People forget that the "free market" only operates to the consumer's benefit when there is perfect competition. Most brand name drugs are on patent, which means the company making them has a monopoly on them.
I've already stated that American IP laws need to be severely curtailed/overhauled.
When you only have one company that make the product in a given market, it can charge any price it wants and the customer has no choice but to pay. The customer, in this case, is a patient suffering from a disease not of his own making, whose health is at the mercy of a greedy corporation. He can't afford to refuse to buy.
I dunno, dude. If I had trouble getting it up, I'm not sure that I would buy Viagra even at generic prices.
I think a far better question is why we are not allowed to purchase those drugs from those Canadian or European vendors when they are far cheaper. The excuse is apparently that the FDA has not approved those drugs from such backward countries manufactured by vendors who might be trying to kill you, even if they are exactly the same manufacturer.
I think that is preposterous. We should be allowed to take that massive risk if we desire to do so.
The stupidity swings both ways, actually. While the USA should certainly not be throwing a hissy fit over re-importing those drugs that we exported to Canada in the first place, I also have to wonder why the Canadian government is negotiating for lower drug prices for non-Canadians...
Not really, if patents didnt exist in this case and all competitiors could have access to say company A's data then it would just be an oligarchic industry with very similar results to a monopoly.
Not really. If patents didn't exist, there would be no incentive for these companies to do any R&D at all, and we'd never get new drugs.
The NHS is a effective form of regulation. It saves lives. We pay with taxes. This means anyone can have healthcare. We are happy to not be in the state of the American health services.
Will you be saying the same thing when you get diagnosed with cancer and they put you on the dreaded Waiting List?
I mean, I know the American medical system is screwed up, but what makes everyone think that UHC is the sole alternative?
Because once a scientist starts to work for the FDA or some other government agency he forgets that humans are not rats and becomes a total moron
Of course not. It's not the
scientists who work for the FDA, but the
bureaucrats who run the FDA, who are the total morons. They're the ones who mandate animal testing before moving on to human trials.
That was his point, wasn't it- that the marker is currently constructed in a fashion contrary to consumer interests, and that this isn't properly addressed by the lolbertarians?
Libertarians are sharply divided on the issues of intellectual property, abortion, and capital punishment. When it comes to IP laws, I tend to fly the Jolly Roger, and I don't believe that things like drugs or "Roundup-ready" soybeans should be patentable, though they can be trade secrets like the Colonel's secret blend, and methods of manufacturing them should be patentable.
This is a perfect example of GOOD drug regulations.
Excuse me, but this regulation has DESTROYED MY LIFE and very nearly ENDED it. What's so "good" about that?
I do not know the details of this drug in particular
Then you need to STFU. Seriously.
If you're curious, though, Seconal is the trade name of secobarbital, which is a member of the barbiturate class of drugs. Barbiturates have the same effect on the brain's GABA-a receptors as alcohol does, but whereas alcohol will irritate your stomach, strip the delicate linings from the villi in your small intestine (thereby causing malnutrition), screw around with your body's glucose-glycogen conversion, and generally cause all sorts of havoc before being metabolized into acetaldehyde, which is THIRTY TIMES AS TOXIC as the alcohol itself and the primary cause of liver cirrhosis and hangovers, barbiturates won't do any of those things. Barbiturates are, in effect, the real-world equivalent of the "synthehol" found in the later Star Treks.
but sleeping drugs that are not available OTC are usually because of there potential as drugs of abuse.
Yeah. Alcohol is so much better
Care to guess what the most popular treatment for insomnia was in an unregulated industry?
Should I give a damn?
There are many ways of dealing with insomnia... not just seconal or vodka...
For most cases of insomnia, that's true. However, after trying everything from Ativan, Ambien, Lexapro, Seroquel, Remeron, and Doxepin to melatonin, Benadryl, and phenibut, I've managed to trace the source of the problem to my GABA-a receptors, which leaves me with three treatments that don't involve forcibly shutting my brain down via Serotonin Syndrome: alcohol, benzodiazepines, and barbiturates. Although normal humans will develop a cross-tolerance between these three classes of drugs, I do not, so alcohol and barbiturates are still effective while benzodiazepines stopped working after 3 weeks.
Where is this free market you speak of?
It died in 1913. We have yet to find the body.
