Hillarycare part deux

[ClimbingPanther]

Hillary is proposing that health care be mandatory, like car insurance --

 

The satanic union of the worst of both political parties. Bigger government for the purpose of supporting big business.

[JayB]

My point with regards to the example of sildenafil and the long list of drug discoveries was to counter what seemed to be your implicit argument that in the absence of government compulsion, the pharmaceutical industry will fritter away valuable research money on trivial maladies and ignore serious diseases. If that wasn't what you were trying to suggest with your statement that "Market competition generates new medicine for erectile disfunction...," then you didn't do it very well.

 

The fact that - after side effects of sildenafil became evident - drug companies would exploit this discovery discredits the entire pharmaceutical industry? What, exactly, was your point there, if not this? This also seems to imply some kind of grand moral failing on the part of the afflicted men for spending money to restore the most intimate connections they have with the people they love the most instead of donating the money that they spent on viagra/cialis/whatever to Oxfam, and on the part of society for not insisting that their government dictate which choices they make concerning their medical priorities are permissible and which are not.

 

As for the addenda below:

 

"Second, I didn't say that there is or should be "government compulsion" but I DID say there was and should be government and other "coordinated" funding and this has proven central to most pharmaceutical research that actually produces real breakthroughs. (I could be wrong, as I acknowledged, but I have read this steadily for many years and I believe it is likely true.)

 

I DID say that public health advances have come about in large part through government-directed programs. You have not even tried to refute that.

 

I did suggest that many of the "services" offered in modern American medical practice are not really linked to any "therapeutic target" as you say, and you didn't refute this.

 

You and I can differ as to whether private insurance companies and the research department at Pfizer are more likely to be looking out for yours and my interests in living healthy lives than might be the National Institute of Health or whatever but, if you want to "debate," please answer the argument."

 

...these points seem to be only tangentially related to the "thrust" of the argument embedded in your statements concerning the existence of drugs to treat impotence.

 

These are separate matters, I didn't address or refute them, because - for the most part - I didn't take exception to them.