|
I'm voting republican because...
On Sep 16, 1:22*pm, "John R. Carroll"
wrote: wrote: On Sep 12, 5:14 pm, "Hawke" wrote: CLINTON dropped the ball on this one. snip How come you don't address the fact that Clinton could have gotten OBL a number of times but didn't? Was it above his pay grade? (Good thing OBL didn't change his name to "Vince Foster") Don't confuse Ms Carrol with the ugly truth. Your "truth" is a lie told originally by NewsMax. Read the 9/11 Commission Report for the truth. http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_...tatement_5.pdf (bottom of page 3): If you think that by informing our right wingers of the truth about the subject it will have any effect on their beliefs you are out of your mind. The point is those guys don't care about the truth so informing them won't do any good. They believe what they want to believe and even if you show them they are wrong they still won't change their minds. That's just the way they are. Hawke The truth of your free health care is that I get to pay for mine and I get to pay for yours. A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan. There is nothing secret about Senator McCain's far-reaching proposals, but they haven't gotten much attention because the chatter in this campaign has mostly been about nonsense - lipstick, celebrities and "Drill, baby, drill!" For starters, the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on. "It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money," said Sherry Glied, an economist who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Ms. Glied is one of the four scholars who have just completed an independent joint study of the plan. Their findings are being published on the Web site of the policy journal, Health Affairs. http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2008/0...ninsured-cheap... According to the study: "The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system - the nongroup market - where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now." The net effect of the plan, the study said, "almost certainly will be to increase family costs for medical care." Under the McCain plan (now the McCain-Palin plan) employees who continue to receive employer-paid health benefits would look at their pay stubs each week or each month and find that additional money had been withheld to cover the taxes on the value of their benefits. -- * * * * * *John R. Carroll *www.machiningsolution.com- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - What did their study show under the Obama/Weasel health care plan? |
I'm voting republican because...
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:44:13 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote:
Why can't you grasp the concept of getting your own health care and quit mooching off of me? Do you have any evidence that he does? -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
I'm voting republican because...
If you think that by informing our right wingers of the truth about the subject it will have any effect on their beliefs you are out of your mind. The point is those guys don't care about the truth so informing them won't do any good. They believe what they want to believe and even if you show them they are wrong they still won't change their minds. That's just the way they are. Hawke If you think that by informing our left wingers of the truth about the subject it will have any effect on their beliefs you are out of your mind. The point is those guys don't care about the truth so informing them won't do any good. They believe what they want to believe and even if you show them they are wrong they still won't change their minds. That's just the way they are. |
Health Care
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:49:15 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote:
"Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message . .. On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:33:16 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote: snip Yes, now I would. I just went through six sessions of laser eye surgery for PDR. I don't want to do it again. I'll pay for the best control I can get. Physicians Desk Reference? Dunno "PDR." Most diabetics would opt for injections when the pump is out of pocket, except for those in extreme distress. Sorry, you seemed to know about diabetes so I used the abbreviation for proliferative diabetic retinopathy. As for opting for injections, that's fine if you're lucky enough to have A1c readings of less than 7.0. Some people's systems just won't allow it, even if they do multiple blood-glucose tests and inject ten times a day. I test 5 times a day and inject 6 or more separate doses, but my A1c runs around 7.2. The newest pumps should get someone like me down to something under 6.8. 7.0 will carry you if you have good genes and haven't been diabetic for more than 10 or 15 years. I have the right genes, but it's 35 years for me. Until the eye problem I was the only Type 1 (juvenile) diabetic I knew with more than 30 years on the clock who had no major problems. Now I have one, but, thanks to advanced medical technology (laser surgery) I may not have the problem again. Maybe. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you but do not extrapolate your extreme medical condition to the general populace. Note, I've designed medical instrumentation. One product is not too dissimilar to your insulin pump, it took a blood sample from a drip line and tested for lactate acid giving real time results. I am very familiar with the industry. Well, maybe I should interview you for an article I've had in the can for a year. It's about medical-device manufacturing and meeting the FDA and customer requirements. I have eight interviews done, but I'm losing energy for it. Use my email in the header. Thanks. I've put this message into the file in case I revive that article. I have around 50 hours invested in it so I do want to finish it. snip True but the root cause is that health care insurance is unavailable at rational cost. Kaiser for my wife and I would be $1600/month in the USA and is about $25 in Argentina. So, Argentina has subsidized or government-run insurance. I'm all for it. Kinda, sorta both. Immigrants can buy into the state system but each municipality has an open clinic where the costs are very cheap. A front/side chest x-ray cost about $13, dental extraction of molar with abscess cost a friend $6.70, etc. I've bought into private health care at a local hospital chain. Ambulance service is free, I used it two nights running when semi-conscious and unable to drive. Heh, I had _chicken_pox_ at my age... Never knew it could be life threatening... Being in the seond or third economic tier can produce some wonderful benefits for a country. For example, you don't have to invent or develop much of anything. You just use the same stuff that was developed in the leading countries. You'll find that the companies selling that stuff can be very compliant to your political needs. They'll set up an entirely separate accounting system for dealing with you, one that doesn't have to account for any upfront costs, because those are all paid for in the leading country. Since your market is basically a gift to those companies, providing unanticipated sales on otherwise idle production capacity, they'll be happy to treat you as a source of marginal sales, and all that their books will show as expense against their selling price in your country is the marginal manufacturing costs and shipping. Something that costs $100 in the leading country, where they're amortizing all of the upfront costs, might cost $2 in your country. And it will appear on their books as a profitable sale -- because it's a marginal sale. Accounting can be a very creative thing. d8-) The problem with being a second- or third-tier country in those circumstances is that your economy basically don't exist outside of the orbit of the leading countries. It creates quite a web of dependencies over which you have no control. But it sure saves a hell of a lot of money. All true. On the other hand you are talking about providing cutting edge technology to the general population and that's not a reasonable expectation. Regrettably it's a path that will bankrupt the health care system. Life sometimes sucks and if you are very poor you may not be able to afford a life saving proceedure, that's what charity is for. On the other hand those costs are outrageous and we must bring them down to earth. Your program further inflates costs to the majority for the few, mine chops the hell out of those costs for the majority at the expense of a few. I believe that my program is the more humane by far. There's always a ready market for new drugs and new medical technology. True, and sometimes the costs are justified. But recognize that a full 60% of new drugs are governmentally subsidized through university research then turned over to pharmaceuticals for manufacture and distribution with but a bare tithe to the university while Abbott et. al. gains usuary profits on our own tax dollar. sigh I'm well aware of how that works. My last job in a medical communication agency involved a drug on which Sanofi-Aventis had paid something like $135 million in development costs, and $110 million in pre-approval marketing costs (which was paying my salary). Then the FDA decided not to approve the drug. So my company laid half of us off. d8-) The basic research on that drug was not from a university, however. I know that a lot of the basic research is done in universities. What you may not know is that the testing that the pharma companies have to go through after some basic-science lab makes a discovery often costs ten times more than the basic research. I'm familiar with the problem. The FDA should be an advisory, not regulatory, agency. All the special interest groups like, encourage, support, and fund that evil. I completely disagree about having the FDA become an advisory agency, We disagree then. I see the FDA as a self-serving bureaucracy controlled by special interests. I do not like the idea of a governmental agency telling me what medicines or treatments I can, and can't, have. The thing is, Curly, that you have no experience of buying or using drugs in an environment that isn't dictated by the FDA and similar agencies in other highly developed countries. So you're speculating about how it would work out. To the contrary, remember, I've lived in Argentina for about 3 years now where I can buy just about any drug without a prescription and those that do are drugs that I'm not interested in. Those lower-tier economies have an office that sounds like FDA, but it's usually an empty shell full of rubber stamps, giving supposed approval to drugs and procedures that have gone through the approval process of the FDA or the British, French, or German equivalents. And the drugs they sell over-the-counter are mostly ones that have been vetted, for prescription sale or otherwise, by the leading countries. And it's wonderful. I needn't visit a doctor for simple drugs, I can self-medicate, I can refill my one long term medication without being molested by a self-interested bureaucracy. I can get immunizations and injections at the pharmacy too. This is one major reason I live here, I hate the "Big Brother" attitude. The only direct comparison you can make is to the US before there was an FDA. It was much harder to get a centralized, reliable count in those days of how many people were winding up dead from taking the drugs then available. But the number was substantial. We can tell now, in a lot of cases, because those drugs have since been run through large clinical trials in which the results have been measured. That's an excellent foundation to convert the FDA upon too. That work will not be lost, its the basis for evolving healthcare. for the same reason we got the FDA in the first place. Those greedy corporate types you're complaining about wouldn't mind killing many more people if they could get away with it. Testing on humans first is the way to make more money. That is not what I propose. Let the FDA provide online, honest, data on drugs and let the buyer comment and beware. You're proposing a system by which smart people save a few bucks, and not-so-smart people make minor mistakes and drop dead. I don't really like the sound of it. "A few bucks"????? We're talking thousands and tens of thousands of dollars per person! Do not extrapolate your health condition to the population at large. Not-smart people do not "drop dead" they don't medicate usually and if a few do "drop-dead" then that's life. Or death. Note that I've actually been through the FDA approval process. Not responsible but as an independent contractor responsible for adhering to the requirements on glucose monitors, inhalation dispensers and patient monitoring systems. I should point out here that testing a medical device is NOTHING like testing a drug. It's much simpler, and it's done with much smaller cohorts, so it's vastly cheaper. You don't see $50 million studies for devices, as you often do for drugs. I think I mentioned elsewhere that a new drug requires roughly a half billion dollars to become FDA certified. That is intolerable. Generics, Canadian, and other sources are often 90% cheaper. Of course. Generics just ride on the research, testing, post-marketing studies and marketing that was done for the original drug. All they have to recover is manufacturing costs and quality-control reporting. In Canada, they have price controls and just refuse to allow the drug companies to amortize research and development. The Canadians, and the French, and the Brits, and everyone else knows that they can collect those costs in the US. How long do you think a pharmaceutical should have a monopoly? Is 17 years not enough? It depends on how you structure it. Some kind of regulated, extended and mandatory licensing would reduce prices and keep up enough income to fund big trials. And it's the big clinical trials that cost most of the money in pharma. Patented medicines are too expensive, but generics are too cheap. Precisely why I want to change the FDA to an advisory agency. Today it costs roughly half a billion dollars to bring a drug to market, that is irrational and runs the prices up so that the general tax fund must subsidize use. But what's the basis on which the FDA would "advise"? The last drug I worked on as an employee (rimonabant) was being sold in France, Germany, the UK, and parts of South America before three long-term studies ordered by the FDA turned up the problems with it. The Europeans got egg on their faces -- and some dead citizens -- because they didn't require the long-term studies. Now they're pulling back and black-boxing those drugs. But they never would have known the problems without those huge studies, which cost something like $100 million in total to run. There you go, publish those data, update as more data becomes available. Caveat emptor. Who pays for that if the FDA doesn't impose it as a requirement for approval? You're talking about going back to the dark ages of the drug business, when people died from taking drugs and no one knew the drug was involved in the deaths. Hell, no one even knew that the people who died had been taking the drugs. Statistical review can pull that data from the noise. People died in the example you offered even with testing. Not only test subjects but subjects who were denied the new medications but might have been helped. That's life. And death. **** happens, no one life is worth the cost of FDA regulations. It can be argued that limiting drugs as the FDA does costs lives too. snip You are one of the lucky, many cannot get insurance because they are under employed, unemployed, homeless. Yeah, we know. I'm very lucky. The year before last I paid insurance out of my pocket for six months, and it cost me almost $7,000. How would you change that inequity? Universal health care, with a single-payer system and optional supplemental insurance. Take the European and Canadian systems, analyze the good and the bad in each, and design a better one based on those experiences. You'll have to re-engineer a lot of the health care business to do it. Tort reform, reducing redundancies in testing facilities, etc. Very socialist-sounding. Very politically incorrect. But the only way to reduce costs and provide health care for everyone at the same time. The danger with it is not so much a case of limiting coverage (that will happen no matter what system you use, including our present free-for-all system), but rather limiting innovation. That part will require very careful work. Since the US is the last country of any substance without universal health care, this is where most of the innovation happens. The Europeans and others are tuned to our drum; they adjust their systems so they don't look too bad in the innovation department, given our example. It's hard to say how that would work if there was no free-for-all system like the US against which to compare oneself. It is a concern, if every major country has a controlled system. It's easy to become complacent if there is nothing against which to compare your results. I don't expect a universal system to work really well. I just expect it to produce a better result than we have now, in terms of health statistics. There is no way that it will produce as much innovation. You pay your money and take your choice. My choice is universal coverage. Mandated health insurance, right? What about those who do not want mandate health care? What you propose violates my freedom and monopolizes the health care industry. It is also a license to steal and further empowers the FDA monopoly. Redirecting the FDA to an advisory agency would immediately chop off at least half the cost of health. Remove the AMA monopoly and another quarter might be saved. Cutting health care costs by 75% would be easy and making care available to those who now cannot afford your care would save more lives than are now being lost. What we now have are a number of state protected monopolies which prevent competitive forces to rein in health care costs. I cannot/will not vote for that. This transitions into the quality of care issue too. Another factor we've not discussed is the costs caused by AMA monopoly of providers. Midwives and alternative treatments have essentially been banned to create a monopoly. Then there is the FDA making many drugs prescription only. In fact some years ago the FDA stated that they would have made many current over the counter drugs a prescription item if they had it to do over. They are now trying to rectify that by regulating vitamins, minerals and even tobacco. We Americans have an aversion to reading about dead people who took drugs they were told were OK. **** happens. Life is not guaranteed safe. The government is only permitted to regulate fraud and crime, not what we ingest. I think the law disagrees with you on that. g You realize that I have a very low opinion of laws which violate my liberty, don't you? We have no obligation to obey anti-constitutional laws. Your ideas concerning pharma are ideological, abstract, and unreal based on what we know about drugs, Curly. You're laying out a prescription for ignorance and death. No one would know what drugs are causing what side effects and adverse outcomes; all you'd have is a collection of rumors, marketing claims, and guesswork. That is an unsupportable assertion and one that I disagree with deeply. When market forces are unleashed we also need to revamp fraud laws to keep the manufacturers honest but all major diseases have drug treatment now so the number of new drugs coming onto the market is smaller. And hideously more costly given the current FDA regulations. We cannot permit an industry to blackmail us for health care. We've gone beyond that and hardly anyone who knows the issues would want to go back. Your reactionary approach would result in a meaner and riskier health care system for everyone. It would be cheap, but it would leave a lot of bodies and maimed lives in its wake. Nope, all the current drug treatment programs would continue, no risk involved. Only new drugs coming onto the market might risk, advise the patient rather than burden the health care of every other individual on earth. This is where the FDA would come in, monitor the use of new drugs and provide statistical analysis of the effects for advising other users in the future. -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
I'm voting republican because...
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:24:44 +0000, Ray Fischer wrote:
wrote: On Sep 16, 8:39*am, wf3h wrote: On Sep 15, 11:29*pm, wrote: On Sep 15, 11:40*pm, wf3h wrote: On Sep 15, 9:55*pm, wrote: The truth of your free health care is that I get to pay for mine and I get to pay for yours which you do now. it's just more expensive now than it would be under universal care. I get first dibs at the doctors under the present system. *And why shouldn't I? *I'm paying for it. so you enjoy having average health care for inflated prices? I enjoy paying my own way. Even if it costs you half again as much. Half? Try 3x or 4x if health care were truly reformed removing the FDA and AMA monopolies. Making health care affordable would eliminate these debates and discussions from the table. Sucker. yep sounds republican. Yeh, that whole, ummm, personal responsibility thingy really upsets some folks. If you're so in favor of "personal responsibility" then why don't you insist on higher taxes? Under the squirrels and the hawkes system, I pay for theirs and I pay for mine, and some else says who gets dibs on appointments and treatments. never heard of an HMO did you? they tell you what doctors you'll go to, what treatment they'll pay for, etc. I could have selected the HMO route and paid less. Instead I selected a Preferred Choice plan. As opposed to paying your own way? you really HAVE swallowed the GOP kool aid, haven't you? you don't have control over your health care at all. your boss does. your insurance company does. As it stands now, I can change plans and I can change bosses. And if you get sick or injured and can't work, you can't get any plan, you can't get any job, and you and your family go broke. The leading cause of personal bankruptcies is medical emergencies. Second leading cause, yes! -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
Health Care
"Ray Fischer" wrote in message ... Ed Huntress wrote: "Ray Fischer" wrote in message . .. Ed Huntress wrote: "Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message Lets not get sidetracked into the health insurance debate for it masks the underlying problem. The fundamental problem is that our health care system has been hijacked by corporate powers making healthcare too expensive. Nonsense. The main thing that makes it so expensive is that medical technology marches forward, not backward, and there's always more stuff to apply to medical problems -- increasingly expensive stuff. That would be a better argument if not for the fact that US healthcare is the most expensive in the world. Americans pay 50% more then the next most expensive industrial nation. Right. It's the most expensive, and, for those who can afford it, the most effective. The reason it doesn't look very effective in the statistics is that a lot of people can't afford it. Is that an example of right-wing doublethink? Oh, I don't think there's doublethink involved. As we can see from some of the postings here, some of the right-wingers really don't care that there are many people who are uninsured. To them, those people who can't afford the extra $15,000/yr. or so should have thought of that when they were in middle school, or they should have chosen their parents more responsibly, so they'd be making that much more money now. As far as they're concerned, those irresponsible oafs are just screwing up the statistics for the rest of us. And it marches forward because people will pay for it, as an alternative to living in misery or dying. There's always a ready market for new drugs and new medical technology. Meanwhile Americans have shorter lifespans and higher infant mortality. See above. Things are pretty ducky if you have a few million or more. That's why even heads of state and foreign corporations come here to get some of their operations. We're especially good at neurosurgery and plastic surgery. Our nose jobs can't be beat. Ah. Social darwinism. Eliminate the poor. Well, it would make the statistics look a lot better. -- Ed Huntress |
I'm voting republican because...
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:04:18 -0700, Hawke wrote:
wrote in message ... On Sep 16, 3:32 am, Curly Surmudgeon wrote: On Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:29:20 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: On Sep 15, 11:40 pm, wf3h wrote: On Sep 15, 9:55 pm, wrote: The truth of your free health care is that I get to pay for mine and I get to pay for yours which you do now. it's just more expensive now than it would be under universal care. I get first dibs at the doctors under the present system. And why shouldn't I? I'm paying for it. Under the squirrels and the hawkes system, I pay for theirs and I pay for mine, and some else says who gets dibs on appointments and treatments. of course, if you lose your job and don't want health care, just refuse it...for you and your kids. i won't mind That, in part, is what motivates me to keep working. If only we could motivate the little squirrel and the little hawke to work... And you continue to make **** up. What psychedelics do you take? I don't make up ****. The little squirrel and the little hawke are short-sale "investors." What kind of health plan comes with that? None. You guys are waiting for me to pay for your health care. See, this guy is just plain dumb. I've told him myself numerous times that under a universal care program he will only have to pay the same or less than he's paying now. He can't grasp the concept that we are spending more than enough to cover everybody but we are doing it so badly and so wastefully that we don't cover everyone. With all the dough going into health care there is plenty to cover everyone. Unfortunately, this guy is willfully ignorant. No matter how many times you correct him he never understands what's going on. He learned something like an old dog and he can't learn anything new. Hell, that's a typical republican for you. He probably still thinks Bush is going to have a budget surplus before his term in office is over. Hawke Agreed but please use the "reply" button on your newsreader so the msg to which you reply is properly nested. It's not obvious by glance where his words end and yours begin. Remember who you are speaking to. Do you really want people to mix his words with yours? -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
Health Care
"Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message . .. On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:49:15 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote: "Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message . .. On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:33:16 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote: snip Yes, now I would. I just went through six sessions of laser eye surgery for PDR. I don't want to do it again. I'll pay for the best control I can get. Physicians Desk Reference? Dunno "PDR." Most diabetics would opt for injections when the pump is out of pocket, except for those in extreme distress. Sorry, you seemed to know about diabetes so I used the abbreviation for proliferative diabetic retinopathy. As for opting for injections, that's fine if you're lucky enough to have A1c readings of less than 7.0. Some people's systems just won't allow it, even if they do multiple blood-glucose tests and inject ten times a day. I test 5 times a day and inject 6 or more separate doses, but my A1c runs around 7.2. The newest pumps should get someone like me down to something under 6.8. 7.0 will carry you if you have good genes and haven't been diabetic for more than 10 or 15 years. I have the right genes, but it's 35 years for me. Until the eye problem I was the only Type 1 (juvenile) diabetic I knew with more than 30 years on the clock who had no major problems. Now I have one, but, thanks to advanced medical technology (laser surgery) I may not have the problem again. Maybe. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you but do not extrapolate your extreme medical condition to the general populace. Thanks, and I don't extrapolate. Type I diabetics make up just a fraction of 1% of the population. I'm just a shining example d8-) But considering that Type II (adult-onset) diabetics have similar problems -- some of them worse, in fact, including the incidence of loss of limbs -- and make up 23.1% of the US population over age 60 (and those are just the ones that have been diagnosed), my situation is not really "extreme." It's just that I got started earlier and serve as a kind of weathervane for those who acquired the similar condition later in life. If you're in your 50s or older, those 10-15 years of grace that 20-year-olds enjoy may shrink to just a few years. Note, I've designed medical instrumentation. One product is not too dissimilar to your insulin pump, it took a blood sample from a drip line and tested for lactate acid giving real time results. I am very familiar with the industry. Well, maybe I should interview you for an article I've had in the can for a year. It's about medical-device manufacturing and meeting the FDA and customer requirements. I have eight interviews done, but I'm losing energy for it. Use my email in the header. Thanks. I've put this message into the file in case I revive that article. I have around 50 hours invested in it so I do want to finish it. snip True but the root cause is that health care insurance is unavailable at rational cost. Kaiser for my wife and I would be $1600/month in the USA and is about $25 in Argentina. So, Argentina has subsidized or government-run insurance. I'm all for it. Kinda, sorta both. Immigrants can buy into the state system but each municipality has an open clinic where the costs are very cheap. A front/side chest x-ray cost about $13, dental extraction of molar with abscess cost a friend $6.70, etc. I've bought into private health care at a local hospital chain. Ambulance service is free, I used it two nights running when semi-conscious and unable to drive. Heh, I had _chicken_pox_ at my age... Never knew it could be life threatening... Being in the seond or third economic tier can produce some wonderful benefits for a country. For example, you don't have to invent or develop much of anything. You just use the same stuff that was developed in the leading countries. You'll find that the companies selling that stuff can be very compliant to your political needs. They'll set up an entirely separate accounting system for dealing with you, one that doesn't have to account for any upfront costs, because those are all paid for in the leading country. Since your market is basically a gift to those companies, providing unanticipated sales on otherwise idle production capacity, they'll be happy to treat you as a source of marginal sales, and all that their books will show as expense against their selling price in your country is the marginal manufacturing costs and shipping. Something that costs $100 in the leading country, where they're amortizing all of the upfront costs, might cost $2 in your country. And it will appear on their books as a profitable sale -- because it's a marginal sale. Accounting can be a very creative thing. d8-) The problem with being a second- or third-tier country in those circumstances is that your economy basically don't exist outside of the orbit of the leading countries. It creates quite a web of dependencies over which you have no control. But it sure saves a hell of a lot of money. All true. On the other hand you are talking about providing cutting edge technology to the general population and that's not a reasonable expectation. Regrettably it's a path that will bankrupt the health care system. Life sometimes sucks and if you are very poor you may not be able to afford a life saving proceedure, that's what charity is for. On the other hand those costs are outrageous and we must bring them down to earth. Well, that's all true, too. The healthcare issue as many people see it is that everyone should have the same cutting-edge technology available to them. That's a majority position in the US (as in most of the world) now, as unrealistic as it may be. It will be the guiding idea behind health care reforms. The practical outcome will be different. The question is how much different it will be, because health care reform is coming, whether the conservative ideologues want it or not. It's a tsunami that's racing across the seas from all directions. Your program further inflates costs to the majority for the few, mine chops the hell out of those costs for the majority at the expense of a few. I believe that my program is the more humane by far. If you follow the polls, you realize that yours is definitely a minority position, and the trend is against you. It will lose, politically. It's just a question of how soon it will come to a vote and move. What will happen is that universal health care will be sold in a package with efforts to cut medical costs. Some efforts will be successful. Others will not. It will extend the delay to the crisis point for a while, maybe for many years. And then we'll decide what we want and can have, once again. There's always a ready market for new drugs and new medical technology. True, and sometimes the costs are justified. But recognize that a full 60% of new drugs are governmentally subsidized through university research then turned over to pharmaceuticals for manufacture and distribution with but a bare tithe to the university while Abbott et. al. gains usuary profits on our own tax dollar. sigh I'm well aware of how that works. My last job in a medical communication agency involved a drug on which Sanofi-Aventis had paid something like $135 million in development costs, and $110 million in pre-approval marketing costs (which was paying my salary). Then the FDA decided not to approve the drug. So my company laid half of us off. d8-) The basic research on that drug was not from a university, however. I know that a lot of the basic research is done in universities. What you may not know is that the testing that the pharma companies have to go through after some basic-science lab makes a discovery often costs ten times more than the basic research. I'm familiar with the problem. The FDA should be an advisory, not regulatory, agency. All the special interest groups like, encourage, support, and fund that evil. I completely disagree about having the FDA become an advisory agency, We disagree then. I see the FDA as a self-serving bureaucracy controlled by special interests. I do not like the idea of a governmental agency telling me what medicines or treatments I can, and can't, have. The thing is, Curly, that you have no experience of buying or using drugs in an environment that isn't dictated by the FDA and similar agencies in other highly developed countries. So you're speculating about how it would work out. To the contrary, remember, I've lived in Argentina for about 3 years now where I can buy just about any drug without a prescription and those that do are drugs that I'm not interested in. No, because Argentina's health care system, as I explained above, exists in the shadow of the FDA and the European (and Japanese) equivalents of our system. I don't know Argentina in particular but most countries are in that situation. Argentina's health care system can only function because it's parasitic on the systems of the major players, in terms of what drugs are available, how they've been vetted, and what experience from those more regulated countries tells the Argentinians about what works and what doesn't. They don't operate in a vacuum. A friend of mine who was the Carter-Wallace rep for Africa, and who also repped throughout the Caribbean, explained it in fine detail to me over a period of years. What I learned from working for Big Pharma confirms the same thing. They're all riding on information that comes from the drug development, testing, approval process, and record-keeping of the major western countries. They make their own decisions, but they don't have any significant amount of their own information on which to base them. They can get all the information they need from us, for free. You can go online and collect the PIs (prescribing information) forms from the FDA for 1,000 drugs in a couple of days; put a team of physicians and other specialists together to review them; and develop a drug policy and approvals for a medium-sized country in less than a month. And that's the skeleton of how they actually do it. Those lower-tier economies have an office that sounds like FDA, but it's usually an empty shell full of rubber stamps, giving supposed approval to drugs and procedures that have gone through the approval process of the FDA or the British, French, or German equivalents. And the drugs they sell over-the-counter are mostly ones that have been vetted, for prescription sale or otherwise, by the leading countries. And it's wonderful. I needn't visit a doctor for simple drugs, I can self-medicate, I can refill my one long term medication without being molested by a self-interested bureaucracy. I can get immunizations and injections at the pharmacy too. This is one major reason I live here, I hate the "Big Brother" attitude. It's only possible because there is a Big Brother who provides them with all the information, for free. Then they make their own decisions, based on their politics, their sense of responsibility to their people, their legal structure, and their tolerance for a few unfortunate deaths resulting from people who are medically ignorant making life-and-death medical decisions. In the case of many countries, their willingness to institute a system of controls -- that is, their willingness to pay for such a system -- enters as a big factor. The only direct comparison you can make is to the US before there was an FDA. It was much harder to get a centralized, reliable count in those days of how many people were winding up dead from taking the drugs then available. But the number was substantial. We can tell now, in a lot of cases, because those drugs have since been run through large clinical trials in which the results have been measured. That's an excellent foundation to convert the FDA upon too. That work will not be lost, its the basis for evolving healthcare. It won't be lost, but it's only available for drugs that are already available. New ones need new studies and analysis. for the same reason we got the FDA in the first place. Those greedy corporate types you're complaining about wouldn't mind killing many more people if they could get away with it. Testing on humans first is the way to make more money. That is not what I propose. Let the FDA provide online, honest, data on drugs and let the buyer comment and beware. You're proposing a system by which smart people save a few bucks, and not-so-smart people make minor mistakes and drop dead. I don't really like the sound of it. "A few bucks"????? We're talking thousands and tens of thousands of dollars per person! Do not extrapolate your health condition to the population at large. Not-smart people do not "drop dead" they don't medicate usually and if a few do "drop-dead" then that's life. Or death. Huh? Over 125,000 people die in the US each year from drug reactions and mistakes alone. Misprescribing leads to some of the reactions; lack of clinical-study information about drug interactions leads to most of them. That's not "a few" who are dropping dead. As for the "tens of thousands of dollars per person," the average pharmaceutical bill in the US is $850/person. The way to cut that is with some reforms in health care and the way the pharma industry is regulated, not in deep-sixing the FDA, because it's the FDA that keeps that 125,000 deaths from being a much larger number. We pop a hell of a lot of pills, and a lot of them are deadly if they're used ignorantly. Note that I've actually been through the FDA approval process. Not responsible but as an independent contractor responsible for adhering to the requirements on glucose monitors, inhalation dispensers and patient monitoring systems. I should point out here that testing a medical device is NOTHING like testing a drug. It's much simpler, and it's done with much smaller cohorts, so it's vastly cheaper. You don't see $50 million studies for devices, as you often do for drugs. I think I mentioned elsewhere that a new drug requires roughly a half billion dollars to become FDA certified. That is intolerable. Half of that number is marketing. Cut the marketing, not the clinical studies or drug regulations. I don't care how much the marketing people get anymore. g Generics, Canadian, and other sources are often 90% cheaper. Of course. Generics just ride on the research, testing, post-marketing studies and marketing that was done for the original drug. All they have to recover is manufacturing costs and quality-control reporting. In Canada, they have price controls and just refuse to allow the drug companies to amortize research and development. The Canadians, and the French, and the Brits, and everyone else knows that they can collect those costs in the US. How long do you think a pharmaceutical should have a monopoly? Is 17 years not enough? It depends on how you structure it. Some kind of regulated, extended and mandatory licensing would reduce prices and keep up enough income to fund big trials. And it's the big clinical trials that cost most of the money in pharma. Patented medicines are too expensive, but generics are too cheap. Precisely why I want to change the FDA to an advisory agency. Today it costs roughly half a billion dollars to bring a drug to market, that is irrational and runs the prices up so that the general tax fund must subsidize use. But what's the basis on which the FDA would "advise"? The last drug I worked on as an employee (rimonabant) was being sold in France, Germany, the UK, and parts of South America before three long-term studies ordered by the FDA turned up the problems with it. The Europeans got egg on their faces -- and some dead citizens -- because they didn't require the long-term studies. Now they're pulling back and black-boxing those drugs. But they never would have known the problems without those huge studies, which cost something like $100 million in total to run. There you go, publish those data, update as more data becomes available. Caveat emptor. That's precisely what they do. It's all available to the public, once it's submitted for FDA approval. I read around 360 studies related to the marketing for one drug, alone. Regarding "caveat emptor," how many do you have time to read? They run around 8 or 10 pages each, on the average, and they're not very entertaining. I've read thousands of clinical studies but I'll do the emptoring, and let the FDA do my caveating, thank you. d8-) Who pays for that if the FDA doesn't impose it as a requirement for approval? You're talking about going back to the dark ages of the drug business, when people died from taking drugs and no one knew the drug was involved in the deaths. Hell, no one even knew that the people who died had been taking the drugs. Statistical review can pull that data from the noise. People died in the example you offered even with testing. Many die even with the testing we have now. Many more would die without it. Not only test subjects but subjects who were denied the new medications but might have been helped. That's life. And death. **** happens, no one life is worth the cost of FDA regulations. FDA fast-tracks cancer drugs and many other critical drugs now. You might want to make the track faster. I think it's about right. It can be argued that limiting drugs as the FDA does costs lives too. I've read the arguments. The data is available. You'll find it with a good search on PubMed. snip You are one of the lucky, many cannot get insurance because they are under employed, unemployed, homeless. Yeah, we know. I'm very lucky. The year before last I paid insurance out of my pocket for six months, and it cost me almost $7,000. How would you change that inequity? Universal health care, with a single-payer system and optional supplemental insurance. Take the European and Canadian systems, analyze the good and the bad in each, and design a better one based on those experiences. You'll have to re-engineer a lot of the health care business to do it. Tort reform, reducing redundancies in testing facilities, etc. Very socialist-sounding. Very politically incorrect. But the only way to reduce costs and provide health care for everyone at the same time. The danger with it is not so much a case of limiting coverage (that will happen no matter what system you use, including our present free-for-all system), but rather limiting innovation. That part will require very careful work. Since the US is the last country of any substance without universal health care, this is where most of the innovation happens. The Europeans and others are tuned to our drum; they adjust their systems so they don't look too bad in the innovation department, given our example. It's hard to say how that would work if there was no free-for-all system like the US against which to compare oneself. It is a concern, if every major country has a controlled system. It's easy to become complacent if there is nothing against which to compare your results. I don't expect a universal system to work really well. I just expect it to produce a better result than we have now, in terms of health statistics. There is no way that it will produce as much innovation. You pay your money and take your choice. My choice is universal coverage. Mandated health insurance, right? What about those who do not want mandate health care? Screw 'em. As it is, they're winding up in the ER and taxpayers are footing the bill. This isn't Zimbabwe or the Sudan so we aren't going to just let them die, so ram health care coverage down their throats, for the same reason we don't let people drive without liability insurance. What you propose violates my freedom and monopolizes the health care industry. Yup. When your "freedom" becomes my tax bill, because you can't or won't cover your own ass, you've just forfeited some of your freedom, IMO. Or you can move out. That's your freedom. It is also a license to steal and further empowers the FDA monopoly. What's your gripe with the FDA? I can see bitching about Big Pharma, or hospitals, or doctors, but the FDA does a pretty good job, IMO. What is it you think they do? Redirecting the FDA to an advisory agency would immediately chop off at least half the cost of health. Baloney. It would just speed up the casket business. Remove the AMA monopoly and another quarter might be saved. Great. We'll let anybody put out a shingle. I told my wife, after studying endocrinology for some of my work, that maybe I should go into the business and start prescribing hormones. It would be a great experiment and fun, too. d8-) Cutting health care costs by 75% would be easy and making care available to those who now cannot afford your care would save more lives than are now being lost. Hey, you aren't in the market for a Bridge to Nowhere by any chance, are you? What we now have are a number of state protected monopolies which prevent competitive forces to rein in health care costs. I cannot/will not vote for that. Significant competitive forces don't exist in health care; never did, and never will. You don't shop around when you're having a heart attack. This transitions into the quality of care issue too. Another factor we've not discussed is the costs caused by AMA monopoly of providers. Midwives and alternative treatments have essentially been banned to create a monopoly. Then there is the FDA making many drugs prescription only. In fact some years ago the FDA stated that they would have made many current over the counter drugs a prescription item if they had it to do over. They are now trying to rectify that by regulating vitamins, minerals and even tobacco. We Americans have an aversion to reading about dead people who took drugs they were told were OK. **** happens. Life is not guaranteed safe. The government is only permitted to regulate fraud and crime, not what we ingest. I think the law disagrees with you on that. g You realize that I have a very low opinion of laws which violate my liberty, don't you? We have no obligation to obey anti-constitutional laws. shrug The Founding Fathers didn't anticipate CT scans and open-heart surgery. They were lucky to get leeches. Your ideas concerning pharma are ideological, abstract, and unreal based on what we know about drugs, Curly. You're laying out a prescription for ignorance and death. No one would know what drugs are causing what side effects and adverse outcomes; all you'd have is a collection of rumors, marketing claims, and guesswork. That is an unsupportable assertion and one that I disagree with deeply. Well, fine. Spend four or five years studying and writing about pharmaceuticals and health insurance, and we'll have another talk. When market forces are unleashed we also need to revamp fraud laws to keep the manufacturers honest but all major diseases have drug treatment now so the number of new drugs coming onto the market is smaller. And hideously more costly given the current FDA regulations. We cannot permit an industry to blackmail us for health care. You tell 'em. We've gone beyond that and hardly anyone who knows the issues would want to go back. Your reactionary approach would result in a meaner and riskier health care system for everyone. It would be cheap, but it would leave a lot of bodies and maimed lives in its wake. Nope, all the current drug treatment programs would continue, no risk involved. Only new drugs coming onto the market might risk, advise the patient rather than burden the health care of every other individual on earth. This is where the FDA would come in, monitor the use of new drugs and provide statistical analysis of the effects for advising other users in the future. That's what they do now. Then they regulate the ones that would kill us off the market. That's about it. -- Ed Huntress |
Health Care
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:52:18 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote:
Feel free to prune as you feel fit, if I think something important was left out I'll reinsert it and not attribute ill intent on your part. You are not a gunner, HH&C or Jerry... "Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message . .. On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:49:15 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote: "Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message . .. On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:33:16 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote: snip Yes, now I would. I just went through six sessions of laser eye surgery for PDR. I don't want to do it again. I'll pay for the best control I can get. Physicians Desk Reference? Dunno "PDR." Most diabetics would opt for injections when the pump is out of pocket, except for those in extreme distress. Sorry, you seemed to know about diabetes so I used the abbreviation for proliferative diabetic retinopathy. As for opting for injections, that's fine if you're lucky enough to have A1c readings of less than 7.0. Some people's systems just won't allow it, even if they do multiple blood-glucose tests and inject ten times a day. I test 5 times a day and inject 6 or more separate doses, but my A1c runs around 7.2. The newest pumps should get someone like me down to something under 6.8. 7.0 will carry you if you have good genes and haven't been diabetic for more than 10 or 15 years. I have the right genes, but it's 35 years for me. Until the eye problem I was the only Type 1 (juvenile) diabetic I knew with more than 30 years on the clock who had no major problems. Now I have one, but, thanks to advanced medical technology (laser surgery) I may not have the problem again. Maybe. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you but do not extrapolate your extreme medical condition to the general populace. Thanks, and I don't extrapolate. Type I diabetics make up just a fraction of 1% of the population. I'm just a shining example d8-) But considering that Type II (adult-onset) diabetics have similar problems -- some of them worse, in fact, including the incidence of loss of limbs -- and make up 23.1% of the US population over age 60 (and those are just the ones that have been diagnosed), my situation is not really "extreme." It's just that I got started earlier and serve as a kind of weathervane for those who acquired the similar condition later in life. If you're in your 50s or older, those 10-15 years of grace that 20-year-olds enjoy may shrink to just a few years. Note, I've designed medical instrumentation. One product is not too dissimilar to your insulin pump, it took a blood sample from a drip line and tested for lactate acid giving real time results. I am very familiar with the industry. Well, maybe I should interview you for an article I've had in the can for a year. It's about medical-device manufacturing and meeting the FDA and customer requirements. I have eight interviews done, but I'm losing energy for it. Use my email in the header. Thanks. I've put this message into the file in case I revive that article. I have around 50 hours invested in it so I do want to finish it. snip True but the root cause is that health care insurance is unavailable at rational cost. Kaiser for my wife and I would be $1600/month in the USA and is about $25 in Argentina. So, Argentina has subsidized or government-run insurance. I'm all for it. Kinda, sorta both. Immigrants can buy into the state system but each municipality has an open clinic where the costs are very cheap. A front/side chest x-ray cost about $13, dental extraction of molar with abscess cost a friend $6.70, etc. I've bought into private health care at a local hospital chain. Ambulance service is free, I used it two nights running when semi-conscious and unable to drive. Heh, I had _chicken_pox_ at my age... Never knew it could be life threatening... Being in the seond or third economic tier can produce some wonderful benefits for a country. For example, you don't have to invent or develop much of anything. You just use the same stuff that was developed in the leading countries. You'll find that the companies selling that stuff can be very compliant to your political needs. They'll set up an entirely separate accounting system for dealing with you, one that doesn't have to account for any upfront costs, because those are all paid for in the leading country. Since your market is basically a gift to those companies, providing unanticipated sales on otherwise idle production capacity, they'll be happy to treat you as a source of marginal sales, and all that their books will show as expense against their selling price in your country is the marginal manufacturing costs and shipping. Something that costs $100 in the leading country, where they're amortizing all of the upfront costs, might cost $2 in your country. And it will appear on their books as a profitable sale -- because it's a marginal sale. Accounting can be a very creative thing. d8-) The problem with being a second- or third-tier country in those circumstances is that your economy basically don't exist outside of the orbit of the leading countries. It creates quite a web of dependencies over which you have no control. But it sure saves a hell of a lot of money. All true. On the other hand you are talking about providing cutting edge technology to the general population and that's not a reasonable expectation. Regrettably it's a path that will bankrupt the health care system. Life sometimes sucks and if you are very poor you may not be able to afford a life saving proceedure, that's what charity is for. On the other hand those costs are outrageous and we must bring them down to earth. Well, that's all true, too. The healthcare issue as many people see it is that everyone should have the same cutting-edge technology available to them. That's a majority position in the US (as in most of the world) now, as unrealistic as it may be. It will be the guiding idea behind health care reforms. The practical outcome will be different. The question is how much different it will be, because health care reform is coming, whether the conservative ideologues want it or not. It's a tsunami that's racing across the seas from all directions. Your program further inflates costs to the majority for the few, mine chops the hell out of those costs for the majority at the expense of a few. I believe that my program is the more humane by far. If you follow the polls, you realize that yours is definitely a minority position, and the trend is against you. It will lose, politically. It's just a question of how soon it will come to a vote and move. What will happen is that universal health care will be sold in a package with efforts to cut medical costs. Some efforts will be successful. Others will not. It will extend the delay to the crisis point for a while, maybe for many years. And then we'll decide what we want and can have, once again. There's always a ready market for new drugs and new medical technology. True, and sometimes the costs are justified. But recognize that a full 60% of new drugs are governmentally subsidized through university research then turned over to pharmaceuticals for manufacture and distribution with but a bare tithe to the university while Abbott et. al. gains usuary profits on our own tax dollar. sigh I'm well aware of how that works. My last job in a medical communication agency involved a drug on which Sanofi-Aventis had paid something like $135 million in development costs, and $110 million in pre-approval marketing costs (which was paying my salary). Then the FDA decided not to approve the drug. So my company laid half of us off. d8-) The basic research on that drug was not from a university, however. I know that a lot of the basic research is done in universities. What you may not know is that the testing that the pharma companies have to go through after some basic-science lab makes a discovery often costs ten times more than the basic research. I'm familiar with the problem. The FDA should be an advisory, not regulatory, agency. All the special interest groups like, encourage, support, and fund that evil. I completely disagree about having the FDA become an advisory agency, We disagree then. I see the FDA as a self-serving bureaucracy controlled by special interests. I do not like the idea of a governmental agency telling me what medicines or treatments I can, and can't, have. The thing is, Curly, that you have no experience of buying or using drugs in an environment that isn't dictated by the FDA and similar agencies in other highly developed countries. So you're speculating about how it would work out. To the contrary, remember, I've lived in Argentina for about 3 years now where I can buy just about any drug without a prescription and those that do are drugs that I'm not interested in. No, because Argentina's health care system, as I explained above, exists in the shadow of the FDA and the European (and Japanese) equivalents of our system. I don't know Argentina in particular but most countries are in that situation. Argentina's health care system can only function because it's parasitic on the systems of the major players, in terms of what drugs are available, how they've been vetted, and what experience from those more regulated countries tells the Argentinians about what works and what doesn't. They don't operate in a vacuum. A friend of mine who was the Carter-Wallace rep for Africa, and who also repped throughout the Caribbean, explained it in fine detail to me over a period of years. What I learned from working for Big Pharma confirms the same thing. They're all riding on information that comes from the drug development, testing, approval process, and record-keeping of the major western countries. They make their own decisions, but they don't have any significant amount of their own information on which to base them. They can get all the information they need from us, for free. You can go online and collect the PIs (prescribing information) forms from the FDA for 1,000 drugs in a couple of days; put a team of physicians and other specialists together to review them; and develop a drug policy and approvals for a medium-sized country in less than a month. And that's the skeleton of how they actually do it. How does that pertain to the cost of health care in the United States? Simply because the USA pays too much isn't an indictment against others. Those lower-tier economies have an office that sounds like FDA, but it's usually an empty shell full of rubber stamps, giving supposed approval to drugs and procedures that have gone through the approval process of the FDA or the British, French, or German equivalents. And the drugs they sell over-the-counter are mostly ones that have been vetted, for prescription sale or otherwise, by the leading countries. And it's wonderful. I needn't visit a doctor for simple drugs, I can self-medicate, I can refill my one long term medication without being molested by a self-interested bureaucracy. I can get immunizations and injections at the pharmacy too. This is one major reason I live here, I hate the "Big Brother" attitude. It's only possible because there is a Big Brother who provides them with all the information, for free. Then they make their own decisions, based on their politics, their sense of responsibility to their people, their legal structure, and their tolerance for a few unfortunate deaths resulting from people who are medically ignorant making life-and-death medical decisions. In the case of many countries, their willingness to institute a system of controls -- that is, their willingness to pay for such a system -- enters as a big factor. The only direct comparison you can make is to the US before there was an FDA. It was much harder to get a centralized, reliable count in those days of how many people were winding up dead from taking the drugs then available. But the number was substantial. We can tell now, in a lot of cases, because those drugs have since been run through large clinical trials in which the results have been measured. That's an excellent foundation to convert the FDA upon too. That work will not be lost, its the basis for evolving healthcare. It won't be lost, but it's only available for drugs that are already available. New ones need new studies and analysis. Therefore only affecting new drugs, not the existing supply. Focusing then on new products, do you believe that a half billion dollars to release a new drug for, say, gout, is justified? for the same reason we got the FDA in the first place. Those greedy corporate types you're complaining about wouldn't mind killing many more people if they could get away with it. Testing on humans first is the way to make more money. That is not what I propose. Let the FDA provide online, honest, data on drugs and let the buyer comment and beware. You're proposing a system by which smart people save a few bucks, and not-so-smart people make minor mistakes and drop dead. I don't really like the sound of it. "A few bucks"????? We're talking thousands and tens of thousands of dollars per person! Do not extrapolate your health condition to the population at large. Not-smart people do not "drop dead" they don't medicate usually and if a few do "drop-dead" then that's life. Or death. Huh? Over 125,000 people die in the US each year from drug reactions and mistakes alone. Misprescribing leads to some of the reactions; lack of clinical-study information about drug interactions leads to most of them. That's not "a few" who are dropping dead. I'd have to see verification of that number before accepting it. As for the "tens of thousands of dollars per person," the average pharmaceutical bill in the US is $850/person. The way to cut that is with some reforms in health care and the way the pharma industry is regulated, not in deep-sixing the FDA, because it's the FDA that keeps that 125,000 deaths from being a much larger number. And the average health care cost is over $10,000 per person. We pop a hell of a lot of pills, and a lot of them are deadly if they're used ignorantly. I will not pay for stupidity or ignorance. Tough luck but that's the way the belly buttons. It's their life, if they don't do the homework that is not a societal problem nor responsibility. Note that I've actually been through the FDA approval process. Not responsible but as an independent contractor responsible for adhering to the requirements on glucose monitors, inhalation dispensers and patient monitoring systems. I should point out here that testing a medical device is NOTHING like testing a drug. It's much simpler, and it's done with much smaller cohorts, so it's vastly cheaper. You don't see $50 million studies for devices, as you often do for drugs. I think I mentioned elsewhere that a new drug requires roughly a half billion dollars to become FDA certified. That is intolerable. Half of that number is marketing. Cut the marketing, not the clinical studies or drug regulations. I don't care how much the marketing people get anymore. g Again, I'd have to see some verification of that claim. Not that it makes the FDA any less onerous, $250,000,000.00 is still intolerable. Generics, Canadian, and other sources are often 90% cheaper. Of course. Generics just ride on the research, testing, post-marketing studies and marketing that was done for the original drug. All they have to recover is manufacturing costs and quality-control reporting. In Canada, they have price controls and just refuse to allow the drug companies to amortize research and development. The Canadians, and the French, and the Brits, and everyone else knows that they can collect those costs in the US. How long do you think a pharmaceutical should have a monopoly? Is 17 years not enough? It depends on how you structure it. Some kind of regulated, extended and mandatory licensing would reduce prices and keep up enough income to fund big trials. And it's the big clinical trials that cost most of the money in pharma. Patented medicines are too expensive, but generics are too cheap. Precisely why I want to change the FDA to an advisory agency. Today it costs roughly half a billion dollars to bring a drug to market, that is irrational and runs the prices up so that the general tax fund must subsidize use. But what's the basis on which the FDA would "advise"? The last drug I worked on as an employee (rimonabant) was being sold in France, Germany, the UK, and parts of South America before three long-term studies ordered by the FDA turned up the problems with it. The Europeans got egg on their faces -- and some dead citizens -- because they didn't require the long-term studies. Now they're pulling back and black-boxing those drugs. But they never would have known the problems without those huge studies, which cost something like $100 million in total to run. There you go, publish those data, update as more data becomes available. Caveat emptor. That's precisely what they do. It's all available to the public, once it's submitted for FDA approval. I read around 360 studies related to the marketing for one drug, alone. Regarding "caveat emptor," how many do you have time to read? They run around 8 or 10 pages each, on the average, and they're not very entertaining. If my life is dependent upon the results I'll read every last one in detail. I've read thousands of clinical studies but I'll do the emptoring, and let the FDA do my caveating, thank you. d8-) That should be your option too but not my obligation to subsidize. Who pays for that if the FDA doesn't impose it as a requirement for approval? You're talking about going back to the dark ages of the drug business, when people died from taking drugs and no one knew the drug was involved in the deaths. Hell, no one even knew that the people who died had been taking the drugs. Statistical review can pull that data from the noise. People died in the example you offered even with testing. Many die even with the testing we have now. Many more would die without it. So? I'm not belittling your point, in fact I'll submit that it is true, but artificially extending a dying persons life simply isn't worth the cost in most cases. Not only test subjects but subjects who were denied the new medications but might have been helped. That's life. And death. **** happens, no one life is worth the cost of FDA regulations. FDA fast-tracks cancer drugs and many other critical drugs now. You might want to make the track faster. I think it's about right. It can be argued that limiting drugs as the FDA does costs lives too. I've read the arguments. The data is available. You'll find it with a good search on PubMed. snip You are one of the lucky, many cannot get insurance because they are under employed, unemployed, homeless. Yeah, we know. I'm very lucky. The year before last I paid insurance out of my pocket for six months, and it cost me almost $7,000. How would you change that inequity? Universal health care, with a single-payer system and optional supplemental insurance. Take the European and Canadian systems, analyze the good and the bad in each, and design a better one based on those experiences. You'll have to re-engineer a lot of the health care business to do it. Tort reform, reducing redundancies in testing facilities, etc. Very socialist-sounding. Very politically incorrect. But the only way to reduce costs and provide health care for everyone at the same time. The danger with it is not so much a case of limiting coverage (that will happen no matter what system you use, including our present free-for-all system), but rather limiting innovation. That part will require very careful work. Since the US is the last country of any substance without universal health care, this is where most of the innovation happens. The Europeans and others are tuned to our drum; they adjust their systems so they don't look too bad in the innovation department, given our example. It's hard to say how that would work if there was no free-for-all system like the US against which to compare oneself. It is a concern, if every major country has a controlled system. It's easy to become complacent if there is nothing against which to compare your results. I don't expect a universal system to work really well. I just expect it to produce a better result than we have now, in terms of health statistics. There is no way that it will produce as much innovation. You pay your money and take your choice. My choice is universal coverage. Mandated health insurance, right? What about those who do not want mandate health care? Screw 'em. And the opposition feels the same about your program. In fact there is more justification on the liberty side than the mandatory side given that we are a nation based upon individual liberties. As it is, they're winding up in the ER and taxpayers are footing the bill. Not a justification, stop doing that at the same time we cut the burden and make health care affordable. That argument is self justifying. This isn't Zimbabwe or the Sudan so we aren't going to just let them die, so ram health care coverage down their throats, for the same reason we don't let people drive without liability insurance. I'll fight you on using coercion every time. What you propose violates my freedom and monopolizes the health care industry. Yup. When your "freedom" becomes my tax bill, because you can't or won't cover your own ass, you've just forfeited some of your freedom, IMO. Or you can move out. That's your freedom. It's your tax bill because you voluntarily assume the costs, a self serving argument. Stop doing that and your justification evaporates. It is also a license to steal and further empowers the FDA monopoly. What's your gripe with the FDA? I can see bitching about Big Pharma, or hospitals, or doctors, but the FDA does a pretty good job, IMO. What is it you think they do? The FDA violates my right to choose and treats me like a child. I do not like being patronized by anyone, especially my government. Redirecting the FDA to an advisory agency would immediately chop off at least half the cost of health. Baloney. It would just speed up the casket business. Probably both. Remove the AMA monopoly and another quarter might be saved. Great. We'll let anybody put out a shingle. I told my wife, after studying endocrinology for some of my work, that maybe I should go into the business and start prescribing hormones. It would be a great experiment and fun, too. d8-) No prescriptions required, remember? Along with advising buyers on drugs the FDA must keep open records for health care providers, both the positives and negatives. If you like a provider then rate them, kind of like what Ebay does. Bad providers, snake oil salesmen, and charlatans are subject to fraud laws and would soon be out of business. FDA advisories should include herbs, vitamins and minerals too. There are many herbs that can be life threatening. I do not want them regulated either, I want my government to _inform_ me to the risks and allow me the liberty of self medication. Cutting health care costs by 75% would be easy and making care available to those who now cannot afford your care would save more lives than are now being lost. Hey, you aren't in the market for a Bridge to Nowhere by any chance, are you? Nope, I'm not a Trojan Moose. What we now have are a number of state protected monopolies which prevent competitive forces to rein in health care costs. I cannot/will not vote for that. Significant competitive forces don't exist in health care; never did, and never will. You don't shop around when you're having a heart attack. That is why health care is so expensive, no competition. $1,800 taxi rides (ambulance) for 1.5 miles and no alternative, intolerable. This transitions into the quality of care issue too. Another factor we've not discussed is the costs caused by AMA monopoly of providers. Midwives and alternative treatments have essentially been banned to create a monopoly. Then there is the FDA making many drugs prescription only. In fact some years ago the FDA stated that they would have made many current over the counter drugs a prescription item if they had it to do over. They are now trying to rectify that by regulating vitamins, minerals and even tobacco. We Americans have an aversion to reading about dead people who took drugs they were told were OK. **** happens. Life is not guaranteed safe. The government is only permitted to regulate fraud and crime, not what we ingest. I think the law disagrees with you on that. g You realize that I have a very low opinion of laws which violate my liberty, don't you? We have no obligation to obey anti-constitutional laws. shrug The Founding Fathers didn't anticipate CT scans and open-heart surgery. They were lucky to get leeches. The FDA wants to regulate the medicinal use of leeches too. Your ideas concerning pharma are ideological, abstract, and unreal based on what we know about drugs, Curly. You're laying out a prescription for ignorance and death. No one would know what drugs are causing what side effects and adverse outcomes; all you'd have is a collection of rumors, marketing claims, and guesswork. That is an unsupportable assertion and one that I disagree with deeply. Well, fine. Spend four or five years studying and writing about pharmaceuticals and health insurance, and we'll have another talk. When market forces are unleashed we also need to revamp fraud laws to keep the manufacturers honest but all major diseases have drug treatment now so the number of new drugs coming onto the market is smaller. And hideously more costly given the current FDA regulations. We cannot permit an industry to blackmail us for health care. You tell 'em. No, I pretty much ignore them but those still in the USA do not have my options. They are saddled with monopolies which rape, pillage, and destroy the economy, leave many with unacceptable or no health care, and enrichen the few at the expense of the many. That is not what America is about. We've gone beyond that and hardly anyone who knows the issues would want to go back. Your reactionary approach would result in a meaner and riskier health care system for everyone. It would be cheap, but it would leave a lot of bodies and maimed lives in its wake. Nope, all the current drug treatment programs would continue, no risk involved. Only new drugs coming onto the market might risk, advise the patient rather than burden the health care of every other individual on earth. This is where the FDA would come in, monitor the use of new drugs and provide statistical analysis of the effects for advising other users in the future. That's what they do now. Then they regulate the ones that would kill us off the market. That's about it. I do not want the FDA to "regulate" anything, I want the FDA to "advise" on much more than drugs. They should assist us in selection practitioners, herbs, minerals, vitamins, exercise programs, maternal care, infant care, all health related data. Governmental treatment as infants is not the American way. Nor is coercion, punishment, or regulation. -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
I'm voting republican because...
wrote:
(Ray Fischer) wrote: wrote: On Sep 16, 8:39*am, wf3h wrote: On Sep 15, 11:29*pm, wrote: On Sep 15, 11:40*pm, wf3h wrote: On Sep 15, 9:55*pm, wrote: The truth of your free health care is that I get to pay for mine and I get to pay for yours which you do now. it's just more expensive now than it would be under universal care. I get first dibs at the doctors under the present system. *And why shouldn't I? *I'm paying for it. so you enjoy having average health care for inflated prices? I enjoy paying my own way. Even if it costs you half again as much. Sucker. Just like when I buy a car. I could purchase a hundai or a lexus. Is anyone driving anything other than a hundai a sucker? You pay for a Lexus and get a Hyundai. yep sounds republican. Yeh, that whole, ummm, personal responsibility thingy really upsets some folks. If you're so in favor of "personal responsibility" then why don't you insist on higher taxes? Why don't you pay your taxes? Such an intelligent response. Under the squirrels and the hawkes system, I pay for theirs and I pay for mine, and some else says who gets dibs on appointments and treatments. never heard of an HMO did you? they tell you what doctors you'll go to, what treatment they'll pay for, etc. I could have selected the HMO route and paid less. *Instead I selected a Preferred Choice plan. As opposed to paying your own way? It is part of my compensation package. Smirk. There will always be an additional "co-pay" to keep malingerers from overtaxing the system. Doesn't seem to work that way in other countries. But you're a class bigot who hates poor people, aren't you? you really HAVE swallowed the GOP kool aid, haven't you? you don't have control over your health care at all. your boss does. your insurance company does. As it stands now, I can change plans and I can change bosses. And if you get sick or injured and can't work, you can't get any plan, you can't get any job, and you and your family go broke. Me? I keep myself employed. I make it a point to do so. I consider it my "responsibility" to provide for myself and my family. And what happens if you CANNOT work? What then? So should I have a catastrophic injury or health event, I'm covered. No, you're not. All the health plans limit payouts. The leading cause of personal bankruptcies is medical emergencies. And making health care free to everyone who doesn't work is going to make it better for me who is paying the bills? How? You are already paying for other people's health care. The medical industry raises prices in order to cover the expense of treating those who cannot pay. Once again: Health care in the US costs about 50% PER PERSON than it costs in any other industrial nation. Administrative overheads, profits, and inefficiences drive up the cost of health care in the US. -- Ray Fischer |
I'm voting republican because...
Curly Surmudgeon wrote:
Ray Fischer wrote: wrote: so you enjoy having average health care for inflated prices? I enjoy paying my own way. Even if it costs you half again as much. Half? Try 3x or 4x if health care were truly reformed removing the FDA and AMA monopolies. The per capita cost of health care in the US is 50% more than any other industrial nation. As it stands now, I can change plans and I can change bosses. And if you get sick or injured and can't work, you can't get any plan, you can't get any job, and you and your family go broke. The leading cause of personal bankruptcies is medical emergencies. Second leading cause, yes! Illness and medical bills caused half of the 1,458,000 personal bankruptcies in 2001, according to a study published by the journal Health Affairs. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...tcy_study.html -- Ray Fischer |
I'm voting republican because...
On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:15:33 +0000, Ray Fischer wrote:
Curly Surmudgeon wrote: Ray Fischer wrote: wrote: so you enjoy having average health care for inflated prices? I enjoy paying my own way. Even if it costs you half again as much. Half? Try 3x or 4x if health care were truly reformed removing the FDA and AMA monopolies. The per capita cost of health care in the US is 50% more than any other industrial nation. I'm not contesting your numbers, I'm asserting that costs could be one-half to one-quarter of current values. As it stands now, I can change plans and I can change bosses. And if you get sick or injured and can't work, you can't get any plan, you can't get any job, and you and your family go broke. The leading cause of personal bankruptcies is medical emergencies. Second leading cause, yes! Illness and medical bills caused half of the 1,458,000 personal bankruptcies in 2001, according to a study published by the journal Health Affairs. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...tcy_study.html That was true in 2005. Don't have the cites at hand but recently read a news article which said that personal, mainly credit card, debt was due to the bad economy. -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
I'm voting republican because...
On Sep 17, 10:13*pm, (Ray Fischer) wrote:
wrote: (Ray Fischer) wrote: wrote: On Sep 16, 8:39*am, wf3h wrote: On Sep 15, 11:29*pm, wrote: On Sep 15, 11:40*pm, wf3h wrote: On Sep 15, 9:55*pm, wrote: The truth of your free health care is that I get to pay for mine and I get to pay for yours which you do now. it's just more expensive now than it would be under universal care. I get first dibs at the doctors under the present system. *And why shouldn't I? *I'm paying for it. so you enjoy having average health care for inflated prices? I enjoy paying my own way. Even if it costs you half again as much. Sucker. Just like when I buy a car. *I could purchase a hundai or a lexus. *Is anyone driving anything other than a hundai a sucker? You pay for a Lexus and get a Hyundai. It's my money. Yet you insist that I buy us both hyundais. yep sounds republican. Yeh, that whole, ummm, personal responsibility thingy really upsets some folks. If you're so in favor of "personal responsibility" then why don't you insist on higher taxes? Why don't you pay your taxes? Such an intelligent response. Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Under the squirrels and the hawkes system, I pay for theirs and I pay for mine, and some else says who gets dibs on appointments and treatments. never heard of an HMO did you? they tell you what doctors you'll go to, what treatment they'll pay for, etc. I could have selected the HMO route and paid less. *Instead I selected a Preferred Choice plan. As opposed to paying your own way? It is part of my compensation package. Smirk. Some people even get a company car... *There will always be an additional "co-pay" to keep malingerers from overtaxing the system. Doesn't seem to work that way in other countries. Yet they still come here for services they can't get there. But you're a class bigot who hates poor people, aren't you? Is that what I am? you really HAVE swallowed the GOP kool aid, haven't you? you don't have control over your health care at all. your boss does. your insurance company does. As it stands now, I can change plans and I can change bosses. And if you get sick or injured and can't work, you can't get any plan, you can't get any job, and you and your family go broke. Me? *I keep myself employed. *I make it a point to do so. *I consider it my "responsibility" to provide for myself and my family. And what happens if you CANNOT work? *What then? Short term... sick leave, health insurance. Long term... workman's compensation, medical retirement, medicare, savings. So should I have a catastrophic injury or health event, I'm covered. No, you're not. *All the health plans limit payouts. And health care where there are double the number of folks covered won't be limited? Wow! Where does all the money come from? The leading cause of personal bankruptcies is medical emergencies. And making health care free to everyone who doesn't work is going to make it better for me who is paying the bills? *How? You are already paying for other people's health care. *The medical industry raises prices in order to cover the expense of treating those who cannot pay. Then what's the problem? Once again: *Health care in the US costs about 50% PER PERSON than it costs in any other industrial nation. *Administrative overheads, profits, and inefficiences drive up the cost of health care in the US. If it's 50% of what other countries pay then we're getting a deal. -- Ray Fischer * * * * *- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - |
I'm voting republican because... -- Another HH&C lie
On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:50:25 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote:
Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Cite? -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
I'm voting republican because...
wrote:
On Sep 17, 10:13*pm, (Ray Fischer) wrote: wrote: (Ray Fischer) wrote: wrote: so you enjoy having average health care for inflated prices? I enjoy paying my own way. Even if it costs you half again as much. Sucker. Just like when I buy a car. *I could purchase a hundai or a lexus. *Is anyone driving anything other than a hundai a sucker? You pay for a Lexus and get a Hyundai. It's my money. Yet you insist that I buy us both hyundais. Because of your greed and selfishness we all end up paying more. Yeh, that whole, ummm, personal responsibility thingy really upsets some folks. If you're so in favor of "personal responsibility" then why don't you insist on higher taxes? Why don't you pay your taxes? Such an intelligent response. Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Gesundheit. never heard of an HMO did you? they tell you what doctors you'll go to, what treatment they'll pay for, etc. I could have selected the HMO route and paid less. *Instead I selected a Preferred Choice plan. As opposed to paying your own way? It is part of my compensation package. Smirk. Some people even get a company car... COMPANY health care and COMPANY car. *There will always be an additional "co-pay" to keep malingerers from overtaxing the system. Doesn't seem to work that way in other countries. Yet they still come here for services they can't get there. Yet Americans still go to other countries for services they can't get here. But you're a class bigot who hates poor people, aren't you? Is that what I am? Is that an admission? As it stands now, I can change plans and I can change bosses. And if you get sick or injured and can't work, you can't get any plan, you can't get any job, and you and your family go broke. Me? *I keep myself employed. *I make it a point to do so. *I consider it my "responsibility" to provide for myself and my family. And what happens if you CANNOT work? *What then? Short term... sick leave, health insurance. Long term... workman's compensation, medical retirement, medicare, savings. A recent estimate put the lifetime cost of health care for seniors at $300,000 above medicare. One major illness and you'll double that. Workman's comp only applies to on-the-job injuries. So should I have a catastrophic injury or health event, I'm covered. No, you're not. *All the health plans limit payouts. And health care where there are double the number of folks covered won't be limited? Health care isn't limited. Peyments by insurance companies is limited. The leading cause of personal bankruptcies is medical emergencies. And making health care free to everyone who doesn't work is going to make it better for me who is paying the bills? *How? You are already paying for other people's health care. *The medical industry raises prices in order to cover the expense of treating those who cannot pay. Then what's the problem? The emergency care that people get when they're really sick is much more expensive than the routine care they'd get if there was a national health care. Once again: *Health care in the US costs about 50% PER PERSON than it costs in any other industrial nation. *Administrative overheads, profits, and inefficiences drive up the cost of health care in the US. If it's 50% of what other countries pay then we're getting a deal. 50% MORE than then next most expensive. -- Ray Fischer |
I'm voting republican because... -- Another HH&C lie
Ray Fischer wrote:
Curly Surmudgeon wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:50:25 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Cite? You know neocons - they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. Can you define "neocon?" |
I'm voting republican because... -- Another HH&C lie
|
I'm voting republican because... -- Another HH&C lie
On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:10:44 -0400, BAR wrote:
Ray Fischer wrote: Curly Surmudgeon wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:50:25 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Cite? You know neocons - they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. Can you define "neocon?" In one word, "liar." -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
I'm voting republican because... -- Another HH&C lie
BAR wrote:
Ray Fischer wrote: Curly Surmudgeon wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:50:25 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Cite? You know neocons - they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. Can you define "neocon?" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- February 19, 2006 After Neoconservatism By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point. The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles. The doctrine (elaborated, among other places, in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States) argued that, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, America would have to launch periodic preventive wars to defend itself against rogue states and terrorists with weapons of mass destruction; that it would do this alone, if necessary; and that it would work to democratize the greater Middle East as a long-term solution to the terrorist problem. But successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while America's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before. It is not surprising that in its second term, the administration has been distancing itself from these policies and is in the process of rewriting the National Security Strategy document. But it is the idealistic effort to use American power to promote democracy and human rights abroad that may suffer the greatest setback. Perceived failure in Iraq has restored the authority of foreign policy "realists" in the tradition of Henry Kissinger. Already there is a host of books and articles decrying America's naïve Wilsonianism and attacking the notion of trying to democratize the world. The administration's second-term efforts to push for greater Middle Eastern democracy, introduced with the soaring rhetoric of Bush's second Inaugural Address, have borne very problematic fruits. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood made a strong showing in Egypt's parliamentary elections in November and December. While the holding of elections in Iraq this past December was an achievement in itself, the vote led to the ascendance of a Shiite bloc with close ties to Iran (following on the election of the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran in June). But the clincher was the decisive Hamas victory in the Palestinian election last month, which brought to power a movement overtly dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In his second inaugural, Bush said that "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," but the charge will be made with increasing frequency that the Bush administration made a big mistake when it stirred the pot, and that the United States would have done better to stick by its traditional authoritarian friends in the Middle East. Indeed, the effort to promote democracy around the world has been attacked as an illegitimate activity both by people on the left like Jeffrey Sachs and by traditional conservatives like Pat Buchanan. The reaction against democracy promotion and an activist foreign policy may not end there. Those whom Walter Russell Mead labels Jacksonian conservatives - red-state Americans whose sons and daughters are fighting and dying in the Middle East - supported the Iraq war because they believed that their children were fighting to defend the United States against nuclear terrorism, not to promote democracy. They don't want to abandon the president in the middle of a vicious war, but down the road the perceived failure of the Iraq intervention may push them to favor a more isolationist foreign policy, which is a more natural political position for them. A recent Pew poll indicates a swing in public opinion toward isolationism; the percentage of Americans saying that the United States "should mind its own business" has never been higher since the end of the Vietnam War. More than any other group, it was the neoconservatives both inside and outside the Bush administration who pushed for democratizing Iraq and the broader Middle East. They are widely credited (or blamed) for being the decisive voices promoting regime change in Iraq, and yet it is their idealistic agenda that in the coming months and years will be the most directly threatened. Were the United States to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would in my view be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world. The problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as American as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a "realistic Wilsonianism" that better matches means to ends. The Neoconservative Legacy How did the neoconservatives end up overreaching to such an extent that they risk undermining their own goals? The Bush administration's first-term foreign policy did not flow ineluctably from the views of earlier generations of people who considered themselves neoconservatives, since those views were themselves complex and subject to differing interpretations. Four common principles or threads ran through much of this thought up through the end of the cold war: a concern with democracy, human rights and, more generally, the internal politics of states; a belief that American power can be used for moral purposes; a skepticism about the ability of international law and institutions to solve serious security problems; and finally, a view that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected consequences and thereby undermines its own ends. The problem was that two of these principles were in potential collision. The skeptical stance toward ambitious social engineering - which in earlier years had been applied mostly to domestic policies like affirmative action, busing and welfare - suggested a cautious approach toward remaking the world and an awareness that ambitious initiatives always have unanticipated consequences. The belief in the potential moral uses of American power, on the other hand, implied that American activism could reshape the structure of global politics. By the time of the Iraq war, the belief in the transformational uses of power had prevailed over the doubts about social engineering. In retrospect, things did not have to develop this way. The roots of neoconservatism lie in a remarkable group of largely Jewish intellectuals who attended City College of New York (C.C.N.Y.) in the mid- to late 1930's and early 1940's, a group that included Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Nathan Glazer and, a bit later, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The story of this group has been told in a number of places, most notably in a documentary film by Joseph Dorman called "Arguing the World." The most important inheritance from the C.C.N.Y. group was an idealistic belief in social progress and the universality of rights, coupled with intense anti-Communism. It is not an accident that many in the C.C.N.Y. group started out as Trotskyites. Leon Trotsky was, of course, himself a Communist, but his supporters came to understand better than most people the utter cynicism and brutality of the Stalinist regime. The anti-Communist left, in contrast to the traditional American right, sympathized with the social and economic aims of Communism, but in the course of the 1930's and 1940's came to realize that "real existing socialism" had become a monstrosity of unintended consequences that completely undermined the idealistic goals it espoused. While not all of the C.C.N.Y. thinkers became neoconservatives, the danger of good intentions carried to extremes was a theme that would underlie the life work of many members of this group. If there was a single overarching theme to the domestic social policy critiques issued by those who wrote for the neoconservative journal The Public Interest, founded by Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell in 1965, it was the limits of social engineering. Writers like Glazer, Moynihan and, later, Glenn Loury argued that ambitious efforts to seek social justice often left societies worse off than before because they either required massive state intervention that disrupted pre-existing social relations (for example, forced busing) or else produced unanticipated consequences (like an increase in single-parent families as a result of welfare). A major theme running through James Q. Wilson's extensive writings on crime was the idea that you could not lower crime rates by trying to solve deep underlying problems like poverty and racism; effective policies needed to focus on shorter-term measures that went after symptoms of social distress (like subway graffiti or panhandling) rather than root causes. How, then, did a group with such a pedigree come to decide that the "root cause" of terrorism lay in the Middle East's lack of democracy, that the United States had both the wisdom and the ability to fix this problem and that democracy would come quickly and painlessly to Iraq? Neoconservatives would not have taken this turn but for the peculiar way that the cold war ended. Ronald Reagan was ridiculed by sophisticated people on the American left and in Europe for labeling the Soviet Union and its allies an "evil empire" and for challenging Mikhail Gorbachev not just to reform his system but also to "tear down this wall." His assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, Richard Perle, was denounced as the "prince of darkness" for this uncompromising, hard-line position; his proposal for a double-zero in the intermediate-range nuclear arms negotiations (that is, the complete elimination of medium-range missiles) was attacked as hopelessly out of touch by the bien-pensant centrist foreign-policy experts at places like the Council on Foreign Relations and the State Department. That community felt that the Reaganites were dangerously utopian in their hopes for actually winning, as opposed to managing, the cold war. And yet total victory in the cold war is exactly what happened in 1989-91. Gorbachev accepted not only the double zero but also deep cuts in conventional forces, and then failed to stop the Polish, Hungarian and East German defections from the empire. Communism collapsed within a couple of years because of its internal moral weaknesses and contradictions, and with regime change in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact threat to the West evaporated. The way the cold war ended shaped the thinking of supporters of the Iraq war, including younger neoconservatives like William Kristol and Robert Kagan, in two ways. First, it seems to have created an expectation that all totalitarian regimes were hollow at the core and would crumble with a small push from outside. The model for this was Romania under the Ceausescus: once the wicked witch was dead, the munchkins would rise up and start singing joyously about their liberation. As Kristol and Kagan put it in their 2000 book "Present Dangers": "To many the idea of America using its power to promote changes of regime in nations ruled by dictators rings of utopianism. But in fact, it is eminently realistic. There is something perverse in declaring the impossibility of promoting democratic change abroad in light of the record of the past three decades." This overoptimism about postwar transitions to democracy helps explain the Bush administration's incomprehensible failure to plan adequately for the insurgency that subsequently emerged in Iraq. The war's supporters seemed to think that democracy was a kind of default condition to which societies reverted once the heavy lifting of coercive regime change occurred, rather than a long-term process of institution-building and reform. While they now assert that they knew all along that the democratic transformation of Iraq would be long and hard, they were clearly taken by surprise. According to George Packer's recent book on Iraq, "The Assassins' Gate," the Pentagon planned a drawdown of American forces to some 25,000 troops by the end of the summer following the invasion. By the 1990's, neoconservatism had been fed by several other intellectual streams. One came from the students of the German Jewish political theorist Leo Strauss, who, contrary to much of the nonsense written about him by people like Anne Norton and Shadia Drury, was a serious reader of philosophical texts who did not express opinions on contemporary politics or policy issues. Rather, he was concerned with the "crisis of modernity" brought on by the relativism of Nietzsche and Heidegger, as well as the fact that neither the claims of religion nor deeply-held opinions about the nature of the good life could be banished from politics, as the thinkers of the European Enlightenment had hoped. Another stream came from Albert Wohlstetter, a Rand Corporation strategist who was the teacher of Richard Perle, Zalmay Khalilzad (the current American ambassador to Iraq) and Paul Wolfowitz (the former deputy secretary of defense), among other people. Wohlstetter was intensely concerned with the problem of nuclear proliferation and the way that the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty left loopholes, in its support for "peaceful" nuclear energy, large enough for countries like Iraq and Iran to walk through. I have numerous affiliations with the different strands of the neoconservative movement. I was a student of Strauss's protégé Allan Bloom, who wrote the bestseller "The Closing of the American Mind"; worked at Rand and with Wohlstetter on Persian Gulf issues; and worked also on two occasions for Wolfowitz. Many people have also interpreted my book "The End of History and the Last Man" (1992) as a neoconservative tract, one that argued in favor of the view that there is a universal hunger for liberty in all people that will inevitably lead them to liberal democracy, and that we are living in the midst of an accelerating, transnational movement in favor of that liberal democracy. This is a misreading of the argument. "The End of History" is in the end an argument about modernization. What is initially universal is not the desire for liberal democracy but rather the desire to live in a modern - that is, technologically advanced and prosperous - society, which, if satisfied, tends to drive demands for political participation. Liberal democracy is one of the byproducts of this modernization process, something that becomes a universal aspiration only in the course of historical time. "The End of History," in other words, presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support. The Failure of Benevolent Hegemony The Bush administration and its neoconservative supporters did not simply underestimate the difficulty of bringing about congenial political outcomes in places like Iraq; they also misunderstood the way the world would react to the use of American power. Of course, the cold war was replete with instances of what the foreign policy analyst Stephen Sestanovich calls American maximalism, wherein Washington acted first and sought legitimacy and support from its allies only after the fact. But in the post-cold-war period, the structural situation of world politics changed in ways that made this kind of exercise of power much more problematic in the eyes of even close allies. After the fall of the Soviet Union, various neoconservative authors like Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol and Robert Kagan suggested that the United States would use its margin of power to exert a kind of "benevolent hegemony" over the rest of the world, fixing problems like rogue states with W.M.D., human rights abuses and terrorist threats as they came up. Writing before the Iraq war, Kristol and Kagan considered whether this posture would provoke resistance from the rest of the world, and concluded, "It is precisely because American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality that other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power." (Italics added.) It is hard to read these lines without irony in the wake of the global reaction to the Iraq war, which succeeded in uniting much of the world in a frenzy of anti-Americanism. The idea that the United States is a hegemon more benevolent than most is not an absurd one, but there were warning signs that things had changed in America's relationship to the world long before the start of the Iraq war. The structural imbalance in global power had grown enormous. America surpassed the rest of the world in every dimension of power by an unprecedented margin, with its defense spending nearly equal to that of the rest of the world combined. Already during the Clinton years, American economic hegemony had generated enormous hostility to an American-dominated process of globalization, frequently on the part of close democratic allies who thought the United States was seeking to impose its antistatist social model on them. There were other reasons as well why the world did not accept American benevolent hegemony. In the first place, it was premised on American exceptionalism, the idea that America could use its power in instances where others could not because it was more virtuous than other countries. The doctrine of pre-emption against terrorist threats contained in the 2002 National Security Strategy was one that could not safely be generalized through the international system; America would be the first country to object if Russia, China, India or France declared a similar right of unilateral action. The United States was seeking to pass judgment on others while being unwilling to have its own conduct questioned in places like the International Criminal Court. Another problem with benevolent hegemony was domestic. There are sharp limits to the American people's attention to foreign affairs and willingness to finance projects overseas that do not have clear benefits to American interests. Sept. 11 changed that calculus in many ways, providing popular support for two wars in the Middle East and large increases in defense spending. But the durability of the support is uncertain: although most Americans want to do what is necessary to make the project of rebuilding Iraq succeed, the aftermath of the invasion did not increase the public appetite for further costly interventions. Americans are not, at heart, an imperial people. Even benevolent hegemons sometimes have to act ruthlessly, and they need a staying power that does not come easily to people who are reasonably content with their own lives and society. Finally, benevolent hegemony presumed that the hegemon was not only well intentioned but competent as well. Much of the criticism of the Iraq intervention from Europeans and others was not based on a normative case that the United States was not getting authorization from the United Nations Security Council, but rather on the belief that it had not made an adequate case for invading Iraq in the first place and didn't know what it was doing in trying to democratize Iraq. In this, the critics were unfortunately quite prescient. The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism. Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally. The misjudgment was based in part on the massive failure of the American intelligence community to correctly assess the state of Iraq's W.M.D. programs before the war. But the intelligence community never took nearly as alarmist a view of the terrorist/W.M.D. threat as the war's supporters did. Overestimation of this threat was then used to justify the elevation of preventive war to the centerpiece of a new security strategy, as well as a whole series of measures that infringed on civil liberties, from detention policy to domestic eavesdropping. What to Do Now that the neoconservative moment appears to have passed, the United States needs to reconceptualize its foreign policy in several fundamental ways. In the first instance, we need to demilitarize what we have been calling the global war on terrorism and shift to other types of policy instruments. We are fighting hot counterinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and against the international jihadist movement, wars in which we need to prevail. But "war" is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle, since wars are fought at full intensity and have clear beginnings and endings. Meeting the jihadist challenge is more of a "long, twilight struggle" whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world. As recent events in France and Denmark suggest, Europe will be a central battleground in this fight. The United States needs to come up with something better than "coalitions of the willing" to legitimate its dealings with other countries. The world today lacks effective international institutions that can confer legitimacy on collective action; creating new organizations that will better balance the dual requirements of legitimacy and effectiveness will be the primary task for the coming generation. As a result of more than 200 years of political evolution, we have a relatively good understanding of how to create institutions that are rulebound, accountable and reasonably effective in the vertical silos we call states. What we do not have are adequate mechanisms of horizontal accountability among states. The conservative critique of the United Nations is all too cogent: while useful for certain peacekeeping and nation-building operations, the United Nations lacks both democratic legitimacy and effectiveness in dealing with serious security issues. The solution is not to strengthen a single global body, but rather to promote what has been emerging in any event, a "multi-multilateral world" of overlapping and occasionally competing international institutions that are organized on regional or functional lines. Kosovo in 1999 was a model: when the Russian veto prevented the Security Council from acting, the United States and its NATO allies simply shifted the venue to NATO, where the Russians could not block action. The final area that needs rethinking, and the one that will be the most contested in the coming months and years, is the place of democracy promotion in American foreign policy. The worst legacy that could come from the Iraq war would be an anti-neoconservative backlash that coupled a sharp turn toward isolation with a cynical realist policy aligning the United States with friendly authoritarians. Good governance, which involves not just democracy but also the rule of law and economic development, is critical to a host of outcomes we desire, from alleviating poverty to dealing with pandemics to controlling violent conflicts. A Wilsonian policy that pays attention to how rulers treat their citizens is therefore right, but it needs to be informed by a certain realism that was missing from the thinking of the Bush administration in its first term and of its neoconservative allies. We need in the first instance to understand that promoting democracy and modernization in the Middle East is not a solution to the problem of jihadist terrorism; in all likelihood it will make the short-term problem worse, as we have seen in the case of the Palestinian election bringing Hamas to power. Radical Islamism is a byproduct of modernization itself, arising from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. It is no accident that so many recent terrorists, from Sept. 11's Mohamed Atta to the murderer of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh to the London subway bombers, were radicalized in democratic Europe and intimately familiar with all of democracy's blessings. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalization and - yes, unfortunately - terrorism. But greater political participation by Islamist groups is very likely to occur whatever we do, and it will be the only way that the poison of radical Islamism can ultimately work its way through the body politic of Muslim communities around the world. The age is long since gone when friendly authoritarians could rule over passive populations and produce stability indefinitely. New social actors are mobilizing everywhere, from Bolivia and Venezuela to South Africa and the Persian Gulf. A durable Israeli-Palestinian peace could not be built upon a corrupt, illegitimate Fatah that constantly had to worry about Hamas challenging its authority. Peace might emerge, sometime down the road, from a Palestine run by a formerly radical terrorist group that had been forced to deal with the realities of governing. If we are serious about the good governance agenda, we have to shift our focus to the reform, reorganization and proper financing of those institutions of the United States government that actually promote democracy, development and the rule of law around the world, organizations like the State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the National Endowment for Democracy and the like. The United States has played an often decisive role in helping along many recent democratic transitions, including in the Philippines in 1986; South Korea and Taiwan in 1987; Chile in 1988; Poland and Hungary in 1989; Serbia in 2000; Georgia in 2003; and Ukraine in 2004-5. But the overarching lesson that emerges from these cases is that the United States does not get to decide when and where democracy comes about. By definition, outsiders can't "impose" democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective. The Bush administration has been walking - indeed, sprinting - away from the legacy of its first term, as evidenced by the cautious multilateral approach it has taken toward the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. Condoleezza Rice gave a serious speech in January about "transformational diplomacy" and has begun an effort to reorganize the nonmilitary side of the foreign-policy establishment, and the National Security Strategy document is being rewritten. All of these are welcome changes, but the legacy of the Bush first-term foreign policy and its neoconservative supporters has been so polarizing that it is going to be hard to have a reasoned debate about how to appropriately balance American ideals and interests in the coming years. The reaction against a flawed policy can be as damaging as the policy itself, and such a reaction is an indulgence we cannot afford, given the critical moment we have arrived at in global politics. Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world - ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about. Francis Fukuyama teaches at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. This essay is adapted from his book "America at the Crossroads," which will be published this month by Yale University Press. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top -- John R. Carroll www.machiningsolution.com |
I'm voting republican because... -- Another HH&C lie
"Ray Fischer" wrote in message ... Curly Surmudgeon wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:50:25 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Cite? You know neocons - they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. -- Ray Fischer You know liberal- they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. |
Curly admits to being a neocon
"Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message . .. On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:10:44 -0400, BAR wrote: Can you define "neocon?" In one word, "liar." -- Regards, Curly |
Curly takes the low road again.
"Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message . .. On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:52:18 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote: Feel free to prune as you feel fit, Ok pruned. Now let's talk about the way Curly lies and distorts the truth each time he is caught in a lie of his own. How can you tell Curly is lying? Easy, when his posts call someone else a liar, his nose grows another inch. It has to this date grown so long that it stretcheds around the world at pokes himself in the ass. Funny though, he doesn't notice and just thinks it's one of his countrymen in Argentina getting fresh. He gets all excited, but before he can discover that it's just his nose, he passes out from the fumes. By tomorrow, he will have penetrated himself, thus taking my advice, where I told him to go **** himself. |
Curly takes the low road again -- Another Jerrytm Lie
On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:41:12 -0500, Jerry wrote:
"Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message . .. On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:52:18 -0400, Ed Huntress wrote: Feel free to prune as you feel fit, Ok pruned. Now let's talk about the way Curly lies and distorts the truth each time he is caught in a lie of his own. How can you tell Curly is lying? Easy, when his posts call someone else a liar, his nose grows another inch. It has to this date grown so long that it stretcheds around the world at pokes himself in the ass. Funny though, he doesn't notice and just thinks it's one of his countrymen in Argentina getting fresh. He gets all excited, but before he can discover that it's just his nose, he passes out from the fumes. By tomorrow, he will have penetrated himself, thus taking my advice, where I told him to go **** himself. If you had found any evidence of my lying then you'd have broadcast it on Fox "News". I challenge you to show a single example, you cannot for it doesn't exist. That's why you're rightfully viewed as a lying troll. Now, pretend that you are HH&C or ACMH and babble the same bull****. Lies. -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
I'm voting republican because... -- Another HH&C lie
On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:55:33 +0000, RM V2.0 wrote:
"Ray Fischer" wrote in message ... Curly Surmudgeon wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:50:25 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Cite? You know neocons - they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. -- Ray Fischer You know liberal- they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. Kinda like neocons and Republicans but how many liberals are there here? I count only one or two with the majority in the middle 80% and a few right wing wackos. -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
Curly admits to being a neocon --Another "Jerry Lie"tm
On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:31:21 -0500, Jerry wrote:
"Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message . .. On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:10:44 -0400, BAR wrote: Can you define "neocon?" In one word, "liar." My but you're having a real tantrum today aren't you? If it bothers you so much getting caught in lies the solution is simple, don't do that... -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
I'm voting republican because...
On Sep 17, 10:24*am, Curly Surmudgeon
wrote: On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:44:13 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Why can't you grasp the concept of getting your own health care and quit mooching off of me? Do you have any evidence that he does? Only that the little squirrel, the little hawke, and him want to. |
I'm voting republican because... -- Another little squirrel lie
On Sep 18, 11:24*am, Curly Surmudgeon
wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:50:25 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Cite? You have a bad memory? |
Curly admits to being a neocon
On Sep 18, 7:31*pm, "Jerry" wrote:
"Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message . .. On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:10:44 -0400, BAR wrote: Can you define "neocon?" In one word, "liar." -- Regards, Curly- Looks like he's saying he's a neocon. |
I'm voting republican because... -- Another HH&C lie
On Sep 18, 2:55*pm, "RM V2.0" wrote:
"Ray Fischer" wrote in message ... Curly Surmudgeon wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:50:25 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama.. Cite? You know neocons - they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. -- Ray Fischer You know liberal- they like to make up facts to justify their *irrational agenda. I know the type... squirrely. |
I'm voting republican because... -- Another little squirrel lie
On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:46:26 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote:
On Sep 18, 11:24*am, Curly Surmudgeon wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:50:25 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Cite? You have a bad memory? As I thought, you made up more **** out of your fantasies. No cite, you're lying again. -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
I'm voting republican because...
On Sep 18, 1:10*pm, (Ray Fischer) wrote:
wrote: On Sep 17, 10:13*pm, (Ray Fischer) wrote: wrote: (Ray Fischer) wrote: wrote: so you enjoy having average health care for inflated prices? I enjoy paying my own way. Even if it costs you half again as much. Sucker. Just like when I buy a car. *I could purchase a hundai or a lexus. *Is anyone driving anything other than a hundai a sucker? You pay for a Lexus and get a Hyundai. It's my money. *Yet you insist that I buy us both hyundais. Because of your greed and selfishness we all end up paying more. My money. My problem. I can live with it. Yeh, that whole, ummm, personal responsibility thingy really upsets some folks. If you're so in favor of "personal responsibility" then why don't you insist on higher taxes? Why don't you pay your taxes? Such an intelligent response. Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Gesundheit. never heard of an HMO did you? they tell you what doctors you'll go to, what treatment they'll pay for, etc. I could have selected the HMO route and paid less. *Instead I selected a Preferred Choice plan. As opposed to paying your own way? It is part of my compensation package. Smirk. Some people even get a company car... COMPANY health care and COMPANY car. *There will always be an additional "co-pay" to keep malingerers from overtaxing the system. Doesn't seem to work that way in other countries. Yet they still come here for services they can't get there. Yet Americans still go to other countries for services they can't get here. But you're a class bigot who hates poor people, aren't you? Is that what I am? Is that an admission? Is that "honest dialog?" As it stands now, I can change plans and I can change bosses. And if you get sick or injured and can't work, you can't get any plan, you can't get any job, and you and your family go broke. Me? *I keep myself employed. *I make it a point to do so. *I consider it my "responsibility" to provide for myself and my family. And what happens if you CANNOT work? *What then? Short term... sick leave, health insurance. *Long term... workman's compensation, medical retirement, medicare, savings. A recent estimate put the lifetime cost of health care for seniors at $300,000 above medicare. *One major illness and you'll double that. Workman's comp only applies to on-the-job injuries. Then let's make sure I get injured off the job so your statistics come out right for you. So should I have a catastrophic injury or health event, I'm covered. No, you're not. *All the health plans limit payouts. And health care where there are double the number of folks covered won't be limited? Health care isn't limited. *Peyments by insurance companies is limited. Ahem, it's limited now. That's why I have it and the little squirrel, the little hawke, and you don't have it and want me to share mine. The leading cause of personal bankruptcies is medical emergencies. And making health care free to everyone who doesn't work is going to make it better for me who is paying the bills? *How? You are already paying for other people's health care. *The medical industry raises prices in order to cover the expense of treating those who cannot pay. Then what's the problem? The emergency care that people get when they're really sick is much more expensive than the routine care they'd get if there was a national health care. But you said $300,000 above medicare... and health care is unlimited. Do you even know what it is your talking about? Once again: *Health care in the US costs about 50% PER PERSON than it costs in any other industrial nation. *Administrative overheads, profits, and inefficiences drive up the cost of health care in the US. If it's 50% of what other countries pay then we're getting a deal. 50% MORE than then next most expensive. Oh, more than. Good thing I have a real job and can afford it. |
I'm voting republican because...
On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:38:07 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote:
On Sep 17, 10:24*am, Curly Surmudgeon wrote: On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:44:13 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Why can't you grasp the concept of getting your own health care and quit mooching off of me? Do you have any evidence that he does? Only that the little squirrel, the little hawke, and him want to. Cite? Betcha you're making up lies again. -- Regards, Curly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Love Republicans, They Taste Just Like Chickenhawks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ .................................................. ............... Posted via TITANnews - Uncensored Newsgroups Access at http://www.TitanNews.com -=Every Newsgroup - Anonymous, UNCENSORED, BROADBAND Downloads=- |
I'm voting republican because...
On Sep 17, 10:15*pm, (Ray Fischer) wrote:
Curly Surmudgeon wrote: Ray Fischer wrote: wrote: so you enjoy having average health care for inflated prices? I enjoy paying my own way. Even if it costs you half again as much. Half? *Try 3x or 4x if health care were truly reformed removing the FDA and AMA monopolies. The per capita cost of health care in the US is 50% more than any other industrial nation. Are you sure you don't want to go with the little squirrels numbers? It makes health care sound like it's even more of a problem, which is his goal. Energize the vote and all that. As it stands now, I can change plans and I can change bosses. And if you get sick or injured and can't work, you can't get any plan, you can't get any job, and you and your family go broke. The leading cause of personal bankruptcies is medical emergencies. Second leading cause, yes! * * Illness and medical bills caused half of the 1,458,000 personal * * bankruptcies in 2001, according to a study published by the * * journal Health Affairs. * *http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...tcy_study.html Hmmmm? Bankruptcies in 2001 were probably from costs incurred in 2000. Why didn't Bill Clinton take better care of America? |
I'm voting republican because... -- Another HH&C lie
"RM V2.0" wrote in message m... "Ray Fischer" wrote in message ... Curly Surmudgeon wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:50:25 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Cite? You know neocons - they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. -- Ray Fischer You know liberal- they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. Considering who has been in power and destroyed the country, maybe you should STFU. |
Health Care
Lets not get sidetracked into the health insurance debate for it masks the underlying problem. The fundamental problem is that our health care system has been hijacked by corporate powers making healthcare too expensive. Nonsense. The main thing that makes it so expensive is that medical technology marches forward, not backward, and there's always more stuff to apply to medical problems -- increasingly expensive stuff. That is one factor but there are many others such as malpractice insurance but the overriding component is that a corporate monopoly has seized control of the industry at large. Sure, Curley, malpractice insurance is a factor, and there are many other factors. It's not a single thing that's done all of it. But if you spend some time sorting out where the costs are you'll see that most of it boils down to the fact that doctors can -- and do -- employ more expensive drugs, procedures, and so on. I don't agree. It's all about treating a population and most of the population is healthy and doesn't require a lot of expensive procedures and medications. I think some amazing amount of health care dollars are spent on people in the last five years of their lives and something like the last six months equals more than what they spent on health care in their entire lives. So most people are not getting a lot of expensive procedures that cost an arm and a leg. g Technology has brought down the costs of some treatments but it's increased the cost of many more, and added hundreds, or thousands, of completely new ones. Couple that with the malpractice insurance mess, which leads to excessive testing and so on, and all of the technology is simply employed more. Just amortizing an MRI machine results in incredible costs for an MRI. I think my last one was $880, and took maybe 30 minutes of machine time and the time of two technicians. It's a multi-million-dollar machine and they charge shop time on amortization, just like in a machine shop. g In the old days, they'd just apply an educated guess to what's wrong in that joint or brain. An MRI in Japan costs $98. and the machines in the US are built there. If you stay in a room over night in Japan with three other people the cost is $100. The amount being charged for inexpensive procedures in this country is outrageous. Just going in an ambulance to the emergency room and being looked at costs thousands of dollars, which is ludicris. The prices people have to pay for the ordinary stuff is simply the worst rip off I have even seen. It would be like having to pay a thousand dollars to have an average front yard mowed by a kid. They are gouging the **** out of us at every level. Meantime, here's another one: I have a nice new insulin pump with feedback sitting in a box next to me, to be stuck into/onto me tomorrow. It cost $6,000. 35 years ago I had a 25-cent syringe and a $10/month bottle of insulin, and that was it, pard'. Pumps didn't exist. Neither did home blood-glucose monitoring. I just took a stab at it -- literally. g I got lucky and survived it with my limbs, kidneys, and eyes. Good luck for me. That' isn't a lot of money. I know of people that have gone to the emergency room and had 12 stitches taken in a finger and the cost was 12,000. The whole thing is a joke. On us. And it marches forward because people will pay for it, as an alternative to living in misery or dying. That substantiates my point. Let me give an example: My daughter had her first yeast infection. A simple anti-fungal yeast prescription was all that was required yet the doctor/hospital demanded a pregnancy test (she was/is virgin), blood panels, hormone tests, etc. running the price up to $4,600. Then they wanted to negotiate. Note that not a single curative action was taken. Right, but that's only marginally a "corporate powers" issue. That's mostly a "we don't want to be sued" issue. Take it up with the tort reformers. We can sure use some tort reform. No thanks. When you consider how much malpractice goes on and how many people doctors and nurses kill every year taking away the right to sue for legitimate damages is not in the interest of patients. Last I heard 80,000 people a year are killed in hospitals. You don't take the right to sue away from those people. Now, if you want to know what I do when I suspect a doctor/hospital is just running up my costs to keep the cash flowing to their own lab, I tell them "please write a prescription for the test procedure, and I'll check around to see where I want it done." Then I go look up the procedure and see if I really want to have it done at all. Most hospitals, particularly, are in desperate cash-flow situations now. It's not greed that drives it. It's their survival. In Argentina no prescription is required, just a visit to a local pharmacy with a short discussion to an educated pharmacist and a $7 prescription which I mailed to her. Cured the infection in 3 days. So, did she have this infection in the US or in Argentina? Health Care is essentially unavailable in the US without insurance. That is hijacking health care holding Americans hostage. Actually, that's not the case. Emergency rooms can't refuse you, and many people use ERs as their primary-care physicians. Then the rest of us pay for it. Yeah, and I hear right wingers bragging about how great our system is. You call that system great? There's always a ready market for new drugs and new medical technology. True, and sometimes the costs are justified. But recognize that a full 60% of new drugs are governmentally subsidized through university research then turned over to pharmaceuticals for manufacture and distribution with but a bare tithe to the university while Abbott et. al. gains usuary profits on our own tax dollar. sigh I'm well aware of how that works. My last job in a medical communication agency involved a drug on which Sanofi-Aventis had paid something like $135 million in development costs, and $110 million in pre-approval marketing costs (which was paying my salary). Then the FDA decided not to approve the drug. So my company laid half of us off. d8-) The basic research on that drug was not from a university, however. I know that a lot of the basic research is done in universities. What you may not know is that the testing that the pharma companies have to go through after some basic-science lab makes a discovery often costs ten times more than the basic research. What you may not know is that after all the money that big pharma has to invest to come up with new drugs, and it is a lot, they still come out way, way, way, ahead. Take a look at the balance sheets of the top dozen pharmaceutical companies. I think you'll find that they are incredibly profitable. In fact, the have much higher profit margins than the oil companies do. So don't buy the sad story from pharma about how much they have to put out to find drugs. In the end they wind up laughing all the way to the bank. Generics, Canadian, and other sources are often 90% cheaper. Of course. Generics just ride on the research, testing, post-marketing studies and marketing that was done for the original drug. All they have to recover is manufacturing costs and quality-control reporting. In Canada, they have price controls and just refuse to allow the drug companies to amortize research and development. The Canadians, and the French, and the Brits, and everyone else knows that they can collect those costs in the US. Don't like it? Talk to your congressman. The money has to come from somewhere, or nobody will have any new drugs. As long as the creation of new drugs results in billions in profits there will always be more new ones in the pipeline. I don't see any end to that in the near future either. Health care insurance is just another facade by those who have plundered our economy. Have you tried to get a doctors appointment without insurance? Ask Larry. Non responsive. Oh, Larry is quite responsive, and he has no insurance. He's the one to ask. I guess he's taking the bet that he will not be the one who winds up needing the expensive health care. Insurance is betting you will be healthy. You are betting you won't if you pay for insurance. He may wind up the winner. I think statistically he's got the number in his favor. Of course, it only takes one biggie to bankrupt him. On the other hand people with insurance go bankrupt all the time. Maybe he's on to something. I've had insurance without a break for decades, excepting one gap of a few months when my COBRA ran out and I was having trouble getting new insurance. (My doctors knew it, and took me anyway.) So I don't know what it's like now. That means so far your luck is holding. If Obama wins we'll all be winners. With a Democratic house, senate, and president I think universal health care will likely be on its way. I hope so. I have to admit I have never understood why business didn't want it? It will remove one of business' biggest expenses if we get national health care. I think they are crazy to oppose it. It would put them on a level playing ground with the rest of the world. But since most businessmen are republicans it makes sense that they would be too stupid to know it would be good for them and they woulk oppose it on principle. You know, like they oppose government intervention in the markets, unless they are losing a lot of money. Hawke |
I'm voting republican because...
wrote in message ... On Sep 16, 1:22 pm, "John R. Carroll" wrote: wrote: On Sep 12, 5:14 pm, "Hawke" wrote: CLINTON dropped the ball on this one. snip How come you don't address the fact that Clinton could have gotten OBL a number of times but didn't? Was it above his pay grade? (Good thing OBL didn't change his name to "Vince Foster") Don't confuse Ms Carrol with the ugly truth. Your "truth" is a lie told originally by NewsMax. Read the 9/11 Commission Report for the truth. http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_...tatement_5.pdf (bottom of page 3): If you think that by informing our right wingers of the truth about the subject it will have any effect on their beliefs you are out of your mind. The point is those guys don't care about the truth so informing them won't do any good. They believe what they want to believe and even if you show them they are wrong they still won't change their minds. That's just the way they are. Hawke The truth of your free health care is that I get to pay for mine and I get to pay for yours. A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan. There is nothing secret about Senator McCain's far-reaching proposals, but they haven't gotten much attention because the chatter in this campaign has mostly been about nonsense - lipstick, celebrities and "Drill, baby, drill!" For starters, the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on. "It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money," said Sherry Glied, an economist who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Ms. Glied is one of the four scholars who have just completed an independent joint study of the plan. Their findings are being published on the Web site of the policy journal, Health Affairs. http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2008/0...ninsured-cheap... According to the study: "The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system - the nongroup market - where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now." The net effect of the plan, the study said, "almost certainly will be to increase family costs for medical care." Under the McCain plan (now the McCain-Palin plan) employees who continue to receive employer-paid health benefits would look at their pay stubs each week or each month and find that additional money had been withheld to cover the taxes on the value of their benefits. -- John R. Carroll www.machiningsolution.com- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - What did their study show under the Obama/Weasel health care plan? It showed that even bone heads like you will be better off than you are now in spite of the fact that you are not bright enough to realize it. Hawke |
I'm voting republican because... -- Another HH&C lie
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message ... BAR wrote: Ray Fischer wrote: Curly Surmudgeon wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:50:25 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Cite? You know neocons - they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. Can you define "neocon?" -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- ---- February 19, 2006 After Neoconservatism By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point. The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles. The doctrine (elaborated, among other places, in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States) argued that, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, America would have to launch periodic preventive wars to defend itself against rogue states and terrorists with weapons of mass destruction; that it would do this alone, if necessary; and that it would work to democratize the greater Middle East as a long-term solution to the terrorist problem. But successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while America's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before. It is not surprising that in its second term, the administration has been distancing itself from these policies and is in the process of rewriting the National Security Strategy document. But it is the idealistic effort to use American power to promote democracy and human rights abroad that may suffer the greatest setback. Perceived failure in Iraq has restored the authority of foreign policy "realists" in the tradition of Henry Kissinger. Already there is a host of books and articles decrying America's naïve Wilsonianism and attacking the notion of trying to democratize the world. The administration's second-term efforts to push for greater Middle Eastern democracy, introduced with the soaring rhetoric of Bush's second Inaugural Address, have borne very problematic fruits. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood made a strong showing in Egypt's parliamentary elections in November and December. While the holding of elections in Iraq this past December was an achievement in itself, the vote led to the ascendance of a Shiite bloc with close ties to Iran (following on the election of the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran in June). But the clincher was the decisive Hamas victory in the Palestinian election last month, which brought to power a movement overtly dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In his second inaugural, Bush said that "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," but the charge will be made with increasing frequency that the Bush administration made a big mistake when it stirred the pot, and that the United States would have done better to stick by its traditional authoritarian friends in the Middle East. Indeed, the effort to promote democracy around the world has been attacked as an illegitimate activity both by people on the left like Jeffrey Sachs and by traditional conservatives like Pat Buchanan. The reaction against democracy promotion and an activist foreign policy may not end there. Those whom Walter Russell Mead labels Jacksonian conservatives - red-state Americans whose sons and daughters are fighting and dying in the Middle East - supported the Iraq war because they believed that their children were fighting to defend the United States against nuclear terrorism, not to promote democracy. They don't want to abandon the president in the middle of a vicious war, but down the road the perceived failure of the Iraq intervention may push them to favor a more isolationist foreign policy, which is a more natural political position for them. A recent Pew poll indicates a swing in public opinion toward isolationism; the percentage of Americans saying that the United States "should mind its own business" has never been higher since the end of the Vietnam War. More than any other group, it was the neoconservatives both inside and outside the Bush administration who pushed for democratizing Iraq and the broader Middle East. They are widely credited (or blamed) for being the decisive voices promoting regime change in Iraq, and yet it is their idealistic agenda that in the coming months and years will be the most directly threatened. Were the United States to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would in my view be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world. The problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as American as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a "realistic Wilsonianism" that better matches means to ends. The Neoconservative Legacy How did the neoconservatives end up overreaching to such an extent that they risk undermining their own goals? The Bush administration's first-term foreign policy did not flow ineluctably from the views of earlier generations of people who considered themselves neoconservatives, since those views were themselves complex and subject to differing interpretations. Four common principles or threads ran through much of this thought up through the end of the cold war: a concern with democracy, human rights and, more generally, the internal politics of states; a belief that American power can be used for moral purposes; a skepticism about the ability of international law and institutions to solve serious security problems; and finally, a view that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected consequences and thereby undermines its own ends. The problem was that two of these principles were in potential collision. The skeptical stance toward ambitious social engineering - which in earlier years had been applied mostly to domestic policies like affirmative action, busing and welfare - suggested a cautious approach toward remaking the world and an awareness that ambitious initiatives always have unanticipated consequences. The belief in the potential moral uses of American power, on the other hand, implied that American activism could reshape the structure of global politics. By the time of the Iraq war, the belief in the transformational uses of power had prevailed over the doubts about social engineering. In retrospect, things did not have to develop this way. The roots of neoconservatism lie in a remarkable group of largely Jewish intellectuals who attended City College of New York (C.C.N.Y.) in the mid- to late 1930's and early 1940's, a group that included Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Nathan Glazer and, a bit later, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The story of this group has been told in a number of places, most notably in a documentary film by Joseph Dorman called "Arguing the World." The most important inheritance from the C.C.N.Y. group was an idealistic belief in social progress and the universality of rights, coupled with intense anti-Communism. It is not an accident that many in the C.C.N.Y. group started out as Trotskyites. Leon Trotsky was, of course, himself a Communist, but his supporters came to understand better than most people the utter cynicism and brutality of the Stalinist regime. The anti-Communist left, in contrast to the traditional American right, sympathized with the social and economic aims of Communism, but in the course of the 1930's and 1940's came to realize that "real existing socialism" had become a monstrosity of unintended consequences that completely undermined the idealistic goals it espoused. While not all of the C.C.N.Y. thinkers became neoconservatives, the danger of good intentions carried to extremes was a theme that would underlie the life work of many members of this group. If there was a single overarching theme to the domestic social policy critiques issued by those who wrote for the neoconservative journal The Public Interest, founded by Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell in 1965, it was the limits of social engineering. Writers like Glazer, Moynihan and, later, Glenn Loury argued that ambitious efforts to seek social justice often left societies worse off than before because they either required massive state intervention that disrupted pre-existing social relations (for example, forced busing) or else produced unanticipated consequences (like an increase in single-parent families as a result of welfare). A major theme running through James Q. Wilson's extensive writings on crime was the idea that you could not lower crime rates by trying to solve deep underlying problems like poverty and racism; effective policies needed to focus on shorter-term measures that went after symptoms of social distress (like subway graffiti or panhandling) rather than root causes. How, then, did a group with such a pedigree come to decide that the "root cause" of terrorism lay in the Middle East's lack of democracy, that the United States had both the wisdom and the ability to fix this problem and that democracy would come quickly and painlessly to Iraq? Neoconservatives would not have taken this turn but for the peculiar way that the cold war ended. Ronald Reagan was ridiculed by sophisticated people on the American left and in Europe for labeling the Soviet Union and its allies an "evil empire" and for challenging Mikhail Gorbachev not just to reform his system but also to "tear down this wall." His assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, Richard Perle, was denounced as the "prince of darkness" for this uncompromising, hard-line position; his proposal for a double-zero in the intermediate-range nuclear arms negotiations (that is, the complete elimination of medium-range missiles) was attacked as hopelessly out of touch by the bien-pensant centrist foreign-policy experts at places like the Council on Foreign Relations and the State Department. That community felt that the Reaganites were dangerously utopian in their hopes for actually winning, as opposed to managing, the cold war. And yet total victory in the cold war is exactly what happened in 1989-91. Gorbachev accepted not only the double zero but also deep cuts in conventional forces, and then failed to stop the Polish, Hungarian and East German defections from the empire. Communism collapsed within a couple of years because of its internal moral weaknesses and contradictions, and with regime change in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact threat to the West evaporated. The way the cold war ended shaped the thinking of supporters of the Iraq war, including younger neoconservatives like William Kristol and Robert Kagan, in two ways. First, it seems to have created an expectation that all totalitarian regimes were hollow at the core and would crumble with a small push from outside. The model for this was Romania under the Ceausescus: once the wicked witch was dead, the munchkins would rise up and start singing joyously about their liberation. As Kristol and Kagan put it in their 2000 book "Present Dangers": "To many the idea of America using its power to promote changes of regime in nations ruled by dictators rings of utopianism. But in fact, it is eminently realistic. There is something perverse in declaring the impossibility of promoting democratic change abroad in light of the record of the past three decades." This overoptimism about postwar transitions to democracy helps explain the Bush administration's incomprehensible failure to plan adequately for the insurgency that subsequently emerged in Iraq. The war's supporters seemed to think that democracy was a kind of default condition to which societies reverted once the heavy lifting of coercive regime change occurred, rather than a long-term process of institution-building and reform. While they now assert that they knew all along that the democratic transformation of Iraq would be long and hard, they were clearly taken by surprise. According to George Packer's recent book on Iraq, "The Assassins' Gate," the Pentagon planned a drawdown of American forces to some 25,000 troops by the end of the summer following the invasion. By the 1990's, neoconservatism had been fed by several other intellectual streams. One came from the students of the German Jewish political theorist Leo Strauss, who, contrary to much of the nonsense written about him by people like Anne Norton and Shadia Drury, was a serious reader of philosophical texts who did not express opinions on contemporary politics or policy issues. Rather, he was concerned with the "crisis of modernity" brought on by the relativism of Nietzsche and Heidegger, as well as the fact that neither the claims of religion nor deeply-held opinions about the nature of the good life could be banished from politics, as the thinkers of the European Enlightenment had hoped. Another stream came from Albert Wohlstetter, a Rand Corporation strategist who was the teacher of Richard Perle, Zalmay Khalilzad (the current American ambassador to Iraq) and Paul Wolfowitz (the former deputy secretary of defense), among other people. Wohlstetter was intensely concerned with the problem of nuclear proliferation and the way that the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty left loopholes, in its support for "peaceful" nuclear energy, large enough for countries like Iraq and Iran to walk through. I have numerous affiliations with the different strands of the neoconservative movement. I was a student of Strauss's protégé Allan Bloom, who wrote the bestseller "The Closing of the American Mind"; worked at Rand and with Wohlstetter on Persian Gulf issues; and worked also on two occasions for Wolfowitz. Many people have also interpreted my book "The End of History and the Last Man" (1992) as a neoconservative tract, one that argued in favor of the view that there is a universal hunger for liberty in all people that will inevitably lead them to liberal democracy, and that we are living in the midst of an accelerating, transnational movement in favor of that liberal democracy. This is a misreading of the argument. "The End of History" is in the end an argument about modernization. What is initially universal is not the desire for liberal democracy but rather the desire to live in a modern - that is, technologically advanced and prosperous - society, which, if satisfied, tends to drive demands for political participation. Liberal democracy is one of the byproducts of this modernization process, something that becomes a universal aspiration only in the course of historical time. "The End of History," in other words, presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support. The Failure of Benevolent Hegemony The Bush administration and its neoconservative supporters did not simply underestimate the difficulty of bringing about congenial political outcomes in places like Iraq; they also misunderstood the way the world would react to the use of American power. Of course, the cold war was replete with instances of what the foreign policy analyst Stephen Sestanovich calls American maximalism, wherein Washington acted first and sought legitimacy and support from its allies only after the fact. But in the post-cold-war period, the structural situation of world politics changed in ways that made this kind of exercise of power much more problematic in the eyes of even close allies. After the fall of the Soviet Union, various neoconservative authors like Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol and Robert Kagan suggested that the United States would use its margin of power to exert a kind of "benevolent hegemony" over the rest of the world, fixing problems like rogue states with W.M.D., human rights abuses and terrorist threats as they came up. Writing before the Iraq war, Kristol and Kagan considered whether this posture would provoke resistance from the rest of the world, and concluded, "It is precisely because American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality that other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power." (Italics added.) It is hard to read these lines without irony in the wake of the global reaction to the Iraq war, which succeeded in uniting much of the world in a frenzy of anti-Americanism. The idea that the United States is a hegemon more benevolent than most is not an absurd one, but there were warning signs that things had changed in America's relationship to the world long before the start of the Iraq war. The structural imbalance in global power had grown enormous. America surpassed the rest of the world in every dimension of power by an unprecedented margin, with its defense spending nearly equal to that of the rest of the world combined. Already during the Clinton years, American economic hegemony had generated enormous hostility to an American-dominated process of globalization, frequently on the part of close democratic allies who thought the United States was seeking to impose its antistatist social model on them. There were other reasons as well why the world did not accept American benevolent hegemony. In the first place, it was premised on American exceptionalism, the idea that America could use its power in instances where others could not because it was more virtuous than other countries. The doctrine of pre-emption against terrorist threats contained in the 2002 National Security Strategy was one that could not safely be generalized through the international system; America would be the first country to object if Russia, China, India or France declared a similar right of unilateral action. The United States was seeking to pass judgment on others while being unwilling to have its own conduct questioned in places like the International Criminal Court. Another problem with benevolent hegemony was domestic. There are sharp limits to the American people's attention to foreign affairs and willingness to finance projects overseas that do not have clear benefits to American interests. Sept. 11 changed that calculus in many ways, providing popular support for two wars in the Middle East and large increases in defense spending. But the durability of the support is uncertain: although most Americans want to do what is necessary to make the project of rebuilding Iraq succeed, the aftermath of the invasion did not increase the public appetite for further costly interventions. Americans are not, at heart, an imperial people. Even benevolent hegemons sometimes have to act ruthlessly, and they need a staying power that does not come easily to people who are reasonably content with their own lives and society. Finally, benevolent hegemony presumed that the hegemon was not only well intentioned but competent as well. Much of the criticism of the Iraq intervention from Europeans and others was not based on a normative case that the United States was not getting authorization from the United Nations Security Council, but rather on the belief that it had not made an adequate case for invading Iraq in the first place and didn't know what it was doing in trying to democratize Iraq. In this, the critics were unfortunately quite prescient. The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism. Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally. The misjudgment was based in part on the massive failure of the American intelligence community to correctly assess the state of Iraq's W.M.D. programs before the war. But the intelligence community never took nearly as alarmist a view of the terrorist/W.M.D. threat as the war's supporters did. Overestimation of this threat was then used to justify the elevation of preventive war to the centerpiece of a new security strategy, as well as a whole series of measures that infringed on civil liberties, from detention policy to domestic eavesdropping. What to Do Now that the neoconservative moment appears to have passed, the United States needs to reconceptualize its foreign policy in several fundamental ways. In the first instance, we need to demilitarize what we have been calling the global war on terrorism and shift to other types of policy instruments. We are fighting hot counterinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and against the international jihadist movement, wars in which we need to prevail. But "war" is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle, since wars are fought at full intensity and have clear beginnings and endings. Meeting the jihadist challenge is more of a "long, twilight struggle" whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world. As recent events in France and Denmark suggest, Europe will be a central battleground in this fight. The United States needs to come up with something better than "coalitions of the willing" to legitimate its dealings with other countries. The world today lacks effective international institutions that can confer legitimacy on collective action; creating new organizations that will better balance the dual requirements of legitimacy and effectiveness will be the primary task for the coming generation. As a result of more than 200 years of political evolution, we have a relatively good understanding of how to create institutions that are rulebound, accountable and reasonably effective in the vertical silos we call states. What we do not have are adequate mechanisms of horizontal accountability among states. The conservative critique of the United Nations is all too cogent: while useful for certain peacekeeping and nation-building operations, the United Nations lacks both democratic legitimacy and effectiveness in dealing with serious security issues. The solution is not to strengthen a single global body, but rather to promote what has been emerging in any event, a "multi-multilateral world" of overlapping and occasionally competing international institutions that are organized on regional or functional lines. Kosovo in 1999 was a model: when the Russian veto prevented the Security Council from acting, the United States and its NATO allies simply shifted the venue to NATO, where the Russians could not block action. The final area that needs rethinking, and the one that will be the most contested in the coming months and years, is the place of democracy promotion in American foreign policy. The worst legacy that could come from the Iraq war would be an anti-neoconservative backlash that coupled a sharp turn toward isolation with a cynical realist policy aligning the United States with friendly authoritarians. Good governance, which involves not just democracy but also the rule of law and economic development, is critical to a host of outcomes we desire, from alleviating poverty to dealing with pandemics to controlling violent conflicts. A Wilsonian policy that pays attention to how rulers treat their citizens is therefore right, but it needs to be informed by a certain realism that was missing from the thinking of the Bush administration in its first term and of its neoconservative allies. We need in the first instance to understand that promoting democracy and modernization in the Middle East is not a solution to the problem of jihadist terrorism; in all likelihood it will make the short-term problem worse, as we have seen in the case of the Palestinian election bringing Hamas to power. Radical Islamism is a byproduct of modernization itself, arising from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. It is no accident that so many recent terrorists, from Sept. 11's Mohamed Atta to the murderer of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh to the London subway bombers, were radicalized in democratic Europe and intimately familiar with all of democracy's blessings. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalization and - yes, unfortunately - terrorism. But greater political participation by Islamist groups is very likely to occur whatever we do, and it will be the only way that the poison of radical Islamism can ultimately work its way through the body politic of Muslim communities around the world. The age is long since gone when friendly authoritarians could rule over passive populations and produce stability indefinitely. New social actors are mobilizing everywhere, from Bolivia and Venezuela to South Africa and the Persian Gulf. A durable Israeli-Palestinian peace could not be built upon a corrupt, illegitimate Fatah that constantly had to worry about Hamas challenging its authority. Peace might emerge, sometime down the road, from a Palestine run by a formerly radical terrorist group that had been forced to deal with the realities of governing. If we are serious about the good governance agenda, we have to shift our focus to the reform, reorganization and proper financing of those institutions of the United States government that actually promote democracy, development and the rule of law around the world, organizations like the State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the National Endowment for Democracy and the like. The United States has played an often decisive role in helping along many recent democratic transitions, including in the Philippines in 1986; South Korea and Taiwan in 1987; Chile in 1988; Poland and Hungary in 1989; Serbia in 2000; Georgia in 2003; and Ukraine in 2004-5. But the overarching lesson that emerges from these cases is that the United States does not get to decide when and where democracy comes about. By definition, outsiders can't "impose" democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective. The Bush administration has been walking - indeed, sprinting - away from the legacy of its first term, as evidenced by the cautious multilateral approach it has taken toward the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. Condoleezza Rice gave a serious speech in January about "transformational diplomacy" and has begun an effort to reorganize the nonmilitary side of the foreign-policy establishment, and the National Security Strategy document is being rewritten. All of these are welcome changes, but the legacy of the Bush first-term foreign policy and its neoconservative supporters has been so polarizing that it is going to be hard to have a reasoned debate about how to appropriately balance American ideals and interests in the coming years. The reaction against a flawed policy can be as damaging as the policy itself, and such a reaction is an indulgence we cannot afford, given the critical moment we have arrived at in global politics. Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world - ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about. Francis Fukuyama teaches at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. This essay is adapted from his book "America at the Crossroads," which will be published this month by Yale University Press. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top John R. Carroll www.machiningsolution.com You need to forward this to Sara Palin. She's going to need to know this if she expects to put on a good performance in her coming debate. It would also be helpful to know this stuff when she is being interviewed. Hawke |
I'm voting republican because... -- Another HH&C lie
"RM V2.0" wrote in message m... "Ray Fischer" wrote in message ... Curly Surmudgeon wrote: On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:50:25 -0700, hot-ham-and-cheese wrote: Squirrely doesn't or at least says he won't be paying any under Obama. Cite? You know neocons - they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. -- Ray Fischer You know liberal- they like to make up facts to justify their irrational agenda. Can't think of anything to say all by yourself? The best you can do is alter what others say? Not very original, are you? You're a right winger! Hawke |
Curly admits to being a neocon
"Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message . .. On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:31:21 -0500, Jerry wrote: "Curly Surmudgeon" wrote in message . .. On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:10:44 -0400, BAR wrote: Can you define "neocon?" In one word, "liar." My but you're having a real tantrum today aren't you? If it bothers you so much getting caught in lies the solution is simple, don't do that... Hardly. You are the one who is lying. I'm enjoying pointing out the lies. |
| All times are GMT +1. The time now is 12:18 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Copyright ©2000 - 2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004 - 2014 BoatBanter.com