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Republicans and healthcare - looking at the wrong end of the horse

jaeger19 said:
Almost all drugs have harmful side effects including death. your premise would virtually eliminate all pharmaceuticals. Particularly some of the most effective at saving lives.
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Every drug is fatal at dosage X, useless at dosage Y, and most effective at dosage Z. These dosages ought to be determined before it ever hits the market, and the information made available to consumers, so that anybody consuming dosage X knows that it's fatal. To compare with Hammurabi, this would be like the occupant of the house destroying one of the support beams, in which case the collapse results from their own stupidity instead of the architect's negligence.

If a drug's X and Z dosages are close together, such that using the drug to treat the illness risks an overdose (different metabolisms or whatever), that information should also be made public. Again, the consumer uses the drug at their own risk; the company did everything they could to mitigate the risks.

If the drug company does not determine the maximum safe dosage, or does not make this information crystal bloody clear to its consumers, then the directors are negligent and ought to be punished severely for it.

And yes, you could phrase this principle in the form of drug regulations, but it shouldn't require more than one page to convey the entirety of this information. Anything more is pointless bureaucracy.
 
APB212 said:
Every drug is fatal at dosage X, useless at dosage Y, and most effective at dosage Z. These dosages ought to be determined before it ever hits the market, and the information made available to consumers, so that anybody consuming dosage X knows that it's fatal. To compare with Hammurabi, this would be like the occupant of the house destroying one of the support beams, in which case the collapse results from their own stupidity instead of the architect's negligence.

If a drug's X and Z dosages are close together, such that using the drug to treat the illness risks an overdose (different metabolisms or whatever), that information should also be made public. Again, the consumer uses the drug at their own risk; the company did everything they could to mitigate the risks.

If the drug company does not determine the maximum safe dosage, or does not make this information crystal bloody clear to its consumers, then the directors are negligent and ought to be punished severely for it.

And yes, you could phrase this principle in the form of drug regulations, but it shouldn't require more than one page to convey the entirety of this information. Anything more is pointless bureaucracy.
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Yeah no. Every drug has side effects that can occur in people despite them taking the exact same dosage. And those side effects can often include death. Drug companies already undergo rigorous testing of their drugs to determine safety. and despite that.. there are often times when drugs that were thought to be safe end up not being safe for certain populations (people with certain genetics, or people with different comorbidities).
There is no way of accounting for all the different variations in people in the testing process to insure that no person will have harm,

A human body does not have the exactly same properties from one human to another.

Wood, concrete and iron are much more consistent..

Which is why the idea of applying the same code to pharma as to building a house is not valid..
 
jaeger19 said:
...those side effects can often include death.
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Not acceptable. If your drug kills somebody while being used as intended, it means you didn't test it properly. That would result in a lawsuit even under the current system.

There is no way of accounting for all the different variations in people in the testing process to insure that no person will have harm
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It'll never be perfect, but it should be as close as possible. And if something bad happens, it's still the drug company's fault.

Which is why the idea of applying the same code to pharma as to building a house is not valid..
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I never mentioned a code, quite the opposite. I said that the entire body of regulations could be replaced with, "if your crappy product kills somebody, you are personally liable for their death."

The point is not whether pharma CEOs deserve the death penalty, or whether making drugs is like building houses. The point is that small rules with big penalties are better than big rules with small penalties.
 
APB212 said:
Not acceptable. If your drug kills somebody while being used as intended, it means you didn't test it properly. That would result in a lawsuit even under the current system.
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Sorry it does not mean that you did not test it properly. And it would not result in a lawsuit unless there was some evidence of malfeasance on the part of the drug company.

It'll never be perfect, but it should be as close as possible. And if something bad happens, it's still the drug company's fault.
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Then you doom the whole pharma industry and pretty much many of the most important drugs. for example antiobiotics.. Medicines are the number one cause of anaphylactic deaths in America. When the drug was identified as the culprit.. 40% of the time it was an antibiotic. the rest of the time it was a diagnostic agent or a chemotherapy drug used to fight cancer.

Do you really want to force pharma companies to stop making antibiotics or cancer medication.?

The point is that small rules with big penalties are better than big rules with small penalties.
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Certainly not in this case. It would end the production of pharmaceuticals and end research and development into a whole host of important life saving drugs.
 
jaeger19 said:
Do you really want to force pharma companies to stop making antibiotics or cancer medication.?
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Of course not. I'm an anarcho-capitalist more or less, so I think drug companies should be free to do whatever they want without government busybodies regulating them. The price of that freedom is increased responsibility: if their drug turns out to be dangerous, they are liable for any harm it causes.

Medicines are the number one cause of anaphylactic deaths in America.
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Indeed, a pharma company cannot be responsible for allergic reactions, unless the immune response is an effect of the drug. Their responsibility is to make a safe product, not to micromanage the health of every other person. If their product isn't at fault, neither are they.
 
APB212 said:
Fixing healthcare in America is easy:

1. Let each state make its own healthcare programme, customized to its individual needs.

2. Allow insurers to sell across state lines, thus increasing competition and lowering prices.

3. Abolish the FDA, thus reducing development costs that the drug companies have to recover.

4. Lower the federal income tax, since the feds no longer need to provide healthcare.

5. Pass a constitutional amendment that forbids Congress from legislating on healthcare.

Under this scenario, a progressive state like California could have a single-payer system, a conservative state like Texas could have a user-pays system, and the two models wouldn't have to be reconciled.

Everybody wins, except the snout-in-trough politicians.
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No state can afford to pay for healthcare for its citizens alone and nothing you suggest would lower the costs of medical services either. Only the Federal Govt. can do that like they already do with Medicare.
 
APB212 said:
Of course not. I'm an anarcho-capitalist more or less, so I think drug companies should be free to do whatever they want without government busybodies regulating them. The price of that freedom is increased responsibility: if their drug turns out to be dangerous, they are liable for any harm it causes.

.
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All drugs are potentially dangerous.. thats what you don;t get. If they are liable every time someone has a reaction that was not forseen.. then basically there is no sense in risking jail and billions of fiines to even produce antibiotics or chemotherapy drugs.

Indeed, a pharma company cannot be responsible for allergic reactions, unless the immune response is an effect of the drug
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so now you flip the other way. So now pharma is not responsible for allergic reactions? so now a pharmaceutical company can knowingly produce and market a drug that causes a huge number of deaths from allergic reaction becaues they are now not liable for allergic reactions?

Sorry but another fail on your part.

Its just not as easy as you make out.
 
joG said:
If you have a doctor from say a Canadian or British hospital that wants to practice, I don't really see any justification other than protectionism and the desire to keep out competition.
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If they are MD/DO competent, then take the US ABMS/AMA Board Exams and be certified. In addition, every state has a Department of Professional Regulation that certify professionals in everything from accounting to real estate.
 
jaeger19 said:
All drugs are potentially dangerous.. thats what you don;t get.
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Potentially, yes. Actually, no.

If a drug has a 1 in a million chance of death, but the other 999,999 times it's completely safe to use, it's unreasonable to consider that drug dangerous. The one-in-a-million is the result of another variable that's probably not the drug company's fault (it might be, but probably isn't). If a tornado destroys a house, that doesn't mean the architect designed it poorly.

If they are liable every time someone has a reaction that was not forseen.. then basically there is no sense in risking jail and billions of fiines to even produce antibiotics or chemotherapy drugs.
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If the risks are known or suspected, and are made widely known, then people use the drug at their own risk. For example, everybody knows that smoking kills, so it's unreasonable to hold the tobacco companies liable for smoking-related deaths. The tobacco company is not responsible for the stupidity of its customers. They're also not responsible for the deaths of people who smoked before cigarettes were found to be dangerous, because the effects of smoking manifest much later in life, which makes testing nearly impossible and thus unreasonable to demand. If, however, they found a new kind of tobacco, and sold it without testing, and it was later found to be significantly more harmful than ordinary tobacco, then they would be liable for negligence.

so now you flip the other way. So now pharma is not responsible for allergic reactions? so now a pharmaceutical company can knowingly produce and market a drug that causes a huge number of deaths from allergic reaction becaues they are now not liable for allergic reactions?
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If the immune response is coincidental to the effect of the drug, the drug is not at fault and pharma isn't liable. If the drug's effect is to cause an allergy-like response, then the drug is at fault and pharma is liable. If people take a drug that they know to be bad, then they are stupid and pharma isn't liable.

This is more or less what I said in my previous response.
 
MTAtech said:
The Affordable Care Act works because it relies on the three legged stool approach. If you want to cover preexisting conditions, you need to guarantee a pool of healthy and sick people. Thus, the mandate (leg 1.) Then, to make sure that insurance companies that don't charge people with preexisting conditions exhortation rates, there is community ratings (leg 2) that guarantees those in the community pay the same rate. Then, to cover the working poor and very poor, there are subsidies and expanded Medicaid (leg 3.)

The GOP plans all saw off at least one leg, making the stool impossible to balance.

If you are complaining that premiums and deductibles are too high, that can be fixed with additional subsidies. Unfortunately, those subsidies are paid through special taxes and the GOP wants to eliminate those taxes to give the rich a benefit.
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Lmao !!

No, the ACA doesn't work. Whats so funny ? The very things you listed that makes makes it " work " are at the heart of its implosion.

I mean really, what color is the sky in your world ?

The cost shifting mechansism that makes covering people with pre-existing conditions affordable ONLY works when a requisite number of healthy young people are buying policies on the exchanges.

They are NOT. Under 10 million are on the xchanges, and insurers are and have been bailing out

The community ratings are Govt imposed price controls. Price controls are the prefered method for controlling cost by Leftist like Maduro in Venezuellla, and they corrupt markets, not make them stable or make products or services affordable.

And why would we need additional subsidies to shore up the exchanges if the ACA " works " ??

Obama already dumped money into the exchanges by illegally transfering billions of dollars from the Treusury to struggling insurance companies, and theyre still bleeding money.

No, the ACA doesnt work at all and its no ones ault but Obama's and the Democrats.
The CBO missed their 2016 projection by 12 million people and the rest is history
 
APB212 said:
Potentially, yes. Actually, no.

If a drug has a 1 in a million chance of death, but the other 999,999 times it's completely safe to use, it's unreasonable to consider that drug dangerous. The one-in-a-million is the result of another variable that's probably not the drug company's fault (it might be, but probably isn't). If a tornado destroys a house, that doesn't mean the architect designed it poorly.
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Actually its very possible for a drug manufacture to "create the tornado" i.e making a drug more likely to cause an allergic reaction.
but now you are complicated your "simple rules"..

so NOW we have to calculate what is an acceptable risk...okay.. 1 in million. what about 1 in 100000? what about 1 in 100? What if those 99 people that don;t have a reaction have their life saved and they would have died without the drug?

Are you realizing that your premise is simply too simplistic to be valid.

If the risks are known or suspected, and are made widely known, then people use the drug at their own risk.
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That's already done. In fact its required by law.

If the immune response is coincidental to the effect of the drug, the drug is not at fault and pharma isn't liable.
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Except in all actuality its entirely possible that a drug manufacturer can manufacture a drug that has a high risk of anaphylactic shock due to malfeasance.. even though the immune response is, using your definition,.. "coincidental to the effect of the drug".

So now you are allowing drug manufacturers to knowingly produce drugs that cause a huge number of deaths from allergic reactions and releasing them from liability
 
jaeger19 said:
Actually its very possible for a drug manufacture to "create the tornado" i.e making a drug more likely to cause an allergic reaction.

...

Except in all actuality its entirely possible that a drug manufacturer can manufacture a drug that has a high risk of anaphylactic shock due to malfeasance.. even though the immune response is, using your definition,.. "coincidental to the effect of the drug".
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I don't know if that's true, having never taken pharmacology at uni, but I'll take your word for it.

So now you are allowing drug manufacturers to knowingly produce drugs that cause a huge number of deaths from allergic reactions and releasing them from liability
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Absolutely not. If they can detect and eliminate the problem during the testing phase, they should.

Are you realizing that your premise is simply too simplistic to be valid.
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No, quite the opposite. My simple principle of "don't harm your customers" has withstood every challenge you've presented.
 
Fenton said:
Lmao !!

No, the ACA doesn't work. Whats so funny ? The very things you listed that makes makes it " work " are at the heart of its implosion.

I mean really, what color is the sky in your world ?

The cost shifting mechansism that makes covering people with pre-existing conditions affordable ONLY works when a requisite number of healthy young people are buying policies on the exchanges.

They are NOT. Under 10 million are on the xchanges, and insurers are and have been bailing out

The community ratings are Govt imposed price controls. Price controls are the prefered method for controlling cost by Leftist like Maduro in Venezuellla, and they corrupt markets, not make them stable or make products or services affordable.

And why would we need additional subsidies to shore up the exchanges if the ACA " works " ??

Obama already dumped money into the exchanges by illegally transfering billions of dollars from the Treusury to struggling insurance companies, and theyre still bleeding money.

No, the ACA doesnt work at all and its no ones ault but Obama's and the Democrats.
The CBO missed their 2016 projection by 12 million people and the rest is history
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No matter how many times you folks, since 2013, have been telling us Obamacare is failing it keeps going. If it really was failing, Trump wouldn't have to sabotage it. I will let Paul Krugman explain.

Obamacare repeal has failed again, for the simple reason that Graham-Cassidy, like all the other G.O.P. proposals, was a piece of meanspirited junk. But while the Affordable Care Act survives, the Trump administration is openly trying to sabotage the law’s functioning.

This sabotage is taking place on multiple levels. The administration has refused to confirm whether it will pay crucial subsidies to insurers that cover low-income customers. It has refused to clarify whether the requirement that healthy people buy insurance will be enforced. It has canceled or suspended outreach designed to get more people to sign up.

These actions translate directly into much higher premiums: Insurers don’t know if they’ll be compensated for major costs, and they have every reason to expect a smaller, sicker risk pool than before. And it’s too late to reverse the damage: Insurers are finalizing their 2018 rates as you read this.
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MTAtech said:
No matter how many times you folks, since 2013, have been telling us Obamacare is failing it keeps going. If it really was failing, Trump wouldn't have to sabotage it. I will let Paul Krugman explain.
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Krugman ?? Everyone knows that Krugman's a total and absolute hack, so WHY do you keep referencing him ?

And I asked you a question. If the ACA works, why do we need to bail out the exchanges to fix it ?
 
Fenton said:
Krugman ?? Everyone knows that Krugman's a total and absolute hack, so WHY do you keep referencing him ?

And I asked you a question. If the ACA works, why do we need to bail out the exchanges to fix it ?
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I have to laugh when I read some guy on the internet besmirch a Nobel Prize winning economist. It is noted that you must dive into personal attacks instead of tackling his points -- but, of course, you can't.
 
MTAtech said:
I have to laugh when I read some guy on the internet besmirch a Nobel Prize winning economist. It is noted that you must dive into personal attacks instead of tackling his points -- but, of course, you can't.
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Obama won a Nobel Prize. The committee hands them out to Leftist as a participation trophy

Krugmans a Left wing hack elitist, AND a arrogant prick to boot. I guess those two qualities go hand and hand these days

And you still havent answered my question. Gee, I wonder if Krugman would take a stab at it ?
 
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APB212 said:
Fixing healthcare in America is easy:

1. Let each state make its own healthcare programme, customized to its individual needs.

2. Allow insurers to sell across state lines, thus increasing competition and lowering prices.

3. Abolish the FDA, thus reducing development costs that the drug companies have to recover.

4. Lower the federal income tax, since the feds no longer need to provide healthcare.

5. Pass a constitutional amendment that forbids Congress from legislating on healthcare.

Under this scenario, a progressive state like California could have a single-payer system, a conservative state like Texas could have a user-pays system, and the two models wouldn't have to be reconciled.

Everybody wins, except the snout-in-trough politicians.
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What a fantasy. This kind of nonsense is exactly why libertarians can't even win a city council seat.

You can already buy insurance across state lines in some states. Insurers have no interest in it because they have to be able to establish provider networks in other markets to be competitive.

Getting rid of the FDA would be incredibly stupid. All sorts of pseudo science garbage would be marketed along side mainstream medicine. Moreover, FDA compliance is not why healthcare is so expensive. Pharma only accounts for about 10% of over all healthcare spending.

If you get the federal government out of healthcare, which means no medicare, no schip, no medicaid, then all you are doing is ensuring the no seniors, anyone with a terminal or chronic condition, and the poor will never get any sort of healthcare coverage as they are uninsurable in the private sector. States simply don't have the resources to make up the difference.

If anything what the federal government needs to do is mandate clear and transparent pricing with providers, find a way to promote insurers to establish national provider networks so that companies like BCBS can put more pressure on providers in negotiating more reasonable rates, and push providers to move away from the fee for service model (perhaps with tax incentives that penalize fee for service and provide incentives for salaried providers instead).
 
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Fenton said:
Obama won a Nobel Prize. The committee hands them out to Leftist as a participation trophy

Krugmans a Left wing hack elitist, AND a arrogant prick to boot. I guess those two qualities go hand and hand these days

And you still havent answered my question. Gee, I wonder if Krugman would take a stab at it ?
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Unless you have something specific to counter Dr. Krugman's piece, your name calling about him is merely hate directed at a brilliant person who makes mincemeat out of conservative arguments, policy and exposes their hypocrisy.

Your question was: "And why would we need additional subsidies to shore up the exchanges if the ACA " works " ??" Subsidies are one of the legs of the three-legged stool I spoke about. They help low income and middle income Americans afford private insurance. The subsidies are a feature, not a bug. One of the biggest complaints about the ACA is that the premiums are still too high. Additional subsidies would solve that problem.

Earlier, you stated that, "The cost shifting mechansism that makes covering people with pre-existing conditions affordable ONLY works when a requisite number of healthy young people are buying policies on the exchanges." That is correct. That's also why there is an individual mandate -- something the GOP alternatives all remove, dooming their plans before they start. Now, if you are saying that young/healthy people are still opting out and choosing to accept the fines instead of insurance, then you are admitting that the fines are too low to provide the incentive to join and should be raised. I agree.

You also said: "he community ratings are Govt imposed price controls." That's just wrong. Insurance companies determine the price; they just need to be the same price for everyone in the community. It's no different than NYC Taxis. In NYC Taxis have the same price. Each taxicab can't determine on their own, what they will charge a passenger.

You also said that, insurers are bailing out. That's a yes and no. While there is a viable marketplace in most areas, there are insurers stopping to sell in other areas.
Are these moves more evidence that Obamacare is fundamentally unworkable? Hardly. Of greedy insurance companies callously disregarding their customers’ health? Not that either. Anthem explained clearly what is responsible for its retreat: Republican sabotage of the health-care system.

The Trump administration has been serially unclear about whether it will keep funding a crucial subsidy program, known as cost-sharing reductions . Without them, insurers would have to jack up premiums to cover their costs or leave markets that would become deeply unprofitable to them. Just as experts and industry officials predicted, insurance companies have done both as the uncertainty about these subsidies has grown.
...
The president’s maladministration could include lax enforcement of the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, inadequate efforts to enroll more people in coverage and other gratuitous subversions of the finely tuned system Obamacare sought to create.

SOURCE
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Without GOP subversion, there likely wouldn't be a mass exodus of insurance companies. Moreover, the GOP is unwilling to tweak the ACA to make it better. Instead of Obamacare dying, the GOP is trying to kill it.

There is one thing Republicans usually leave out of their indictment of Obamacare, though: Insurers might have been less likely to exit if more states had expanded Medicaid under Obamacare.
 
MTAtech said:
Unless you have something specific to counter Dr. Krugman's piece, your name calling about him is merely hate directed at a brilliant person who makes mincemeat out of conservative arguments, policy and exposes their hypocrisy.

Your question was: "And why would we need additional subsidies to shore up the exchanges if the ACA " works " ??" Subsidies are one of the legs of the three-legged stool I spoke about. They help low income and middle income Americans afford private insurance. The subsidies are a feature, not a bug. One of the biggest complaints about the ACA is that the premiums are still too high. Additional subsidies would solve that problem.

Earlier, you stated that, "The cost shifting mechansism that makes covering people with pre-existing conditions affordable ONLY works when a requisite number of healthy young people are buying policies on the exchanges." That is correct. That's also why there is an individual mandate -- something the GOP alternatives all remove, dooming their plans before they start. Now, if you are saying that young/healthy people are still opting out and choosing to accept the fines instead of insurance, then you are admitting that the fines are too low to provide the incentive to join and should be raised. I agree.

You also said: "he community ratings are Govt imposed price controls." That's just wrong. Insurance companies determine the price; they just need to be the same price for everyone in the community. It's no different than NYC Taxis. In NYC Taxis have the same price. Each taxicab can't determine on their own, what they will charge a passenger.

You also said that, insurers are bailing out. That's a yes and no. While there is a viable marketplace in most areas, there are insurers stopping to sell in other areas. Without GOP subversion, there likely wouldn't be a mass exodus of insurance companies. Moreover, the GOP is unwilling to tweak the ACA to make it better. Instead of Obamacare dying, the GOP is trying to kill it.

There is one thing Republicans usually leave out of their indictment of Obamacare, though: Insurers might have been less likely to exit if more states had expanded Medicaid under Obamacare.
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The extra cost to insure older sicker Americans with pre-existing conditions was SUPPOSED to be paid for by a requisite number younger, healthier people buying insurance on the policies.

The 2009 CBO projection of 22 million Americans on the exchanges by 2016 was off by 12 million. The under 10 million currently on the exchanges are disprortionately older and sicker forcing Insurers to raise premiums and deductibles or to just bail out of the exhanges

The ACAs cost shifting mechanism failed, IT DID NOT WORK and the ACA does not work either

Its that simple, there should be NO reason for the Feds to bail out the exchanges with billions of tax payer dollars if ObamaCare " worked "

You wont admit that and neither will Krugman, because he's a hack

States that took money from the FEDs to expand medicare are now having to pony up part of the cost of that expansion and they dont have it.

California doesnt have the money, NY and Illinois doesnt have the money and the only solution the Left can come up with to fix their collosal **** up, is to stick their hand out in the hopes the American tax payer will baill their asses out of this mess, so they can run on the ACA as a " success '"
 
Rogue Valley said:
If they are MD/DO competent, then take the US ABMS/AMA Board Exams and be certified. In addition, every state has a Department of Professional Regulation that certify professionals in everything from accounting to real estate.
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That sounds like a non tariff trade barrier that protects doctors' incomes.
 
APB212 said:
1. Let each state make its own healthcare programme, customized to its individual needs.

2. Allow insurers to sell across state lines, thus increasing competition and lowering prices.
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These are opposite concepts.
 
Fenton said:
The extra cost to insure older sicker Americans with pre-existing conditions was SUPPOSED to be paid for by a requisite number younger, healthier people buying insurance on the policies.

The 2009 CBO projection of 22 million Americans on the exchanges by 2016 was off by 12 million. The under 10 million currently on the exchanges are disprortionately older and sicker forcing Insurers to raise premiums and deductibles or to just bail out of the exhanges

The ACAs cost shifting mechanism failed, IT DID NOT WORK and the ACA does not work either

Its that simple, there should be NO reason for the Feds to bail out the exchanges with billions of tax payer dollars if ObamaCare " worked "

You wont admit that and neither will Krugman, because he's a hack

States that took money from the FEDs to expand medicare are now having to pony up part of the cost of that expansion and they dont have it.

California doesnt have the money, NY and Illinois doesnt have the money and the only solution the Left can come up with to fix their collosal **** up, is to stick their hand out in the hopes the American tax payer will baill their asses out of this mess, so they can run on the ACA as a " success '"
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...at-forecasting-the-last-big-health-care-bill/
That figure is partially a result of the fact that the CBO could not have anticipated that the Supreme Court would make the expansion of Medicaid optional for states under Obamacare. Many Republican officials chose not to expand the program in their states, resulting in fewer people receiving coverage than initially envisioned.


Overall, though, the CBO's forecasts for Medicaid were approximately accurate, because greater-than-expected enrollment in other states made up for the shortfall in states that did not expand the program. Rather, unexpectedly low figures for the exchanges established by the law account for much of the discrepancy, as The Washington Post reported in March.
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APB212 said:
Absolutely not. If they can detect and eliminate the problem during the testing phase, they should.

.
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wait.. you just said that they were not liable for allergic reactions that were "coincidental to the effect of the drug". therefore they have less incentive to go through the expense of fixing any problem with allergies.

No, quite the opposite. My simple principle of "don't harm your customers" has withstood every challenge you've presented.
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Quite the opposite.. you have flipped flopped back and forth over when pharma is liable and when its not. Allergic reactions were.. then there were not liable if its coincidental.. and now you say that they are liable again.

I think the problem is that you cannot see your own flip flops.
 
MTAtech said:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...at-forecasting-the-last-big-health-care-bill/
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Facts are not Fentons friends.

you know what the most frustrating thing about being an educated conservative is? you end up defending liberals a lot on Obamacare because so called conservatives criticise Obamacare for things that aren;t in the bill,, don;t exist.. or problems created by the republicans sabotaging obamacare..

Meanwhile their are tons of problems with Obamacare that never get addressed. Because we are focused on issues that don;t really exist.

And frankly you can see that lack of knowledge borne out in Congress. they lambast Obamacare.. but have no idea how to repair or replace it with anything.
 
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jaeger19 said:
wait.. you just said that they were not liable for allergic reactions that were "coincidental to the effect of the drug". therefore they have less incentive to go through the expense of fixing any problem with allergies.

...

Quite the opposite.. you have flipped flopped back and forth over when pharma is liable and when its not. Allergic reactions were.. then there were not liable if its coincidental.. and now you say that they are liable again.

I think the problem is that you cannot see your own flip flops.
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I'm not "flip-flopping".

My underlying principle is: if your product harms the consumer when used as intended, you are responsible for the damage.

You then challenge that principle with different nuanced scenarios, and I apply the following tests:

1. Did the product itself cause harm to the consumer? If not, the company isn't responsible - something else is.

2. Did the company take all reasonable steps to reduce harm? If not, the company is responsible - they could have prevented the harm, but didn't.

3. If the risk of harm persisted, did the company make these risks known to consumers? If not, the company is responsible - consumers didn't know they were taking a risk.

4. Did the consumer use the product in a safe and correct manner? If not, the company isn't responsible - they can't prevent other people's stupidity.

If you apply these tests to all the scenarios we discussed, you'll see that my principle consistently holds. Once you do that, then I will indulge further rebuttals. Otherwise, you're rebutting my argument based on your own views, not on its logical consistency.
 
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