Did you actually read my post?




Yes, I was amused by how biased the so-called 'sources' are. For example, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (http://www.aei.org/about/contentID.20038142213000031/default.asp)

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of freedom--limited government, private enterprise, vital cultural and political institutions, and a strong foreign policy and national defense--through scholarly research, open debate, and publications. Founded in 1943 and located in Washington, D.C., AEI is one of America's largest and most respected "think tanks."

Well, blow me down! An institution campaigning for limited government finds that government is baaaad! Who'd'a thunk?

[Tony]

Originally posted by Mr Manifesto


Yes, I was amused by how biased the so-called 'sources' are. For example, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (http://www.aei.org/about/contentID.20038142213000031/default.asp)


Well, blow me down! An institution campaigning for limited government finds that government is baaaad! Who'd'a thunk?

That's an ad hominem attack on one of the many sources (I guess an "unbiased" source is anything you, like most fundamentalists, agree with). Care to address the actual substance?

[Theodore Kurita]

Simple solution to the problem.

Go for a socialized medical system, with some privatized hospitals, and increase income taxes.

That or, the United States could go with just the price capping.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Tony


That's an ad hominem attack on one of the many sources (I guess an "unbiased" source is anything you, like most fundamentalists, agree with). Care to address the actual substance?

That is an ad hominem attack Tony.

And here is a hint, it is a CONSERVATIVE institution:

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:QsetMNziAYgJ:www.mediatransparency. org/search_results/info_on_any_recipient.php%3FrecipientID%3D19+Ameri can+Enterprise+Institute+for+public+policy+researc h&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[WildCat]

Here's a huge reason that drug prices are so high in the US: Many foreign governments (Canada included) cap the prices they'll pay for drugs. The drug companies still sell to them because the foreign countries will just waive the patents and manufacture the drugs themselves if they don't. US consumers are left to make up the difference.

Drugs are cheaper overseas because US consumers subsidize them through higher prices here. But this is too complex to fit in a 30 second campaign commercial and tricky to fix, so our sleazy politicians call for re-importing drugs from Canada. And ignore the root cause of the problem.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Mr Manifesto
Yes, I was amused by how biased the so-called 'sources' are.

Yes, that's gotta be a lot easier on the brain than actually considering the arguments... :rolleyes:

[Mr Manifesto]

Originally posted by shanek


Yes, that's gotta be a lot easier on the brain than actually considering the arguments... :rolleyes:

All Libertarians are idiots. The "Libertarians are Idiots" foundation did a survey which comprehensively found that 100% of all Libertarians are idiots.

That is the kind of argument your link provides.

[Tony]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita


That is an ad hominem attack Tony.

And here is a hint, it is a CONSERVATIVE institution:

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:QsetMNziAYgJ:www.mediatransparency. org/search_results/info_on_any_recipient.php%3FrecipientID%3D19+Ameri can+Enterprise+Institute+for+public+policy+researc h&hl=en&ie=UTF-8


So? You just reject their facts because you disagree with them politically. The only thing you'll consider is something that confirms your opinions (a predominate trait of fundamentalists.), you'd fit in well at raptureready.

[Tony]

Originally posted by Mr Manifesto


All Libertarians are idiots. The "Libertarians are Idiots" foundation did a survey which comprehensively found that 100% of all Libertarians are idiots.

That is the kind of argument your link provides.


You always were a piece of *****, but this is a new low for you. At the end of an argument all you have left is pre-school insults.