morality in the whit house

[larry g]

Bush to GAO: Faking the news to dupe seniors is wrong?
The General Accounting Office released a final decision on the fake news segments produced by the administration to promote the new Bush Medicare bill. The GAO arrived at the same conclusion that would take the average American about 30 seconds to reach: pretending to be someone else to push your ideas is wrong. Particularly when you're the federal government.

In January, the administration sent a series of pre-packaged video news releases (VNRs) to local TV stations hyping the benefits of Bush's new Medicare drug benefit. The VNRs ran on at least 40 stations across the country — maybe you saw one. Here's the hitch — instead of stating they were from the government, the "stories" ended with the lines "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting," and "In Washington, I'm Alberto Garcia reporting."

The GAO calls that "covert propaganda." By failing to identify that the reports were produced by the government, the audience did not know who produced the ads. In other words, the Bush administration tried to hide the truth from the public.

[Ken]

You're kidding me with this thread, right ? Morality in the White House, a thread started by a Democrat who, if history is any indication, and with the content already posted, is only interested in bashing George W. Bush.

Especially when the last Democrat in the White House was WHO ? And he did WHAT ?

I don't think I need to waste the space here any further.

[laary g]

believe it or not this was not a post to get your got. i simply did to show the level of diseption the bush adminastration is willing to go to tomislead the american people. you have my humblest appologies to you , the other conservative on this board and to all republicans everywhere.

[abisai]

I know this topic very very well now after working at a pharmaeutical conglomerate from the inside. There are many hard hitting things to be said and cold stone storylines that make everyone mad at everyone. Gotta state for the record, this is not one of them. I know where this comes from and the point behind it, but this is not the meat or the tatter tots. Saying that the form of the message delivered was deceptive is a conviction of 99.9% of everything said about politics.

Forget this the story is the precise figure derived as a cost and was thrown around as fact up until the point the bill passed when it suddenly doubled. That is hard ass hitting and really "the stuff".

My company lobbies the most on the Hill and they throw enough propoganda our way that I can parrot their nonsense. Now, they pay me, so I don't have any right to get offended but here goes:
1. Drugs from other nations are bad because no one regulates the importations and deportations of these goods because Canada has no jurisdiction over US market and US has no jurisdiction of Canadian companies. This is stupid and a wack ass argument. But leads to #2
2. Drugs from other places are forged copies and are often not even close to the real medications. Straight fear talk to scare us away, they show the Chinese duplications found and you know damn well this happens, but you know.. people here do this too and we manage.
3. Drugs from Canada and Europe are cheaper because Canada and Europe have socialist governments that artificially affect the economy with price controls that stave off innovations. I think this is crap because if you have a drug patent you have a monopoly and that defies any economic rights you can pretend to claim. But this leads to 4 brought to you by yours truly
4. Drugs in Canada and Europe are cheaper because they tax more, invest in social welfare, and the government reduces end customer costs by such things as incredible bulk purchasing power and redistributive wealth and pursuit of social well-being.

US is now considering legilation to limit your right to sue doctors and health care professionals and companies. There are ludicrous figures thrown about and people claim insurance costs make them charge you more. I am believing that as much as I believe Clinton never inhaled. My company heavily supports this efforts and other big guns do too, so decent chance for legislation to place caps on jury awards. I think this is bad because we have many examples where legislating numeric numbers gets skewed over the years per inflation, i.e. a $10 million cap now could be like a $1 million cap down the road in relative terms. Also because your only power over a doctor is your ability to pay or not pay him and there is the vindicative settlements to be won if dude messes up keeping dude on his toes. I am all for that shit. I have no pity for doctors in any shape form or fassion. If it's so bad, they can do something else, there's thousands of them out there and plenty to take their place.

In closing:
The story is the figure claimed as a cost that suddenly changed immediately after legislation passed.
Lobbyists are going to help tie up opening borders to drugs for other nations.
I like both because they pay my rent.

[larry g]

ive heard both sides explane the finer points of this one and to tell you the truth i dont even know were either of them stand. thats american politics for ya

[Rob G]

The Clinton getting his ding dong polished means NOTHING.

How many of you really think most powerful mean in washington are loyal to their wives. And that is the only loylaty Clinton broke when he did that.

If you wanna crap on clinton do it with stuff he or his adminstration did in governing. I dont want to hear people bitching about this unless you happen to be Hilary Rodham Clinton of whom is not cleared to log in to my message board.
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The orignal thread on this post is bad. I agree that the government should not make press releases designed to appear as FREE PRESS reporting. Very Bad..
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The drug thing buck spoke of sounds to me like the Cigarette thing where now the Cigarettes are got taxed +2 dollars a pack and most of that money goes to health care but also protects the cigarette companies from lawsuits due to health problems incurred from smoking.
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Finally all this business about drugs from cananda is crazy. While yes it true taht Pharmueceuetical companies have way more sway over our government then what they should and it just has to be currupt, buck is right. Those drugs are cheap for a reason. In the time of amerca being number one target for terrorism we gotta senser and regulate more stuff not just buy more bulk "Joe corner store penesilan" from Alberta.

[Ken]

Buck wrote, “There are ludicrous figures thrown about and people claim insurance costs make them charge you more.”

I have seen and read many stories where doctor’s malpractice insurance has risen so high due to crazy jury awards that it has inhibited doctors from setting up their own shops or practices. We all know how litigation crazy this society is, everyone is trying to get something for nothing, and it seems everyone is willing to give money away for nothing as long as that money isn’t theirs, i.e. jury awards. I tend to believe this logic and buy into the proposed legislation to control jury awards against malpractice. I mean, awarding 400 million dollars to someone who lost a pinky finger seems excessively high (exaggeration), but we’ve all heard stories like this.

If malpractice suits aren’t driving up the cost of medical care (not prescription medication), then what is?

I understand people going over the border to get medication, especially if it is cheaper, but one of the teachers in the school is also a pharmacist on the weekends and he told me that all drugs are not the same, i.e. generic vs. brand name, so it seems logical that cloned medication from across the border or from another country or continent may not be the same either. Differences; dissolve time, acidity, digestibility, time it takes to feel effects.

I kind of feel for doctors. They may have once been optimists, like many teachers , who just wanted to help people. The went to school for ten years, worked their arses off, finally became doctors and made a mistake that resulted in a malpractice suit that could wipe them off the map. Doctors aren’t infallible; they just have super expensive educations.

[larry g]

robs jackie said she had to pay some rediculas amount of insurance when she was working at the hospital and she wasnt even a nurse. but how do you legislate who can sue and who cant.

[Rob G]

The lawsuits stand as the best and only efficient way to make hospitals try to do the right thing. People are lazy and doctors and nurses and all emergency workers are no different. Except when they are lazy or when hospitals begin excepting less then par employees people die. People get their good leg ampuatted. The lawsuits serve as an insentive for private hospitals to manage efficently and make as few mistakes happen as possible. The monetary consequences are the only consequences for corporations of that size.

[abisai]

Two quick points:
1. the payouts come from insurance companies, that is why you have insurance. The premiums are ludicrous but just as ludicrous as the amounts paid the health providers by us and the insurance companies. Either way, should be a fractional cost for a business.
2. The argument about drugs from Canada is not even about generics v. whatever. They mean open a box of Flonase and you could get sugar pills or some other fascimile not approaching Flonase.

Three reasons why health care is on the rise:
1. no one dies of old age anymore and these people who would otherwise sail off into the sunset are being treated more and living longer, creating a massive geriatric population requiring massive amounts of treatment.
2. AIDS patients no longer die, they are sustained by medications and also require massive amount of treatments for their numerous secondary afflictions.
www.treathiv.com/
My company keeps this man alive:
3. the general health craze in the nation and move for treatment over natural healing. My company ran a half-time ad at the Super Bowl, because it works, and people seek out health treatment increasingly. You cannot name something people don't want a pill for.

My company has ads talking about today's drugs pay for tomorrow's future. These are effective and I agree with them. I also see financial statements, thousands of lobbyists, and wild expenditures on promotions like commercial spots on radio and TV. The business model does remind me much of the sales-heavy branding of Pepsi Bottling and what I think cigarette companies do. This has been criticized because these things would lead a company to research and develop new products more likely to sell, not better products. Like Coke making clear cola not healthier cola, you could claim that a pharm co is continuing to treat the symptom not the actual affliction. I've heard people (not where I work, just idiots at SUNY New Paltz) talk about companies working to keep you alive longer, no cure AIDS though they could. To me, the kernel of truth is that the AIDS patients benefit from improvements to existing cures for geriatric patient care and that any company that could cure AIDS would reap arse-loads from a global treatment and damn sure would roll it out as soon as they could. Same for cancers.

[abisai]

www.angelfire.com/space/dkbuckley2002/ImportationPrint_20621_1_.pdf
See link for (literally) propoganda from my company.

[Ken]

I was recently in several conversations dealing with the thought, "how come no diseases have been cured since Polio?" It got me wondering, how come? Why? Are we not as smart as we were when Polio was cured? Have there not been enough advancements in medicine or technology to find a cure or vaccination for AIDS? What's the deal? Is it that drug companies can make more money keeping people dependent on drugs that just maintain rather than cure? Maybe this is why medical care and drugs are so expensive.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go underground, into the secret lairs of these drug companies, and find out the straight skinny. ;D

[Encyclopedia Brown]

Aye aye capitan

My mindset at the onset of my exploratory probing of the pharmaceutical industry from the inside out is: Polio was cured by someone with a microscope and a petry dish, so that must have been an easier disease to conquer. I think my company spends millions to find super cures and the off-shoots are things that are helpful, but not cures. I firmly believe anyone that could make a cure would gain way to much to not exploit the f.uck out of such a thing. I find the conspiracy theory of withholding a cure unthinkable. Truth is stranger than fiction though.......

But I will try some earnest snooping and research and see if I can gleam anything meaningful.

[Dave Buckley]

In case anyone had any misgivings, that last post was from me. I would think that's obvious, but you never know around here.