Do yourself a favor...............

[packinpatland]

I think actors and athletes are alike. It's what you do off the screen/field that makes you a man or woman.

Once again, if Moore would just make some $$$ gesture to help the ones he is documenting. Just 'give back' in some way.
I might take him more seriously.

[PackerBlues]

I think actors and athletes are alike. It's what you do off the screen/field that makes you a man or woman.

Once again, if Moore would just make some $$$ gesture to help the ones he is documenting. Just 'give back' in some way.
I might take him more seriously.

Well, Moore did claim to have sent an "anonymous" check for $12,000. to the guy who had a website thats sole purpose was to "flame" Moore. The guys wife was sick, and he put a bulletin up on his website that said "due to financial problems from his wifes medical bills, he would not be able to keep the site going." Not sure I would have helped a guy that got his kicks by running a web site soley intended to flame me. If its true, I am sure it made Moore feel pretty damned good, if not slightly "holier than thou" to be able to help the guy. If nothing else, if its true, he got a few "Ying and Yang" points built up for it, lol.

[HarveyWallbangers]

Sticking up for Moore is a No Win Proposition.

His picture is in the dictionary under asshat.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/asshat

[rdanomly]

Sticking up for Moore is a No Win Proposition.

His picture is in the dictionary under asshat.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/asshat

Not at that link it isn't.. Is there a different url?

[Fosco33]

Being an 'expert' in heathcare industry and insurance administration, I'll be able to watch this movie w/ a dif't point of view. Lots of the things mentioned (insurance staff looking for denials) is being mitigated by staff in hospitals ensuring things will be paid before service.

Personally, I've fixed some of the largest health systems in the country (and my company overall has saved hospitals BILLIONS of dollars over the last decade). Things are pretty screwed up - that's just obvious.

[Freak Out]

Being an 'expert' in heathcare industry and insurance administration, I'll be able to watch this movie w/ a dif't point of view. Lots of the things mentioned (insurance staff looking for denials) is being mitigated by staff in hospitals ensuring things will be paid before service.

Personally, I've fixed some of the largest health systems in the country (and my company overall has saved hospitals BILLIONS of dollars over the last decade). Things are pretty screwed up - that's just obvious.

Its not screwed up for you, its not screwed up for Harvey but it is screwed up. My wife works for a large company with thousands of employees and pays a very small monthly premium for very good coverage. Good for her and myself (was good for our kids ) , but I'm self employed and if I was not married to her I would have to pay a pile of $$$ a month for the same kind of coverage. What is the GOOD reason for that? My friend who is a Engineer for the State has to pay a bit more than her for his family but makes less $$$. Look at the plans all Federal employees and Congress get to take part in. Why should they get to use those plans when other Americans are denied access? I like my Doctor and Dentist and nurses and all the admin, all these folks are worth what they get paid I'm sure....but American health care is all about profit over people now and that is wrong. Insurance companies that "manage" our health care should not be trying to return dividends to share holders but should be doing all they can for the people they serve.

[MJZiggy]

[Tarlam!]

If you realized it would be moved, then why didn't you just post it there in the first place?

I wouldn't watch a Fatty Hypocrite movie if it was the last on Earth.

This is all I need to read, after the first two sentences of the initial post, to know all I wanna say is:

"What Harvey said."

I will add, I find Michael Moore a scumbag.

[Partial]

Being an 'expert' in heathcare industry and insurance administration, I'll be able to watch this movie w/ a dif't point of view. Lots of the things mentioned (insurance staff looking for denials) is being mitigated by staff in hospitals ensuring things will be paid before service.

Personally, I've fixed some of the largest health systems in the country (and my company overall has saved hospitals BILLIONS of dollars over the last decade). Things are pretty screwed up - that's just obvious.

Its not screwed up for you, its not screwed up for Harvey but it is screwed up. My wife works for a large company with thousands of employees and pays a very small monthly premium for very good coverage. Good for her and myself (was good for our kids ) , but I'm self employed and if I was not married to her I would have to pay a pile of $$$ a month for the same kind of coverage. What is the GOOD reason for that? My friend who is a Engineer for the State has to pay a bit more than her for his family but makes less $$$. Look at the plans all Federal employees and Congress get to take part in. Why should they get to use those plans when other Americans are denied access? I like my Doctor and Dentist and nurses and all the admin, all these folks are worth what they get paid I'm sure....but American health care is all about profit over people now and that is wrong. Insurance companies that "manage" our health care should not be trying to return dividends to share holders but should be doing all they can for the people they serve.

Its all sort of the benefit package with the company. Those are all things people should look at in terms of total compensation from a company.

If a company is huge, insurance will likely be cheaper. It only makes sense.

You could get dirt cheap insurance in America and go without any new drugs or techniques for the next 1000 years, but that would be stupid and stunt progress.

[MJZiggy]

Since when do insurance companies fund drug research????

[Partial]

Since when do insurance companies fund drug research????

It is all inter-related. Somebody is funding the studying of new drugs. Some of it from tax dollars, some of it from insurance companies, some of it privately funded, etc. $800,000,000 doesn't grow on a tree, you know.

It is not necessarily direct funding. It is the reason that drugs are so ridiculously expensive here when under a patent.

My guess is a lot of international drugs are ripped off and "generic" because US patent laws don't apply to overseas. When someone has done all the research for you, done all the testing for you, and when another company is simply just manufacturing a product off of another companies "recipe", of course they can sell it for cheaper.

See Tylenol being 10 dollars a box when Wal-lenol is 2 dollars a box, for example. Tylenol's patent likely has expired, though I really have no idea.

[Freak Out]

JERRY AVORN
Rethinking research funding

By Jerry Avorn | May 7, 2007

THE BIOTECHNOLOGY Industry Organization is holding its annual mega meeting in Boston this week at a pivotal time in the industry's history. Medically, biotech is at the growing edge of therapeutics. Most older, conventional drug companies have become massive marketing engines with a dulled innovative edge -- only 18 new drugs were approved by the FDA in all of 2006. By contrast, many biotech companies retain their roots as research-based operations where the scientists' agenda can still compete with that of the sales department. Some of the most exciting new treatments for cancer, autoimmune diseases, and even vision loss are emerging from this creative new sector.

But amid the breakthrough findings, lavish entertainment, and self-congratulation that will fill the convention attendees' schedules this week, some important worries may not get the attention they merit. The first relates to costs. Not the cost of the luxury harbor tours and exorbitant meals that participants will enjoy in the coming days; I'm referring to what patients (or taxpayers) have to pay to get access to these wondrous discoveries.

Regimens that can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year per patient can cloud the moral judgment of those who purvey them. For example, a confluence of interests among biotech giant Amgen, for-profit dialysis centers, and kidney disease consultants seems to have led to substantial over prescribing of the company's flagship blood-building product, erythropoietin -- a lucrative practice that probably increases the risk of side effects and even death. Another dilemma: A new biotech product, Lucentis, can reverse the vision loss caused by macular degeneration, a devastating cause of blindness. But the drug costs $2,000 for each monthly injection. Many ophthalmologists are convinced that equally miraculous results could be provided to far more patients with use of a very similar biotech product, Avastin, at only $50 per dose. Yet Genentech, which makes Avastin, has not agreed to sponsor a clinical trial to study this possibility, which could also save Medicare hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years. That's probably because Genentech makes both Lucentis and Avastin, and use of the more affordable drug would cut into the more expensive drug's expected profits.

Biotech has brought to market a number of important new cancer treatments. But pricing a lifesaving cancer regimen at over $50,000 is guaranteed to put that treatment beyond the reach of many patients. It doesn't cost anywhere near that much to produce these drugs. Rather, the industry argues that these sky-high prices are justified to fuel the expensive research it performs. But many biotech advances are heavily based on publicly funded research supported by the National Institutes of Health and by foundations. Current policies allow companies to charge whatever they want for a new drug, with no payback required for most of the indispensable, taxpayer-supported basic research that made it possible. With the federal deficit threatening to flatline the NIH budget for the first time in a generation, and venture capital speculators increasingly preferring to fund safer "late-stage" companies with nearly marketable products, savvy conventioneers this week must be worried about where the next decade's miracle cures will come from -- as we all should be.

The breathtaking five-figure prices that some biotech drugs command per course of therapy warrant a rethinking of this "trickle-down" approach to supporting science -- a strategy that amounts to the growing privatization of medical research. The example of biotech's older, flabbier siblings is not encouraging: Only about 14 cents of every dollar paid for Big Pharma's products makes its way back into research and development, according to the companies' own figures.

A safer course for the nation would be to take some of the billions the nation is paying for these expensive products and use it to rev up NIH funding, protecting the flow of scientific innovation on which new biotech products depend. The companies could then come in and do the hard work needed to bring those discoveries to market. They should be rewarded fairly, even handsomely for that important work -- but not at levels that will pauper the rest of us or the federal treasury. And we need a better way to provide reasonable compensation for the taxpayer-supported research on which breakthrough products are based. Public funding of university-based research, not extortionate drug prices, is the safest way to guarantee "the miracle cures of tomorrow." It might make for fewer luxury harbor cruises at future BIO conventions, but we can live with that.

Dr. Jerry Avorn, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, is author of "Powerful Medicines: the Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs."

[Fosco33]

Being an 'expert' in heathcare industry and insurance administration, I'll be able to watch this movie w/ a dif't point of view. Lots of the things mentioned (insurance staff looking for denials) is being mitigated by staff in hospitals ensuring things will be paid before service.

Personally, I've fixed some of the largest health systems in the country (and my company overall has saved hospitals BILLIONS of dollars over the last decade). Things are pretty screwed up - that's just obvious.

Its not screwed up for you, its not screwed up for Harvey but it is screwed up. My wife works for a large company with thousands of employees and pays a very small monthly premium for very good coverage. Good for her and myself (was good for our kids ) , but I'm self employed and if I was not married to her I would have to pay a pile of $$$ a month for the same kind of coverage. What is the GOOD reason for that? My friend who is a Engineer for the State has to pay a bit more than her for his family but makes less $$$. Look at the plans all Federal employees and Congress get to take part in. Why should they get to use those plans when other Americans are denied access? I like my Doctor and Dentist and nurses and all the admin, all these folks are worth what they get paid I'm sure....but American health care is all about profit over people now and that is wrong. Insurance companies that "manage" our health care should not be trying to return dividends to share holders but should be doing all they can for the people they serve.

You could join a SBA and merge with other companies to leverage the amount you have to pay into the system. We, as consumers, have to spend more on goods/services because most of healthcare is either reimbursed by taxes or employers (who pass the buck along).

Ultimately, healthcare is somewhat a right (ER treatment) and a privilege. You have a choice to be self-insured or self-pay. Almost everyone that is disabled, young or very old as well as very poor is covered in this system. The remainder are working class/age people with access to insurance. With the new healthplans (high ded/OOP and lower premiums/co-pays), everyone can find a plan that fits their use of the system.

I can attest to the insane nature of gov't programs - filled with red tape (in some ways worse than private insurers) and inaccuracy.

Almost every hospital is willing to negotiate and write-off charges/portions of bills - as well as acting as a conduit to help patients and insurers. In actuality, hospitals aren't required to bill for patients - it's actually an additional service (which everyone supplies) - that alone accounts for a decent amount of budgeting for hospitals (at no/low cost to consumers). Most people are so confused about HC that they just get run over by greedy hospitals and insurers.

It's also very easy for people like Moore to point out things that are wrong with the US (or anything for that matter). It's much harder to change things. I chose the latter.

[packinpatland]

Drug companies have 7 years to re-coup their expenditures before a drug goes off patent. You are right, Partial, about some drugs costing in excess of $800,000,000, Pfizer just recently pulled the plug on one that had cost that much, will not make it to market.

[Partial]

That is a big waste of money to pull the plug at that point.

Anna worked in a lab studying the osteopontin gene and how it affected vitamin D within the human body. She would use antibodies like crazy(which cost 500 dollars a pop) and go through $100,000 worth of supplies in a month. This is just one person studying something as an undergrad in a lab of 15-20 people. Imagine the overall cost!