Supreme Court upholds ACA

[HejiraNYC]

Originally Posted by KarmaContestant

I never said they would - I implied that they should.

This is more in line with a point you made later, but European medical costs are not just low because of American innovation - they're low because the medical industy there is largely run like a non-profit and the focus is on preventative care - the complete opposite of our system which encourages extending illness for the purpose of making profit on pharmaceauticals that would otherwise be totally unnecessary. Just like you said "There's a pill for that!" but only because people will buy it!

Healthcare costs in Europe are lower primarily because of price controls, electronic medical records and much lower salaries for healthcare practitioners. And of course a single payer means that administrative costs are much lower. Yes, this is good for their bottom line, but what are the consequences? Price controls and national formularies basically extinguish innovation; it is no accident that just about every pharmaceutical/biotechnology company has headquarters or a large operation in the U.S. Controls on salaries for physicians result in a brain drain to places that will pay them well, i.e., the U.S. Yes, for the public at large, access to good healthcare in the U.S. is relatively poor. But for individuals with good coverage, one can find the most pre-eminent specialists in the world.

Yeah....we hear this a lot from the medical/pharma industry. I don't believe it anyore than I believe Monsanto telling me that GMO labeling will make food unaffordable. Despite more than 90% of Americans supporting GMO labeling, our Senators just last Thursday voted down a bill that would have allowed states to require GMO labeling. Why? Hailed and celebrated as a bi-partisan defeat by the GMO industry! Because we allow it by not dissenting, by not protesting, by not marching - who even calls or writes to their Senators anymore? I do. I'll tell you who else does - Conservatives. Those who do dissent or protest are told to "get a job" and let our States pass bills preventing assembly on public property for "security" reasons. Perhaps it's (my opinion, being the armchair therapist I am) because so many Americans secretly feel guilty for quietly allowing all of the things they allow because life is too busy trying to keep up with the Jones'. "I'd love to go and protest but I gotta go to work!"

I'm not sure how this has morphed into a rant against GMO. In my opinion, when it comes to innovation, specifically science and technology, I think companies need to be given financial/regualtory incentives to grow and prosper; this is why I bristle at the notion of price controls in this area. On the other hand, other segments of the economy that do not provide innovation or merely exist to make money, e.g., finance, big oil, insurance, should be regulated/taxed/curbed. Just think... would the iPhone exist if every country in the world decided that a smart phone was only worth $10 and decided that $10 smart phones were a fundamental right? Why should drugs be any different?

Regarding GMO and the business of organic food, I think there is a lot of fearmongering and pseudo science clouding the issue. Is genetically engineered food necessarily a bad thing? Sure it sounds scary, but it has not been proven to be unsafe or correlated with long-term health implications. The sad reality is that the world is going to be a much different place in 20 years- a much more populated, more polluted place with more mouths to feed than arable land. Reliance on GMO due to its higher crop yields and resistance to pests is basically inevitable. As such, I think before people start assailing it with inflammatory names like "Frankenstein food" and "soylent green," I think people really need to look past the names and evaluate the science of it. GMO, just like drugs, are highly regulated and must be proven to be safe before they can be used for food.

We let Washington dictate our lives - and the SCOTUS tell us what is constitutional - and even when we don't agree, as a majority like on the GMO issue or corporate campaign contributions, we do nothing. We say "OK, sure Corporations MUST be people.

I think this cuts both ways. Yes, the U.S. is a constitutional republic, but at least that helps to ensure fundamental protections of rights despite the will of the majority. If every single issue was decided upon purely based on popular vote, this country would be an utter banana republic idiocracy in which the lowest common denominator prevails in every instance.

Americans have battered-wife syndrome, politically. We keep going back. "Maybe he'll change. He loves me. He didn't mean it. He's just a bought and sold Republican/Democrat and can't help all the lies and abuse. I know he can change."

I think it's more like Republicans have battered wife syndrome. Or Stockholm syndrome? Of course it's logical that the super-wealthy tend to be Republicans; I don't blame them since that is what is best for their own self-interests. However, it's the rest of the 99% that I just cannot understand. Time after time they vote for Republican officials that are actively working against their own best interests. To their credit, Republicans do an excellent job of appealing to the least educated/enlightened segments of the population using broad-sweeping characterizations, e.g., taxes are too high, Obama is a socialist, gays are bad, etc. On NPR I heard about a study in which they found that a vast majority of Republicans were against ACA, which is really no surprise at all. However, when asked if they agreed with the major planks of the ACA, without calling it ACA, most of them agreed! With the Republicans it's all about messaging and dumbing things down on Faux News so that Joe Six Pack won't have a coronary trying to think critically about the things that really affect him. It's so sad.

On topic, I'd say that profit margins of 3-5% are totally acceptable - there is no need for the average margin of 16% enjoyed by pharmaceauticals, or the 10% enjoyed by oil and gas companies. Greed is the reason goods and services cost so much in America. We allow it.

As I mentioned before, I think price controls are a dangerous thing, especially if the U.S. wants to continue to be a world leader in innovation. Yes, China is becoming a major economic powerhouse. However, despite their ability to produce lots of goods very, very cheaply (via artifically devaluing their currency, violating the rights of workers, low wages, ridiculously large wealth gaps, corrupt government, etc.) they have simply perfected the concept of "me too" rather than truly innovating in the area of technology. Again, I think the biggest harm we can inflict on ourselves is to meddle too much in the way of technology. It's the non-productive, non-innovative cartels that have to be reined in, namely finance/banking and Big Oil.[/quote]

A fundamental change needs to occur in the way we think about success. Does succcess equate to the amount of money you earn, or does success equate to your accomplishments as a human being - the things you do that help and improve the lives of others? If you measure success by how much profit you can squeeze out while reducing the quality of goods and services and outsourcing of jobs...well...it's clear to me that you're not even really human, but a cold and calculated machine that runs on blood and processed food-products.

Well... that's a question that people have struggled with for ages. While the outsourcing of U.S. jobs is bad for the average U.S. worker, there are probably many people working in a high tech call center in New Delhi thanking their lucky stars that they are making good middle class livings in a country known for its economic extremes. So overall on the scale of humanity... it's kind of a wash. And please don't tell me that everything in your closet was manufactured in the U.S.- you would be walking around practically naked. The fact of the matter is that despite all of the corporate greed, the quality of life of the upper, middle and lower middle class is strikingly similar. It's no longer really possible to discern ones wealth or status simply by the clothes they wear or the shoes on their feet. Or even the cars they drive. As anyone who has seen a jam-packed Wal Mart parking lot can attest, the American dream is as simple as loading up the cart with mass produced goods imported from China. Yes, it sucks that American jobs in the manufacturing sector are evaporating like rubbing alcohol, but the average American consumer is complicit by shopping for price rather than quality.

Why has it taken so long for electric and hybrid cars to break into the market when the technology has been around for decades? Greed. It's estimated that there's trillions of dollars of oil in the ground still, and every drop will be sucked dry for profit. That's why.

I think the sudden disappearance of EV1 will never be explained. Perhaps there was a safety/mechanical defect that forced its recall? Or perhaps it was as cynical as pure greed? Who knows? I think until we have all the facts (which will probably never happen), it would be unwise to assign blame hastily.

Regarding hybrid and electric cars, I think the largest barrier to entry has been the ability to manufacture these drive trains affordably, the limitations of current battery technology, and the lack of an electrical infrastructure to support all electric vehicles. Yes, hybrids have taken a much larger market share of new car sales in recent years; however, there is still a price premium that can only be justified when fuel prices are high. Accordingly, it's safe to assume that hybrid/electric sales will drop off as gas prices go back under $3 per gallon this autumn, as some experts are predicting.