Why else would they want to raise taxes on drug companies?
Such as the provision in Obamacare which took effect January 1, 2011, raising $2.3 billion annually from the drug industry (Politifact confirmation here).
The political logic is there, just look at how Democrats argue that Republicans wanting to control federal government spending on health care means Republicans want people to die, or how Republicans wanting law students to pay for their own birth control means Republicans hate women.
Gonorrhea becoming resistant to last available class of antibiotics (h/t Instapundit):
There may soon come a time when there is no effective treatment available for gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted infection, or STI, that until recently had been easily cured with oral antibiotics.
Resistance to the last class of antibiotics available to treat the disease has been showing up in populations around the world, and will likely soon follow in the United States.
“We believe it is only a matter of time until gonorrhea develops resistance to this last remaining treatment option,” said Dr. Gail Bolan, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of STD Prevention in a telebriefing recently announcing new treatment guidelines for gonorrhea.
Why do Democrats want you to get incurable gonorrhea? Whey do they hate you so much?
Who is going to invent the new strains of antibiotics to deal with this threat to reproductive freedom? Definitely not Sandra Fluke or the Internal Revenue Service:
The CDC is urging the private sector to prioritize the discovery of new treatments, as there is only one new drug treatment currently in the pharmaceutical pipeline and only one clinical trial under way to test existing drugs against the infection.
The truth stings, doesn’t it.
(For the record, I don’t think Democrats want you to get incurable gonorrhea, but I do wish they would stop making stupid and dangerous arguments for political effect. But then they wouldn’t be your modern Democratic Party, would they?)
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There are plenty of problems with antibiotic research these days. The state of knowledge about bacteria has moved forward incrementally, but we haven’t had much in the way of radical transformation (perhaps research into the microbiome will change this). Bacteria, so far as we know, have only so many ways of being exploited so as to kill them, and we’re using almost all the ones we know of that are safe to use.
Another problem is economic. If one develops a new, useful drug against hypertension, a patient will take that drug (when needed, of course) daily for the rest of his/her life. If one develops a new antibiotic, a patient will take that drug (when needed) daily for … 7 to 10 days. If it costs a Pharma company $500 million to get either to market, which one is going to go first given the potential return? You guessed it.
Now create a political environment where socialized / quasi-socialized medicine in Canada, Japan and most of Europe demand the pricing of drugs at marginal cost, excluding research and development. There’s only one major market in the world that has a more open pricing model, and that market is under assault. Who knows what Obamacare, with its tens of thousands of new regulations and (in the coming years) hundreds of thousands of regulators are going to do? Big Pharma may think it bought off Champ with their deal in 2009, but we all know better.
Add it all up and there aren’t many incentives for Big Pharma to do antibiotic research.
On the converse side, there also are numerous problems with the FDA’s regulation of pharmaceuticals, as well far too many patents being given out for things that shouldn’t be patented.
Imposing higher taxes on drug companies is not the answer. By the same token, we are in great need of some fixes in the drug regulatory and patent laws, as well as taxpayer dollars being funneled to pharmaceutical companies for research being conducted in other countries. It’s not always merely too much regulation, but can also is bureaucracies out of control doing crony capitalism, regulating the wrong things and not regulating what they should be regulating, and so forth. Reform is needed.
Some links:
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/12/study-in-crony-capitalism-obamacare-and-big-pharma/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/10/profit-pr-enemies-innovation
http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2012/08/to-what-degree-is-the-current-oxycontin-problem-corporation-driven/
http://dangerousprescriptiondrugs.weebly.com/cancer-chemo-and-crony-capitalism.html
http://www.fff.org/comment/com1207f.asp
The left (Democrats, let’s face it) has worked hard at sexualizing children, beginning at an early age. Two sinister purposes were to keep them distracted (you can read the news, or you can @#$%, take your choice) and militant (“I want my sex! — and birth control! — and abortion!”).
It’s no surprise that VD has now become epidemic.
Yet another two ideas by the left (sexualizing children and Obamacare)have fallen flat on its face.
Everything they do — even ideas with good intentions — fall flat on their face.
If you really think about it, their latest big idea was ‘Barack Obama.’ That one was a long time in the making, with ground-zero being Hawaii a few decades ago.)
Who is going to invent the new strains of antibiotics to deal with this threat to reproductive freedom?
1. Government labs, of course. Academic researchers whose ranks, via Title 9, may soon “look like America”.
Good luck.
2. Let’s not forget that during the post-9/11 anthrax scare, the government floated threats to revoke the patent for (or otherwise confiscate) the anthrax vaccine if it wasn’t offered at the right price.
3. The usual suspects will howl that industry is “placing profit above human life”.
4. Pharma can’t say it publicly, but I bet they’re thinking What kind of fools do you take us for?
How does this incurable strain get cured?
Easy. Once it becomes common in the colon-rectal cavities of gay men, curing it will take on the urgency and resource allocation of the Manhattan Project. This will accelerate even more if a gay politician or actor dies of the strain and Sean Penn portrays him in a film, for which he’ll receive an Oscar, of course.
“Once it affects the duh ass, we’ll respond en mass.” — Uncle Fenn
There is a strong current in the Collective that longs to take us back…NOT “Forward”…into a New Dark Age.
Consider their drive against modernity has so far managed to kill many millions of people in malaria-plagued regions of the world in the name of junk-science (See DDT, ban on).
The Obamic moonpony engineering of the recent CAFE standards mandate will kill many thousands of Americans in necessarily light, unsafe cars.
Our electrical grid is perilously close to catastrophic failure, and generating capacity is actually being REDUCED as demand continues to rise.
Those, of course, are really just a very few of the many ways the Collective drives to force us into shorter, darker, less comfortable, less healthy, less traveled, and more ignorant lives.
And that…by my definition…is evil.
But remember: They’re “progressives” …somehow…
They also seem intent on creating the conditions to allow disease resistant VD to spread. Funny how diseases have a way of biting us on the butt (and don’t even get me started on flesh eating bacteria)!
“Democrats must want you to get incurable gonorrhea.”
If by “you” we mean “Republicans, Conservatives, Christians, Jews, their families, and every one who agrees with you”… Well, yes.
They’ll never admit it, though…
Creating drug-resistant diseases is very easy. All you have to do is fail to make the follow-up appointment.
It works that way with ear infections, too.
ObamaCare contains astonishing contradictions. Take, just two of the taxes. First, this pharma tax will be embedded in the cost of pharmaceuticals. So, whatever the tax collects will be paid back out by the insurance companies and, ultimately, by the insured. This will not lower the cost of health care, it will increase it with the Feds taking a cut.
An even worse example is the tax of the revenue of medical device manufacturers. Medtronics, for example, makes pacemakers. The cost of every pacemaker will be increased by the amount of the tax, once again, raising the cost of the product.
Only an economic idiot could have added these taxes and then argued the intention was to lower the cost of health care. It makes you want to slap these legislators and back of the head (like Gibbs does) and ask them what they were thinking.
I would like to solicit your consideration of two different markets, from a patent attorney’s viewpoint.
The market for medical treatment is heavily charged with public policy concerns, is highly regulated, and limited with respect to patent (personal property) rights.
The market for electronic goods is not subject to as much public policy, is far less regulated, and does not suffer from limits as to patentability.
Prices for medicine keep going up. Prices for electronic goods keep going down.
Brilliant observation.
Of course Dems have an affinity for gonorrhea. They have a strong familial resemblance.
Pffft, you cannot fight illogical people with logic. #WAR Professor. Remember, legitimate rape is kind of like rape rape.
What is the fascist one world lefts biggest buggaboo? Overpopulation. The wars , genocides they conducted in the 20th century didnt affect the trend. Chinese one child is unclear. In my lifetime we vaccinated the world putting more pressure on population. Birth control ,abortion and still the mud people swell. As fascistic one world left institutions and solutions tighten and grow the results worsen. As traditional Christian religeous moral individual responsibity virtue based is marginalized ; the problems worsen. As the negative aspects of Islam are cultivated ; the results are predictable. The fascist one world left is the definition of dysfunction and they have Civilization in a stranglehold to force their will on all. On a PBS news report last night they treated the Norwegian sentance of 21 years to a murderer of 77 as sane. There were no dissenting voices.
You can think John Boehner for the continuing leftist propaganda coming out of PBS (and NPR). The funding for both these organs of the left was on the table a couple of years ago. Boehner had the power to stop this insanity. He did not.
Lunatics will always act like lunatics — that’s who they are. But what’s worse: lunatics on the loose, or the person we hire to stop them being too cowardly? My vote is the latter. Boehner has not only betrayed the people who effectively voted him in an Speaker, he has betrayed his country.
We can electe Romney, take the Senate and keep the house — none of these things will effect any change if RINOs (or cowards or traitors to the electorate) remain in the GOP Senate and House leadership.
Much as repeal Obamacare must be a day-one task if the GOP wins in November, removal of Boehner as Speaker must also occur on day-one. If not, I guarantee: Obamacare will not be repealed, or not be repealed in its entirety.
Mark my words.
“Democrats must want you to get incurable gonorrhea”
…Lunatic-left logic: if it’s good enough for bill “monica-stain” clinton, shouldn’t it be good enough for everyone?
In the old days – before antibiotics – the bishop’s umbrella was used, along with certain mercury tinctures to treat men.
Imagine a tiny hollow stem of surgical steel with a smaller rod that slid to and fro inside it. When the smaller rod is pushed inward, tiny blades deploy outward from the hollow stem, much like an umbrella.
To be used, the whole thing is inserted into the urethra. When it reaches the bladder the blades are deployed, the whole thing is pulled outward, scraping away the infected flesh. The patient, usually restrained and often unconscious, was resuscitated and told to immediately urinate, hypothetically for reasons of sepsis.
These kits were issued through 1944 to Battalion surgeons and doctors in the German army.
Ah, yes. Sans antibiotics, is a return to yesteryear in the future?
“The ‘medical arts’ they call it? Hell no! Make mine medical science. It sounds better and cain’t hurt no worse.” — Uncle Fenn
“The CDC is urging the private sector to prioritize the discovery of new treatments…”
Libs think they can just wish scientific advances into being. Like new drugs, for instance. Or new energy sources, or whatever.
The scientific process, Dem style: Reach a conclusion. Bully the experts, Soviet-style, to get the desired result. If chopping off heads doesn’t work, throw more resources at the problem. If that doesn’t work, chop off more heads. When someone makes a breakthrough, give government credit for it. And if it’s off the beaten path and government can’t take credit for it, suppress it as “unsafe.”
Of course, Dems’ love affair with “free love” (AKA “sleeping around”) and teaching kids everything is OK as long as you do it “safely,” has NOTHING to do with this.
I’d recommend monogamy as protection against it, but our culture is dead-set against it.
Sexual revolution! HIV and a variety of STDs! Normalization of deviant behaviors (i.e. no redeeming value to society or humanity)! Physically and mentally diminished offspring! Progressive cost of medical service increases! Evolutionary dysfunction!
Dreams of instant gratification will not be denied. Some people… many people just want to feel good.
The so-called “health care reform” (which does not address underlying causes of progressive cost of service increases) was necessary in order to counter the effective tax of 10%, both regressive and progressive, levied on every American with the perpetual 10% of GDP federal deficit.
Oh, as Obama and family spend lavishly on their personal welfare, they take away taxpayer funds that could have been used to provide medical services to indigent Americans. Obama wants people to die! Or so it would go if his rhetoric withstood the scrutiny of a sane and reasonable mind. Unfortunately, all of these policies, and his personal welfare, have lead to a progressive distortion of our economy, where costs are shifted and often obscured from the judgment of American citizens.
It is quite a peculiar outcome, that in a nation with a social welfare system which outlays several trillion dollars annually, that there would be any homeless Americans. Someone is lying.