The ugly face of capitalism?

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At the other end of the spectrum was Jonas Salk. I wonder if the idiot on this thread thinks that his ethos was equivalent to socialism.

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ST4 said:
Is it really fair on someone who pays lots of tax but is fit and healthy and never needs the NHS ends up paying for someone who needs very expensive treatment and that person might never had paid very much at all in tax.

Might be nice, but for who? Not the person paying in heaps and getting nothing back from it. Just a thought, just because someone can afford to pay doesn't mean they should.
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It's worth going back to the beginning to help explain.

Health care in a population makes everyone wealthier - even those at the very top of the wealth pile. Having a healthier population means that society is drained less by those who are sick, it means as a whole we are more productive and as a whole our standard of living increases. The benefit of a national health service has improved the standard of living for you and I well beyond the measure of tax we may or may not have paid, and that would likely be true all the way to the very top of the income tree. The relatively small amount of our income that we pay for healthcare is incredibly good value - compare that to the healthcare costs for US citizens who, in theory, pay according to whether they can afford it or not. If the US dealt with a number of social issues including that of healthcare then they would likely be a much more powerful and attractive nation than they are at present.
 
Rapscallion said:
At the other end of the spectrum was Jonas Salk. I wonder if the idiot on this thread thinks that his ethos was equivalent to socialism.

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And Kohler and Milstein with monoclonal antibody technology - the basis of most modern diagnostic tests for the last 25 years. Compare that to Roche, who patented PCR technology and charged large license fees - PCR remained a minor technology until the patents ran out, despite being enormously powerful technique.
 
Rapscallion said:
At the other end of the spectrum was Jonas Salk. I wonder if the idiot on this thread thinks that his ethos was equivalent to socialism.

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It's a tough one. I know, knew to be exact, how much it costs to discover new compound and get through the various trials. Serious amounts of money are required with no guarantee of return on investment. The billions we used to spent sponsoring other research be it at universities or be it start-ups in biosciences. It is required to make money to invest it.

It is unclear what the true story is in the OP in that context. I really feel like it is missing content.
 
ST4 said:
Not hugely, not if the great un tax paying community steadily drop off.
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Lol. And they say youve no sense of humour
 
dejongj said:
It's a tough one. I know, knew to be exact, how much it costs to discover new compound and get through the various trials. Serious amounts of money are required with no guarantee of return on investment. The billions we used to spent sponsoring other research be it at universities or be it start-ups in biosciences. It is required to make money to invest it.

It is unclear what the true story is in the OP in that context. I really feel like it is missing content.
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It's not difficult to fathom the motive for the company in the OP, apparently they have form for this, they're run by a hedge fund manager who has turned his attention to pharmaceuticals, using a totally blunt version of 'supply and demand' to maximise profits.

The quiz is how that particular drug holds the position in the U.S. market place, in an article I read the NHS are paying less than £1 a pill for it (not famous for their negotiating skills).
 
They seem to have bowed to pressure and are lowering the price, though no percentage has been mentioned yet.
 
ST4 said:
Name calling. Tut tut. It was his to give away, but had it been me who invented it, I would charge its worth
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Do you ever feel that you would prefer to live in a place surrounded by like minded folks - the Cayman Islands maybe?
 
ancient_mariner said:
It's worth going back to the beginning to help explain.

Health care in a population makes everyone wealthier - even those at the very top of the wealth pile. Having a healthier population means that society is drained less by those who are sick, it means as a whole we are more productive and as a whole our standard of living increases........
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Very clearly articulated. Good job.
 
ST4 said:
...

Yes, the late and great Mrs Thatcher's finest comments seem lost on you.
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There are villages close to here that had instant street parties when she died.

Do you really think that those thousands of people just 'didn't understand her'?

Or maybe they had to live with the consequences of her actions in a way that you couldn't possibly comprehend because it didn't affect you?

Mrs Thatchers rhetoric is lost on me because I understand what it actually means - whereas some people just see some words that look like they make sense - in a way that Britain First rhetoric 'appears' to make sense - scratch the surface though... it's just propaganda with no substance.
 
Phil V said:
There are villages close to here that had instant street parties when she died.

Do you really think that those thousands of people just 'didn't understand her'?

Or maybe they had to live with the consequences of her actions in a way that you couldn't possibly comprehend because it didn't affect you?

Mrs Thatchers rhetoric is lost on me because I understand what it actually means - whereas some people just see some words that look like they make sense - in a way that Britain First rhetoric 'appears' to make sense - scratch the surface though... it's just propaganda with no substance.
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Or maybe they couldn't see beyond their own myopic bubble and see the greater good of the country.
 
Alastair said:
On expired patents..

Someone once asked the CEO of Coca-Cola for the secret recipe. He asked what they would do with it? - even if they had the recipe they couldn't make it cheaper (Coke has spent 100+ years refining the manufacturing process and distribution efficiencies) and even if it tasted exactly the same and cost the same, it still wouldn't be Coke in the eyes of the consumer. Why buy not-Coke when you can buy Coke? It's near enough the same with pharmaceuticals.
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This is similar to Lego. No one can make the same quality but undercut them. There are many out there trying though.
 
ST4 said:
Or maybe they couldn't see beyond their own myopic bubble and see the greater good of the country.
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Or maybe there wasn't a greater good for the country - you'll struggle with this but poverty costs the whole nation. ill health, crime and substance abuse are all symptoms of poverty and all skyrocketed following Thatchers social engineering experiment. The cost to you and I of that is massive, it'll be lost on you but putting money into prevention rather than cure has massive financial as well as social benefits.

But as we can see from above - you have difficulty grasping such concepts, maybe you'd find it easier if you'd had a proper education (we all know how you hate education) or seen some of it at close quarters.
 
ST4 said:
National deficient. It's spent on needless things IMHO
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Should that be deficit?

You do appreciate it's difficult to maintain a position of intellectual superiority when your posts are so often riddled with grammar and spelling mistakes. But you fail to see why most intelligent people see intollerance as a sign of stupidity when so many racist rants on the internet show a lack of the same.

Needless things? Of course it is - tax breaks for millionaires, looking after the moats of MP's, rail privatisation etc. etc. (I'm guessing you meant something else - but that was fun)
 
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He works in banking so can't be expected to know the difference.

Of course, had he been the discoverer of the Polio vaccine, we'd all be better off here - he'd be dead.
 
See what happens when you get a period of heavy rainfall? The rivers rise and those that dwell under bridges have to seek new refuge.
 
Phil V said:
It's not difficult to fathom the motive for the company in the OP, apparently they have form for this, they're run by a hedge fund manager who has turned his attention to pharmaceuticals, using a totally blunt version of 'supply and demand' to maximise profits.

The quiz is how that particular drug holds the position in the U.S. market place, in an article I read the NHS are paying less than £1 a pill for it (not famous for their negotiating skills).
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£13 for 30 tablets, sold by GlaxoSmithKline here though, not that they have a particular good record.
 
Phil V said:
There are villages close to here that had instant street parties when she died.

Do you really think that those thousands of people just 'didn't understand her'?

Or maybe they had to live with the consequences of her actions in a way that you couldn't possibly comprehend because it didn't affect you?

Mrs Thatchers rhetoric is lost on me because I understand what it actually means - whereas some people just see some words that look like they make sense - in a way that Britain First rhetoric 'appears' to make sense - scratch the surface though... it's just propaganda with no substance.
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The town I grew up in Northumberland suffered when Thatcher shut the mine for being "unprofitable" despite it sitting between a smelting plant and a coal-fired power station. It was soon re-opened by a private company, and everyone knows, private companies love running things at a loss....

jakeblu said:
£13 for 30 tablets, sold by GlaxoSmithKline here though, not that they have a particular good record.
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That might be changing though, they were the first big player that signed up to the AllTrials movement to ensure that *all* trial results, past, present and future are published, not just those that show a positive use of the drug. And with them on-board, that puts enormous pressure on the entire Pharma business to do the same.- http://www.alltrials.net/news/the-story-of-the-campaign-thats-changing-the-world/
 
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ST4 said:
Why, as I don't want to live in a land where other peoples money is spent on an undeserving greedy grasping untermenchen
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Are you referring to the cost of your prosecution?
 
ST4 said:
Amongst labour grass rootes supporters, not all of the UK which returned a slim Tory majority. Many on the fence labour/tory middle englanders will swing tory
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Ah, but there will be people who voted UKIP as a protest vote, and many more who didn't vote at all ('because they're all the same') who might be drawn to his anti-establishment anti-status-quo message.
Even senior Tories admit they really don't know how the next election will play out - they'd rather have had one of the other 3, as they know how to beat 'New Labour" front-bench stalwarts still tainted by the Brown years. The Corbyn Effect is an unknown.
 
ST4 said:
Why, as I don't want to live in a land where other peoples money is spent on an undeserving greedy grasping untermenchen
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The troll to is back to using Nazi terminology. I wonder what his bedtime reading is? Britain first website followed by the biography of Goebbels probably. And he is so deluded he thinks he is moderate right.
 
Llamaman said:
Ah, but there will be people who voted UKIP as a protest vote, and many more who didn't vote at all ('because they're all the same') who might be drawn to his anti-establishment anti-status-quo message.
Even senior Tories admit they really don't know how the next election will play out - they'd rather have had one of the other 3, as they know how to beat 'New Labour" front-bench stalwarts still tainted by the Brown years. The Corbyn Effect is an unknown.
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I'd say that the Tories are actually concerned about him, hence the absolutely ridiculous things they're trying to portray as negatives. Tory-light was never going to win an election, going back to the left will have won back a lot of voters who just didn't vote, and I imagine some of the green vote too.

Still, far too early to see how it will all play out.

Best thing about PigGate though, the hashtag on twitter - #BaeOfPigs
 
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