2016 POTUS Election Thread

Status
Not open for further replies.

townsend

Banned
Joined
Apr 11, 2013
Messages
5,377
One guy is for tiny government and the other is for massive government. Interesting that those two would be your favorites. By the way I'm all about Paul so don't take that the wrong way.
Bernie is the least hypocritical. I was all in on Paul until he started nuzzling the Tea Party's taint. If the Rand Paul who showed up for Wednesday debate was there every week, I'd be 100% in his corner.

The thing that Bernie and Rand have in common (that they don't have in common with the Republicans) is they aren't jerking themselves off for another war and trying to rewrite history to make George W the hero. They also recognize the ridiculously broken criminal justice system. To me those are the most important topics.

As we've discussed before my libertarian values favor the end of Sanctions against Iran (which Bernie was for and Rand opposed) and protection of women's reproductive rights (which Bernie is for and Rand opposed.)

Rand also screwed up bad on marriage equality I u sweat and (but disagree with) siding with states rights on that issue, but siding with Kim Davis's "religious liberty" was nearly unforgivable.
 
Last edited:

boozeman

28 Years And Counting...
Staff member
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
121,759
Obama has been a worse President than Dubya

It's true. It's true.
 

townsend

Banned
Joined
Apr 11, 2013
Messages
5,377
He's better than Dubya, but a rotting corpse could have achieved that level.
 

BipolarFuk

Demoted
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
11,464
I love how all these fake Christian conservatives are outing themselves by bashing the Pope for speaking on the evil of greed.

Fucking hypocrites revealing their true lord and master: MONEY!!!
 

Cowboysrock55

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
52,465
Price gouging on life saving meds should be illegal.
What's your solution? Do away with medical patents? Then you'd have little to no private medical research and development being done and the life saving medications never get developed in the first place. I agree with you, I'm just not sure how to strike the balance without screwing the whole system up.
 

townsend

Banned
Joined
Apr 11, 2013
Messages
5,377
What's your solution? Do away with medical patents? Then you'd have little to no private medical research and development being done and the life saving medications never get developed in the first place. I agree with you, I'm just not sure how to strike the balance without screwing the whole system up.
I think at a certain point anti-trust regulations kick in. You can't expect the gov't to protect your patents, but not regulate you when you extort dying people.
 

L.T. Fan

I'm Easy If You Are
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
21,689
I love how all these fake Christian conservatives are outing themselves by bashing the Pope for speaking on the evil of greed.

Fucking hypocrites revealing their true lord and master: MONEY!!!
What do you suppose the Pope uses to keep the Papal Empire going and where do you imagine it comes from?
 

Cowboysrock55

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
52,465
I think at a certain point anti-trust regulations kick in. You can't expect the gov't to protect your patents, but not regulate you when you extort dying people.
But how do you draw the line between extortion and a company just trying to make profits for their investments in research? Who determines what is a fair price and what is extortion? The problem with life saving medications is that someone can't just refuse to purchase your product. The patent sets up basically an artificial monopoly on an inelastic good so in a way the government is creating the problem with the patent but it's something that has to be done in order to further research.
 

fortsbest

DCC 4Life
Joined
Apr 8, 2013
Messages
3,733
I love how all these fake Christian conservatives are outing themselves by bashing the Pope for speaking on the evil of greed.

Fucking hypocrites revealing their true lord and master: MONEY!!!
You know dude, I'm catholic and I don't agree with everything this pope says. He may be the Pope, but he is human and he is from a fairly socialist background so naturally his views will tend that way. I don't agree with him on immigration, capitalism or air conditioning so why don't you either convert to Catholicism and follow him wholeheartedly, or quit using him to pimp your BS ideas and rhetoric! :dunce :budd
 

townsend

Banned
Joined
Apr 11, 2013
Messages
5,377
But how do you draw the line between extortion and a company just trying to make profits for their investments in research? Who determines what is a fair price and what is extortion? The problem with life saving medications is that someone can't just refuse to purchase your product. The patent sets up basically an artificial monopoly on an inelastic good so in a way the government is creating the problem with the patent but it's something that has to be done in order to further research.
i feel like there's already some stuff on the books when it comes to price gouging, I don't know what exactly the written law is, they may have a "I'll know it when I see it." Kind of explanation. But as much as any entity can be accused of holding and exploiting a monopoly, these guys can.
 

Clay_Allison

Old Bastard
Joined
Apr 8, 2013
Messages
5,488
But how do you draw the line between extortion and a company just trying to make profits for their investments in research? Who determines what is a fair price and what is extortion? The problem with life saving medications is that someone can't just refuse to purchase your product. The patent sets up basically an artificial monopoly on an inelastic good so in a way the government is creating the problem with the patent but it's something that has to be done in order to further research.
I think they could have a system where the drug company claims their development costs and is allowed to charge anything they want until they make that back, then anyone could develop a generic and the patent holder couldn't stop them, but the patent holder would get a % of the generic producers profits, guaranteeing that the markup won't be so high that another producer couldn't make it cheaper while still having to fork over a % of the profits.
 

L.T. Fan

I'm Easy If You Are
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
21,689
I think they could have a system where the drug company claims their development costs and is allowed to charge anything they want until they make that back, then anyone could develop a generic and the patent holder couldn't stop them, but the patent holder would get a % of the generic producers profits, guaranteeing that the markup won't be so high that another producer couldn't make it cheaper while still having to fork over a % of the profits.
I think if that happened it would set R&D back to the point that no company of any kind would spend money to create a better mousetrap. The whole incentive to R&D is to be able to have exclusive rights or be paid residual compensation for replicating.
 

Cowboysrock55

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
52,465
I think they could have a system where the drug company claims their development costs and is allowed to charge anything they want until they make that back, then anyone could develop a generic and the patent holder couldn't stop them, but the patent holder would get a % of the generic producers profits, guaranteeing that the markup won't be so high that another producer couldn't make it cheaper while still having to fork over a % of the profits.
The problem is making development costs back doesn't really adequately address it. For example you could invest 1 million dollars in research with hopes of finding the cure for cancer. Odds are your research will lead to nothing. So best case scenario is that you break even and get some residuals off generics or worst case scenario (Also most likely scenario) you lose 1 million dollars. Odds are you never invest the money in the first place and the cure for cancer is never discovered.

That's sort of the problem. If you take the financial risk involved you kind of deserve the reward on the back end or you wouldn't have taken the risk in the first place. There is a serious problem with medical costs in the United States though and this is part of the problem. I just don't know how to address it properly. I don't think the proper way to address it is for the government to tell you what you can or can't charge for your product.
 

Clay_Allison

Old Bastard
Joined
Apr 8, 2013
Messages
5,488
The problem is making development costs back doesn't really adequately address it. For example you could invest 1 million dollars in research with hopes of finding the cure for cancer. Odds are your research will lead to nothing. So best case scenario is that you break even and get some residuals off generics or worst case scenario (Also most likely scenario) you lose 1 million dollars. Odds are you never invest the money in the first place and the cure for cancer is never discovered.

That's sort of the problem. If you take the financial risk involved you kind of deserve the reward on the back end or you wouldn't have taken the risk in the first place. There is a serious problem with medical costs in the United States though and this is part of the problem. I just don't know how to address it properly. I don't think the proper way to address it is for the government to tell you what you can or can't charge for your product.
I think if that happened it would set R&D back to the point that no company of any kind would spend money to create a better mousetrap. The whole incentive to R&D is to be able to have exclusive rights or be paid residual compensation for replicating.
I think that depends on how high you set the residuals. If it's 50% then you'll price the generics out of business if you're doing business even kind of fairly. It would basically only cause you a problem if you wanted to make a 5000% profit like the asshole who decided to put a gun to the head of people dying of a disease and pull the trigger on the ones who can't pay.

Also, this asshole didn't have anything to do with developing the drug, he just got his grubby hands on a patent. You could probably fix the problem by not making the patent rights transferable to non-drug companies, since we've never seen them try to pull a stunt like this.
 

Cowboysrock55

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
52,465
It would basically only cause you a problem if you wanted to make a 5000% profit like the asshole who decided to put a gun to the head of people dying of a disease and pull the trigger on the ones who can't pay.
That's not really the issue in America though. It's the insurance companies paying out the crazy high price that is the problem. My buddy who is a pharmacist said his office paid $150.00 for a bottle of the stuff. The insurance company paid his pharmacy $9,200.00 when he sold it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom