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How do I live in a country this over the top in its evil?

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happiness

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21 hours ago, happiness said:

... I had 20+ joints treated at the Cayman clinic last year with good results ...

I'm glad you can do this. Are there patient groups, or patient forums, of people who have a shared interest in changing the law here.?Fighting against vested interests is hard, but organizing -- like labor unions do -- is one of the approaches that has a chance.  

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4 hours ago, softwareNerd said:

I'm glad you can do this. Are there patient groups, or patient forums, of people who have a shared interest in changing the law here.?Fighting against vested interests is hard, but organizing -- like labor unions do -- is one of the approaches that has a chance.  

There is a very grassroots group that advocates for the cause and is a mix of good and bad. The leadership doesn’t have much of a grasp of how to argue, puts out poorly edited articles and social media content, and sometimes lives up to the other side's characterizion of patients as being easily misled. They blew me away last year by spearheading the Texas law that passed, which will be a game-changer if federal authorities don't interfere, so I have to give them some credit. 

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3 hours ago, happiness said:

There is a very grassroots group that advocates for the cause and is a mix of good and bad. The leadership doesn’t have much of a grasp of how to argue, puts out poorly edited articles and social media content, and sometimes lives up to the other side's characterizion of patients as being easily misled. They blew me away last year by spearheading the Texas law that passed, which will be a game-changer if federal authorities don't interfere, so I have to give them some credit. 

Great to hear, that they got this traction. You're always going to find such groups are a mix. After all, you have just average folk, with average (and mostly implicit philosophies) trying to make a case. If not for a physical condition, they would likely be arguing the opposite side of the case. Nevertheless, in pressure group warfare, other things matter: how many people in the group, how much noise they can make to their individual Congressmen, how good an emotionally moving a story they can weave, how they choose their battles (e.g. finding some legislators who can use them to make his arguments, as much as they can use him to make them in the right venue).

Indeed, if one takes the title of this thread literally as "how does one live in a country that bans something that is important to you, the two main answers are:

  • Find a way to get that thing anyhow (outside the country, or illegally inside the country)
  • Find a way to change the law: which typically means forming a pressure group to advocate for change
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  • 4 weeks later...

I do extensive research on Tumblr, and see many interesting patterns taking place.  In this screen shot, you can look at a map, each dot representing a person who reblogged this thread.  It is used to find more bloggers you may have things in common with.  This is from a medical discussion I got into, I started looking at many of the other people who reblog this thread, and so many of them are nearly identical that it seems like some kind of agenda.  This certain type of blog posts endless horror stories sympathizing with nurses about how difficult their jobs are.  I can usually tell when a regular person is blogging because there is a natural variety of information, interests.  It seems that  the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex is employing thousands of bloggers to flood various social media sites with this kind of content.  

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"How do I live in a country…"
…This translates (to me) to mean, how do you manage your frustration with things you think are never going to get better?

Universal Health Care is a scam.  The people pushing it know its never going to work.  The more they push it the worse it gets.  Which intern insights delusional people to scream louder for it.  The terror of death is what keeps it going.  Everyone wants to live forever and they will give their last dime, their home, any legacy they have for their families future, and get themselves in hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt.  Just to stay alive as a guinea pig for another couple years.  This is what they want the government nanny state to pay for.  

Cry SAFETY!!  The ultimate tool of stagnation.  No one is safer than the man is a straight jacket in a padded cell.  Death is so horrifying for most mystics that they will buy any snake oil that promises eternal life.  The safest sounding prescriptions from the oldest biggest churches.  All hail big FDarma.  
 
It is difficult for a person who doesn’t want “power over another person” to understand, communicate with, or come to an agreement with a person who does want power and does want control over others.  They want so much control and power, that they perceive your refusing their power or control as another power/control tactic.  

“Attention whore control freak” is a label that pops into my head more and more as I contemplate the problems in the world that my mind can’t seem to turn away form.  

Every mystic who stands in front on the pulpit is desperate to keep their audience attention.  Their focus is not on quality, but on quantity.  They get people to listen by playing to their weakness and telling them what they want to hear.

Every decision in an irrational person’s life seems to be rooted in fear.  They are so saturated with fear that telling them they do not have to live a life of fear causes them panic and terror.  As though you are taking away their only protection, their only lifeline.  The alternative you offer them seems impossible for their atrophied mind to grasp, the amount of mental effort to get themselves to a better place is alien.  They can not see the context of the better place, they only see the loss of their traditions, and their feelings of belonging.  Are you offering them anything better really?  Does your approach reflect how ‘good’ your own system is?  

It seems so much easier to be a forgiven sheep, than it is to stand up as a man.  

Calling them evil is making yourself a target.  JudaeoChristian values have survived for 5000 years, as countless others have fallen or been absorbed.  The Bible is full of the ample examples of physical and psychological warfare they have engaged in.  Have you ever read the Bible?  Do you even know who your enemy is?  They are masters of war, and your cries of despair fuel their fire.  

Darwin states that it isn’t the strongest or the smartest that survive, but the most adaptable to change.  The Judaeo/Christian movement has certainly adapted.  

How long will your own personal movement last?  Are there paths that will help mystics adapt to greater and greater rationality?  


 

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4 hours ago, happiness said:

Do you know how do the state-level "Right-to-Try" laws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-try_law) interact with existing Federal law? I'm curious about this question: If one is in a state that has pass such a law, would the Federal law have provided more freedom?

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On 3/10/2018 at 2:16 AM, Tenderlysharp said:

It seems that  the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex is employing thousands of bloggers to flood various social media sites with this kind of content. 

Well, if we're sharing what things "seem like" to us, to me that suggestion seems insane.

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13 hours ago, softwareNerd said:

Do you know how do the state-level "Right-to-Try" laws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-try_law) interact with existing Federal law? I'm curious about this question: If one is in a state that has pass such a law, would the Federal law have provided more freedom?

The various state laws are at risk because they attempt to override federal law, which is unconstitutional (Supremacy Clause). What the federal bill would have done is allow state to, individually, override federal rules on this subject matter, as long as the device etc. “is authorized by, and in accordance with, State law”. If your state has no such law, you’re out of luck. If it does, the federal law says “we won’t interfere”.

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Maybe this country still has a sliver of decency,  but the people who oppose this don’t.

The Hill
House passes 'right to try' drug bill
BY RACHEL ROUBEIN - 03/21/18 

The House passed “right to try” legislation on experimental drugs largely along party lines Wednesday, sending a bill backed by President Trump to the Senate.

Last week, House Republican leaders put the bill on the floor under suspension of the rules. Democrats objected, expressing safety concerns over how the measure would bypass the Food and Drug Administration, and it fell short of the necessary two-thirds support it needed.

But leaders made clear the House would take up the bill again. On the second try, the House only needed a simple majority to pass the bill, and easily did so in the 267 to 149 vote.

Thirty-five Democrats voted for the bill, and two Republicans opposed it. 

Now, the measure goes to the Senate, where a version of the bill passed in August by unanimous consent.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has championed the bill in the Senate, urged his chamber to quickly pass the measure. 

“Right to try needs to become the law of the land. It passed the Senate unanimously last summer, and I’m disappointed the House didn’t pass that bill and send it to the president for his signature," Johnson said in a statement.

"Nonetheless, I plan to ask my colleagues to pass right to try again immediately. Terminally ill patients and their families have waited long enough.”

House Republicans revised the bill amid objections from some supporters who had hoped the Senate version would pass, wanting to prevent the measure from ping-ponging between the two chambers. They worried that could make it harder to get the bill to Trump’s desk.

The bill lets terminally ill patients request access to drugs the FDA hasn’t yet approved without going through the agency. Patients can request the drugs from manufacturers if the medicine has gone through a small-scale clinical trial and is still under FDA consideration.

Though no senators objected to the bill, the legislation — which had been revised — proved controversial in the House.

Democrats there, as well as more than 75 patient advocacy groups, have voiced several different concerns, and patient safety was chief among them.

“By allowing patients access to investigational treatments that have only completed a phase 1 clinical trial, patients will be exposed to treatments with no or relatively little data that they are actually effective,” the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), said during the debate on the House floor Wednesday.

“These extremely small trials only examine the safety and toxicity of a drug and do not determine the effectiveness or potential side effects.”

Opponents of the bill also point to the FDA’s compassionate use program, saying the agency approves 99 percent of requests to let a patient use an experimental drug. They argue the legislation provides “false hope,” as drug manufacturers aren’t required to provide the drug to patients who ask.

But House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and health subcommittee chairman Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) maintained that their version of the bill struck “the right balance for patients and their safety.”

Supporters of the measure have argued that people with a terminal illness should have every tool at their disposal to try a drug that could possibly help them.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said that if faced with a terminal illness, he’d “take any risk, including injecting monkey urine if that meant I could spend a few more days, months or years with my children.”

Proponents of the legislation have also argued that the drug approval process takes too long, and that the bill isn't unsafe, as medicines must have passed a phase 1 clinical trial and still be in FDA’s pipeline.

The legislation has powerful backers.

President Trump has urged Congress to pass the bill, notably in his State of the Union address in late January. Vice President Pence is a staunch supporter of right to try, signing the bill into law when he was governor of Indiana. And groups backed by conservative mega-donors Charles and David Koch have also been pushing for its passage.

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Perhaps watching my father trade the fruits of an entire lifetime of work for a couple days at the Huntsman Cancer Institute has made me insane.  Observing the fear manipulation, the placations, the luxury hotel surroundings.  It was fake, like a Las Vegas casino, glitz painted cardboard.  I also let him drag me to a faith healing ministry in Colorado, very similar to the Huntsman Center, and Vegas.  Sell you on your own fantasy.  So, yeah when I read most stories related to medicine, I think its another part of the manipulation.  Who else but the pharmaceutical industrial complex would benefit from the public sympathy that these stories stir?  

Why are people lured into the nursing profession by offers of free education, then turn around and complain endlessly about how much they hate their jobs?  

Why does it cost $10,000-$20,000 to give birth, when the nurses are not good, and the doctor is there for maybe an hour?  

Warren Buffet invests billions into the junk food industries that cause diabetes and cancer, then invests those billions he made into medicine and insurance, its a win/win/win situation for him, and it gets better the sicker people become.  The world is overpopulated anyway, why not sterilize people with their own stupidity and insure that the next generation has to start from nothing unless they are the children of doctors, lawyers, insurance providers, and social media advertisers.   

Tell me Nicky how much money do you and the people close to you make off of the sick and dying?  Is it a fair trade?  

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10 hours ago, Tenderlysharp said:

Perhaps watching my father trade the fruits of an entire lifetime of work for a couple days at the Huntsman Cancer Institute has made me insane.  Observing the fear manipulation, the placations, the luxury hotel surroundings.  It was fake, like a Las Vegas casino, glitz painted cardboard.  I also let him drag me to a faith healing ministry in Colorado, very similar to the Huntsman Center, and Vegas.  Sell you on your own fantasy.  So, yeah when I read most stories related to medicine, I think its another part of the manipulation.  Who else but the pharmaceutical industrial complex would benefit from the public sympathy that these stories stir?  

Why are people lured into the nursing profession by offers of free education, then turn around and complain endlessly about how much they hate their jobs?  

Why does it cost $10,000-$20,000 to give birth, when the nurses are not good, and the doctor is there for maybe an hour?  

Warren Buffet invests billions into the junk food industries that cause diabetes and cancer, then invests those billions he made into medicine and insurance, its a win/win/win situation for him, and it gets better the sicker people become.  The world is overpopulated anyway, why not sterilize people with their own stupidity and insure that the next generation has to start from nothing unless they are the children of doctors, lawyers, insurance providers, and social media advertisers.   

Tell me Nicky how much money do you and the people close to you make off of the sick and dying?  Is it a fair trade?  

I know you are replying to Nicky but I am curious about what you think.

As someone familiar with Objectivism what do you think constitutes a "fair trade" in the realm of health/medicine goods and services industry?  i.e. given all the various trades what distinguishes between those which are unfair and those which are fair?

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32 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

As someone familiar with Objectivism what do you think constitutes a "fair trade" in the realm of health/medicine goods and services industry?  i.e. given all the various trades what distinguishes between those which are unfair and those which are fair?

I honestly don't know how to quantify fairness when it comes to health, the workings of each person's body is such a random variable.  There is so much room there for ignorance to be taken advantage of.  Researchers might find that snake oil actually does work.  I can see that I am emotionally charged on this issue.  

Most people don't know how they got sick or better ways to heal their bodies.  It would be fair to raise awareness, to promote some basic health education.  

It is an industry that receives billions upon billions of dollars regardless of whether they heal people or not.  I wonder if there is a way to incentivize positive results, so that healing people, and preventing illness is more profitable than what I have seen done to all my grandparents, where they pay thousands of dollars a month to maintain their slowly declining conditions.  They have the same faith in their doctors that they have in their priests.  

A person ought to have some knowledge of any industry they are trading their money in.  There is so much to learn.  It seems overwhelming to get an experts education in Medicine, Law, Media, Insurance, Politics in order to recognize when you are being manipulated.  

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1 hour ago, Tenderlysharp said:

I honestly don't know how to quantify fairness when it comes to health, the workings of each person's body is such a random variable.  There is so much room there for ignorance to be taken advantage of.  Researchers might find that snake oil actually does work.  I can see that I am emotionally charged on this issue.  

Most people don't know how they got sick or better ways to heal their bodies.  It would be fair to raise awareness, to promote some basic health education.  

It is an industry that receives billions upon billions of dollars regardless of whether they heal people or not.  I wonder if there is a way to incentivize positive results, so that healing people, and preventing illness is more profitable than what I have seen done to all my grandparents, where they pay thousands of dollars a month to maintain their slowly declining conditions.  They have the same faith in their doctors that they have in their priests.  

A person ought to have some knowledge of any industry they are trading their money in.  There is so much to learn.  It seems overwhelming to get an experts education in Medicine, Law, Media, Insurance, Politics in order to recognize when you are being manipulated.  

Yes, certainly in our complicated and immoral mixed economy driven State/society it is hard to pick the villains from the heroes.  Certainly the concretes of individuals are also complex, but the abstract concepts surrounding a trade are not.  Knowledge, skill, risk, effort, time, cost, value, life, etc.

My question was about the simpler more fundamental issue of what fairness actually consists of.  In a proper society with a proper laissez-faire government, what do you see as a fair trade between an individual customer for medical/health goods and services and an individual  producer?

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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It is just as important to be able to distinguish a fair trade from an unfair trade. Trying to characterize a fair trade as a floating abstraction is futile, but distinguishing fair from unfair is the essence of reasoning. A problem will arise if there are special principles defining "fair" in the context of health care versus housing rentals versus employment etc. What would make a service contract "unfair"? What would make a lease "unfair"?

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16 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

In a proper society with a proper laissez-faire government, what do you see as a fair trade between an individual customer for medical/health goods and services and an individual  producer?

What do I see?  Can hours of life be quantified?  If the hours invested by the doctor equal the hours invested by the producer.  Can the doctor add productive hours to the producers life?  Can the producer add productive hours to the doctor or another producer?    There is something I am missing, I'm groping, not seeing context clearly enough.  

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I am not proposing a solution, per se, only that there are fundamental conceptual requirements to consider what is fair and just. 

Price: 

The price is fair when it is accepted by both parties.  Sellers know there will be no sale if they price themselves out of an exchange, buyers know if they are not willing to pay they wont get the product or service.  Only when the buyer values the good or service more than the money he/she is parting with, AND the seller values the money more than the goods/services represent to him/her will there be a trade.  Simply put, either there will be or will not be a trade.

Honesty:

In any deal justice demands exchange of knowledge.  I think honesty, full honesty rather than dishonesty is required in any deal including one with medical/health goods and services.  In that way a fair trade involves honesty.

What does honestly include in such a transaction?  A doctor cannot transfer all of her knowledge to a patient, but she can give her assessment of her application of that knowledge of the patent and the possible treatments.  She is not infallible nor omniscient, therefore, her assessments must honestly come with caveats, probabilities, likelihoods, even at the most granular level of "It is my opinion that it is more likely than not that you have condition X" in other cases when it is true a doctor would say " I am almost certain you have condition X" in other cases lack of knowledge is the appropriate honest reply.

When it comes to various treatments, risks must be assessed and honestly conveyed.  If something is risky that information should be conveyed objectively.

There is no place for fear mongering.  The doctor is also not there to counsel on what level of risks a patient should be comfortable with, she is there to relay what the risks actually are.

There also is no place in a fair deal for fraud, puffery and the like.  If a doctor has reason to be objectively confident she should be able to rationally convey that, if the doctor is not confident, lacks the skill or experience to be competent, she should relay those concerns to the patient and possibly recommend a different doctor if appropriate.

All side effects, risks, efficacy studies should be available and or summarized.  In cases where there is little evidence of effectiveness the customer should be warned.  If the drug was never actually tested, the customer should be informed of this. 

For the deal to be fair, everything should be on the table so that an informed exchange can be made.

Voluntary:

For any trade to be fair it must be voluntary.  Free from external force, coercion etc. of any kind, including that of government.

 

Having all the information both parties to the transaction can determine the value to each of that is being traded and a fair trade at a mutually agreeable price can be conducted voluntarily.

 

Note: the above is illustrative and not exhaustive of everything that goes into a fair trade

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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18 minutes ago, Tenderlysharp said:

The 

The price tag applied to the medical industry is high.  Ten to a thousand times higher per hour of work rendered by most other professions.  

It is hard to say what natural and just values would obtain in a proper society without government interference (which generally inflate prices), but it is not difficult to see how and why the market is not flooded with an over-supply of doctors given how complex humans are, nor is it surprising people highly value their health.  The value of that demanded is high and there is no over supply (and given the bell curves of required aptitudes to provide the supply, I would assume there would always be an undersupply in any population when compared to, for example, the percentage of any population capable of sweeping a hallway).

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35 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Sellers know there will be no sale if they price themselves out of an exchange

Pay or die is often the ultimatum in the medical industry, and in the case of my father's cancer, he asked repeatedly how much it was going to cost and they gave him Obfuscations and never answered him, showing him funding information that appeared like it was going to pay for everything, until weeks after the procedure was over he got his bill.  Add high pressure sales tactics that the longer he waited to act the worse it would get.  Add the fact that brain researchers have found that much of your frontal cortex goes offline when shocked with a traumatic event like Cancer, you just don't have the full functioning of your reasoning capabilities.  

Are the exorbitant costs in the medical industry malice or happenstance?  

Mystics used shame and war to control the populace, in order to reduce overpopulation.  Shame and war aren't working like they once did.  The humans who are susceptible to shame or who can be goaded into war are being systematically eliminated from the DNA pool.  

Mystics seem to have a strong need for control and attention.  An over active frontal cortex causing obsessive compulsive disorder.  How have these controllers evolved with modern times?  Medical controllers.  Media controllers.  Political controllers.  "Humanity is an infection" Controllers.  There are so many floating abstractions in all of these industries it is easy to control people through their fear. 

How do you usurp control out of the controllers hands?  How do you trick them into running on their own hamster wheel away from the rest of us?  

Would there be ten times as many people here today if it weren’t for the controllers?  
 

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