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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scumbria who wrote (131003)	1/29/2001 5:55:10 PM
From: Joe NYC	Respond to of 1571815

Scumbria, Reagan did it to the tune of $5 trillion dollars for his defense contractor friends, and most people never understood how they were being shafted. Reagan was president for 8 years, and during those 8 years the defense budget was between $200 and $300 billion. Let's take the average of $250, multiply by 8 and you get 2 trillion. What is the percentage of the money that goes to salaries of the serviceman and administration vs. weapons procurement? I don't know, but my guess would be that 1/3 to 1/2 goes for weapons, leaving you with $666 billion to $1 trillion. Joe PS: Anyway, good attempt on your part to play on people's fear and ignorance of the facts.

To: Scumbria who wrote (131003)	1/29/2001 6:39:41 PM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571815

Dear Scumbria: RE: Drug prices. Using my method, they can set any price they want on a drug. All that I am restricting them from is charging us a higher price than anywhere else at that time. They can sell it here at $1,000 a dose and nowhere else (exclusivity can have a justifiable premium) but, as soon as they sell it somewhere else for less, the price here must drop to at least match it (if not lower). This is a far cry from a price cap that the government sets. They still set the price but, like a common carrier, one price for all (this is somewhat more restrictive than the method I put forth but it is more morally defensible). Besides, the Democratic House created the budgets that created the $5 trillion in debt on the House Ways and Means Committee starting with the New Deal. So it is really the Democratic Leaders of the House's fault (Tip O'Neal was one). Republican Leaders starting with Newt Gringrich started paying back the debt the Democrats left. I forget who the Leader of the House was at the start of Social Security (see, even he wanted to fade from the limelight (and I am too tired to look it up)). Pete

To: Scumbria who wrote (131003)	1/30/2001 11:08:43 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571815

Somewhat on that topic: Look at Brazil nytimes.com Patent laws are malleable. Patients are educable. Drug companies are vincible. The world's AIDS crisis is solvable. But not if the drug companies have anything to say about it. This article gets into the rather odd economics by which US companies charge extortionist rates on drugs that were often developed using government money, and then go around strongarming the rest of the world to get them to pay the same extortionist rates. Meanwhile, lots of people are dying. Until a year ago, the triple therapy that has made AIDS a manageable disease in wealthy nations was considered realistic only for those who could afford to pay $10,000 to $15,000 a year or lived in societies that could. The most that poor countries could hope to do was prevent new cases of AIDS through educational programs and condom promotion or to cut mother-to-child transmission and, if they were very lucky, treat some of AIDS's opportunistic infections. But the 32.5 million people with H.I.V. in the developing world had little hope of survival. This was the conventional wisdom. Today, all of these statements are false. . . . Brazil can afford to treat AIDS because it does not pay market prices for antiretroviral drugs -- the most controversial aspect of the country's plan. In 1998, the government began making copies of brand-name drugs, and the price of those medicines has fallen by an average of 79 percent. Brazil now produces some triple therapy for $3,000 a year and expects to do much better, and the price could potentially drop to $700 a year or even less. Brazil is showing that no one who dies of AIDS dies of natural causes. Those who die have been failed -- by feckless leaders who see weapons as more alluring purchases than medicines, by wealthy countries (notably the United States) that have threatened the livelihood of poor nations who seek to manufacture cheap medicine and by the multinational drug companies who have kept the price of antiretroviral drugs needlessly out of reach of the vast majority of the world's population. Er. I'm sure W's chosen AG and the rest of his holy roller team will weigh in on the "right" side on this one. Cheers, Dan.