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from the the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend,-right? dept.
Martin Shkreli, the former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, has launched a list to shame other pharmaceutical companies:
This week, a pharmaceutical trade group stepped up its efforts to distance itself from Martin Shkreli, the disgraced ex-CEO of several drug companies who gained notoriety for an eye-popping drug price increase and an indictment for securities fraud. The trade group even made a television ad to try to bolster its image and make clear that it is different—better—than the likes of Shkreli and his greedy ways.
Is it, though? If you ask Shkreli, it's not. And he's made a website to try to convince you.
On the bare-bones Pharmaskeletons.com, an angry and vengeful Shkreli lists instances of greed, criminal behavior, and other sleaziness of individual members of the pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA. Not all his claims are backed up, explained, or accurate. But the site still offers an embarrassing catalogue of bad deeds, which Shkreli told STAT he would continually update.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Ayn Anonymous on Thursday January 26 2017, @04:06AM
Pay for Health Care ?
You Americans are stupid.
Spending all that tax money for weapons and solders instead for free Health Care for everyone.
I'm glad I live in a sane country with free Health Care and almost no money to military.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @04:10AM
I notice the trolls who use this stupid comparison never mention what superior military-free country they come from, which country or organization will protect them next time there's a war, and how much in taxes are taken from them to pay for their "free" healthcare.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @04:58AM
We're coming for your capital gains, Chuck! Doesn't matter what country we are coming from. We are still coming for you, Chuck! Health care is a universal human right. So we are coming for your capital gains, Chuck! Everyone is entitled to the best care society can provide. So we are coming for your Capital gains, Chuck! If you have capital gains, we are coming for you in the name of people who do not, since people are more important than capital gains, Chuck. Does this make you sad, Chuck? Are you worried? I suggest you tweet your worry to the world, because we are coming for your capital gains, Chuck.
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Thursday January 26 2017, @05:10AM
Just pick a western nation that is not the U.S. and you'll not go wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:21PM
Heya!!! Number two (The Netherlands) here...*
Obamacare was modelled after our medical insurance system... which is becoming more expensive by the year for us .... AND we don't have any money left for the military!
* https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/america-first-make-netherlands-second-because-they-requested-it [whitehouse.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @05:54AM
I notice the trolls who use this stupid comparison never mention what superior military-free country they come from
Here, let me help you, since you are obviously impaired when it comes to reasoning. The come from the military-free (relatively) country that is not Fortress America, which has a defense budget that is greater than the combined defense budgets of the REST OF THE FUCKING WORLD! Now, Fuck off, American!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @09:32AM
I bet this was written by yet another American fetishizing European healthcare (as if it was all the same, too) without knowing anything about it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday January 26 2017, @03:09PM
Yes, the US is insane for spending as much as it does on the military. One of the numbers I particularly find telling is that the US military cannot account for roughly $6.5 trillion that we've given them. In other words, 1/3 of the US national debt was money that was sent to the Pentagon and promptly disappeared with nothing to show for it.
That said, that has little-to-nothing to do with why we don't have a National Health Service or something similar. An NHS would be, by all available measurements, cheaper and better than the current hodgepodge of insurance companies and hospital networks and random doctors' offices and so forth, so we could in fact afford to have both an NHS and a ridiculously overblown military.
The real reason the US doesn't have an NHS is that the most powerful people in the country have figured out how to divide the population up on social issues that don't cost them anything (e.g. racism, homophobia, and abortion) while the various industries bribe the politicians to do their bidding on anything involving dollars and cents. That's why, for example, Medicare Part D involved private insurance companies, why the Affordable Care Act doesn't include an option for using the government as your health insurance company, and why it is illegal in the US to import medication from other countries so that pharmaceutical companies can charge 20 times more for the same pill in the US as they do anywhere else.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @02:13AM
One of the numbers I particularly find telling is that the US military cannot account for roughly $6.5 trillion that we've given them. In other words, 1/3 of the US national debt was money that was sent to the Pentagon and promptly disappeared with nothing to show for it.
You need to look into that much deeper. Your description of the facts does not pass the laugh test. DoD budget is ~0.5 trillion per year. [defense.gov] How could they possibly have last the entire budget for the last 12.5 years?
The answer is they did not. What really happened is that they did not keep track of it in sufficient detail to pass the most scrupulous audit. E.g. they bought a humvee but didn't break out the costs for individual options, like leather seats and a machine-gun mount. But they still accounted for the entire cost of the humvee.
I'm not saying there isn't waste in the Pentagon. I am saying that you are misrepresenting the meaning of the number you are talking about.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Friday January 27 2017, @05:19PM
Don't forget the thousands of M1 tanks the Army did not want because they already had too many in mothball, the DoD did not want for the same reason, but Congress forced them to buy anyway because the bribes were good.
waste does not have to be money that cannot be accounted for, or even overpaying for items.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 26 2017, @05:54PM
No, no that's not how health care works in America. You wait until your health needs are dire, then go to emergency. That's the medical place with all those signs announcing that it is illegal for them to deny you care just because you have an unpaid debt with them. Afterwards, when you are no longer at death's door, if not fully recovered, they send you a bill with fantasy prices in which everything has been inflated at least 20 times. At least. 200 times is common. We're not talking a piddly 100% profit margin, no, we're talking 20,000%. We're talking $300 for a $1.50 bag of saline solution, aka salt water, $20 for a $0.10 aspirin, a "facility fee" of over $1000 just because they had to suffer the presence of your sorry behind in a room, and that's just the hospital. The doctors and labs will each bill you separately.
If you have insurance, the insurer will cut those prices by various amounts in a highly opaque and mysterious manner that amounts to about 75% off. But, strangely, the hospital may offer 85% to 90% off if you are uninsured. If you're inexperienced, you will waste time arguing over these insane bills. Sooner or later, you will understand what your next step is: refuse to pay all of even the discounted amount. Of course then you will be hounded by their debt collectors. So you use the next little piece of this system, the laws that forbid debt collectors from hounding you. You tell them not to call you, and they have to stop calling.
The debt collectors will try to threaten and scare you. They may tell you that they will sue. As I understand it, it's illegal for them to make such threats, especially if they have no intention of following through. Sue or do not sue, don't threaten to sue. They will also threaten to trash your credit rating. Well, guess what? There's another piece of the puzzle on that point. The private companies that maintain credit ratings recently changed their system to lessen the severity of medical debt. If (big if) the only kind of delinquent debt you have is medical, your credit rating will hardly be damaged.
The final piece is the statute of limitations. Many offenses drop off a person's record after 7 years, and unpaid debt is one of those. It's a little tricky though. There are ways to "restart" the clock, and debt collectors try to trick you into doing something that counts as restarting the clock.
Some other things you can do is stuff like timing your medical care. If it's the end of the year and you can hold off until the new year, do so. Want to load as much medical care as possible into the same year, to meet those deductibles. It's stupid that the system works that way, but there it is.
Very cynical. The whole system is a (sick pun intended) sick joke.