All insurance companies negotiate to some extent. UHG is no more successful than any other company and do not realize the kinds of savings envisioned by UHC proponents.
A future form of economic planning (not Soviet-style, obviously) might be a big success (or failure! Much easier to fuck up spectacularly than do it correctly) but it would take some serious left-wing balls to implement it. We have to wait and see.
Anyway, it seems that “Socialist”, “Communist” and similar, as official names, are not currently bogeymen in Europe - even the Pirate Party is winning a few seats there - but they are in America. The political solution, already suggested above, seems obvious: advocate exactly the same policies (hopefully sound and successful ones), but don’t use those buzzwords, at least until enough time passes and they lose their stigma. “Capitalism” is OK too as long as 100% get their goods and services.
The marketing budget for the drugs is not the problem. The highest actual cost of marketing I have seen is 20%. The commercials are a small piece of the marketing, 12.5%. Most of the marketing is providing free drugs and samples.
The cost driver is the cost of research and testing which runs around 2-3 billion per drug.
Say what?
XT,
In NAZI Germany most capital was privately owned and most labor was privately employed. That is Capitalism.
The continuity of the corporations indicates that the same line of industrial thought passed unmodified through
two wars and several political philosophies. The economy was never socialist
Your post makes unsubstantiated claims. Please provide evidence that the means of production in
NAZI Germany was government owned. I’ve tried and I can find none.
During the war companies, and labor, were all directed by their governments, both us and them.
Several years ago I had medical issues that similarly caused lab tests, MRIs, CTs, ultrasound, surgery, ambulance, more surgery, and 4 day stays each time. I paid a $100 copay for the first surgery, my employers pays ALL of my premium now that I’m single, and Kaiser Permanente (non-profit, please note) took care of the rest.
$250K? Your friend is exaggerating some. I don’t know the point of billing someone that amount; they likely don’t have it.
First off, I never said the Nazi German economy was socialist…I specifically said it wasn’t. So, not sure where you got that from.
The economy wasn’t so much owned (outright) by the government as almost completely controlled by the Nazi party, which was the state…and in conquered territories especially but not limited to them, Nazi party economy hegemony was in full force, as was the central planning of the economy. It was a command economy, not a market based economy, with the Nazi controlling what, when and how things were produced and certainly who produced them (from the ‘private’ side, mainly companies owned and controlled by Nazi members). This was increasingly done from 1936 to the end of the war (really, even before that with respect to favoring companies operated by members), with the Nazi increasingly controlling all aspects of the economy. This is not how a capitalist economy works. Granted, this was during war, but then the Nazi were pretty much in power during war.
I will concede that in Nazi Germany private ownership was definitely still a thing (sort of…see below), unlike in the USSR (it was really more like how China operates it’s state owned businesses, with prominent CCP members controlling them), but their economy was still a command economy pretty much for the time they were in power. So…I suppose it was a hybrid mix, not fully one thing or another. Meaning we were both sort of kind of wrong and sort of kind of right. I actually thought I recalled that at one point the Nazi’s had taken full control of all of industry (this turned out to be mainly in conquered territory, and even then it was more turning them over to prominent members of the party who were in the various industries), but then I did some checking and…well, in a way they DID, since what they did was to favor companies that were either members of the Nazi party or supported them, while basically not favoring those who didn’t (and seizing those assets, especially from business people who were either Jewish or opposed the party). Kind of the Chinese model in reverse, where CCP members own and operate the state controlled companies because they are CCP members, instead of co-opting the owners into the party. It really comes to the same thing, however, which is that, de-facto, the party controls the means of production through those elite.
Regardless, it wasn’t capitalism. As I didn’t say it was socialism either, I’ll stand by my statement that it was a third option…a fascist economy that did have private ownership, but it was private ownership of the means of production by the party elite and in service of the party and the nation.
There is a difference: our government has taken the Social Security trust money that was supposed to work the same way and used it to fund other stuff.
Nine out of ten pharmaceutical companies spent more on marketing than on R&D in 2013 (cite); Johnson & Johnson for example spent twice as much on sales and marketing as on research and development; GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer came close to that.
Only armchair historians or ignorants would had missed what real historians concluded about that treaty.
I get the sense that many did consider that like the cold war before the cold war became a thing.
There was no love among the signers, it was really asinine to ignore that they were enemies that only came for a few years into a convenient way to not to reach for each others throats until later, also carving Poland and others with no worries about the other side intervening was seen as convenient.
Both Hitler and Stalin knew that war was very likely among them in the future, in the case of Russia they had to get some time to reform the army that Stalin had decapitated in the purges. The army also needed to modernize too and Stalin expected that Germany was going to get boggled down in a long war with France and England in the west first.
He was dead wrong, but the treaty just barely did give Russia time to eventually pull the amazing feat of not caving in and eventually defeating Hitler.
Could you point to specific programs or policies, especially economic policies that indicate that Bernie Sanders is a socialist? Not social programs, but actual socialist policies?
Is expanding social security socialism? Is expanding medicare coverage socialism? Was his too big to fail bank breakup bill socialism? Was the free credit report bill socialism? Was the cancer registries bill socialism?
I know you’re not directly claiming Bernie Sanders’s bills are socialist, but you’re making an argument about the semantics of what socialism is. If we’re going to use this logic, should we say AOC is a libertarian right winger for wanting to abolish ICE and the DHS? The whole reason bernie adopted the socialist title is because he know he would be branded as such anyways. So if the right and center is going to call center left proposals socialist, then we’re going to call Scandinavia socialist. We’re going to embrace it and call every social program socialist. Fire departments, socialist. Military? Socialist. Your moms cancer treatment being covered by the feds? Socialist. I mean there certainly are some socialist systems in the united states, such as SNAP which is market socialism. But I guess you could try to make the same argument about public goods not being socialism there as well.
Didn’t the general government seize jewish businesses and give power of them to nazis? I would call that socialism.
That is an interesting read. What is true is that they signed a non-aggression pact, and carved up Poland between them. They also agreed not to get into alliances against each other.
There was of course the secret protocols that Russia denied existed until after the war they were made public. These described the cutting up of various other nations. Then there was the German Soviet Frontier Treaty which affirmed the fact that they were allied. Stalin toasted Hitler as a “fine fellow.”
They were uneasy allies, it’s true. Depending on outcomes, I would say that either was prepared to go either way. Hitler blinked first, overestimating his strength.
But the idea that Hitler and Stalin were not in a sense allied, if uneasy allies is historically difficult to dispute… except if you have a bone to pick and seek to defend Stalin or Russia for some unknown reason.
But hey, if you want to take the side that Stalin was a swell fellow, that’s your problem.
Well I certainly don’t want to do that, so I guess you win. Incredible logic power! Educated by Jesuits, by any chance?
Nope, even in the classic “The World At War” documentary the interviewed military men and diplomats of the day (it was made in the 70s so a good number of the people involved were alive and the disparaging words came from a Russian) disparaged Stalin for what he did, weakening the army just to follow his paranoid ideas. Again being allied does not mean that they are not anyhow despicable enemies that only reached an alliance of convenience for several months.
It is not my problem as I did not say such a thing, as usual you only think that making personal digs will be convincing, it is as pathetic as the attempt at ignoring history so as to claim that Russia and Germany were not enemies.
I don’t know that he IS an actual socialist nor did I make a specific claim he was. I think that HE thinks he is a socialist, and certainly a lot of conservatives and right wingers think he is, but I have no idea what his actual position on, say, a command economy is wrt an assertion of policy. I don’t know what his position is on private ownership of corporations is either. My WAG is he is an old school social democrat, wanting tons of social programs but he doesn’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, so he supports capitalism with heavy regulation and taxation. He’s an old-school green with an almost knee jerk aversion to nuclear power, which is one of the reasons I don’t like him much. That, and he’s just old…old in his thinking and what he advocates. The times have changed, IMHO, and he’s still stuck back in the 70’s. But that’s neither here nor there wrt him being a socialist.
I’m arguing that the actual definition of socialism is, well, the definition. And the actual historic record of socialist governments and socialist economic systems are what they are. And that the seeming modern definition that people on both sides are using is basically wrong…and it’s wrong for specific reasons that they WANT it to be what they want it to be, not what it is. As far as I know, Bernie doesn’t support a command economy. He doesn’t support state ownership of all or even most of the means of production and distribution. He doesn’t support the collectivization of things like farms and the like for the public good. He probably does support lots and lots of social PROGRAMS, such as free college and something like single payer health care of UHC. That alone doesn’t make him a socialist though, even if he and others on both sides might think it does. It makes him a social democrat. IMHO of course. YMMV.
Nm. Wrong thread
You said they were “unsuccessful” in negotiating drug prices down. I provided you a cite from UHG itself to show that they were in fact successful. Now you’ve moved the goalposts to suggest that they weren’t sufficiently successful in comparison to some new unspecified benchmark…which I already addressed by pointing out that there is a significant difference between individual companies negotiating on the behalf of some customers and a government organization negotiating on behalf of *all *of them.
So - insurance companies can negotiate drug prices down and marketing is one of the most significant costs in the pharmaceutical industry. Perhaps less “blind faith” in the current system and more research is required.
AOC’s chief of staff said that the primary intent of the Green New Deal was not climate change, but revamping the economy, if that helps. And of course Bernie Sanders thinks the fact that consumers have too many choices of deodorant and sneakers is immoral and somehow or other government policies should reduce them because of childhood poverty.
Regards,
Shodan
**Scylla **: Russia and Germany were allied in the sense that I’m allied with my ex. Like we talk sometimes, in a “what’s new with you these days ? (I really hope you’re miserable which is why I’m asking the question)” kind of sense ; and we’ve shared some of the loot ; but we both know any actual interaction is going to devolve into a screeching match until someone’s feelings get *really *hurt and a new grudge is borne that will be held forever.
Or at least until either of us gets a nuke first.