Obamacare 5 years later. Crow, anyone?

[3point14]

. The new toll lanes are essentially just another tax when they're already receiving enough revenue to do the projects and improvements needed.

I thought they were just ways for the well off to avoid queuing in traffic with the plebs?

 

[sunmaster14]

This is not an important measure for two simple reasons. Firstly, we calculate sales globally (see here: http://www.pmlive.com/top_pharma_list/global_revenues ).

Not sure what that has to do with anything. Outside the US, there are price controls. Drug companies are often given a choice between selling their drugs at a level that is modestly higher than the marginal cost of production and not selling them at all. Of course, they would choose the former. But when it comes time to making a decision to invest in a new drug, they have to determine if they will make enough profit in the future to give them an acceptable return on their investment. Selling drugs at a modest premium to the marginal cost of production ain't going to do it. The marginal cost of production is often extremely low. It is swamped by the amortized cost of the R&D.

Secondly, R&D expenditure is not dependent on profit margins as firms tend to spend around 10-15% of revenue into R&D on average. However, some of the most profitable companies spend considerably less than others on R&D, Merck is a good example of this, it ranks 4 or 5th on sales globally, but only spends 5% on R&D.

This shows a profound misapprehension of how economics and finance works. R&D budgets are constrained by how much capital a company might have access to, which includes profit (among many other things), but they're certainly not determined by current revenue or even profits. They're determined by expectations of future profits.

That is, nobody says, "hey, the company is awash in money, so let's double are R&D budget because the industry standard is to spend 10% of revenues on R&D." Instead they say "ok, if we invest $5B in developing this new drug, we estimate that we can sell such and such amount at such and such a price, after spending such and such to market it and get doctors to prescribe it, and that gives us a nice return." Then they say "ok, let's go ahead with the investment," but only if the estimated numbers work on paper.

So current R&D budgets are based on expected market conditions in the future. If drug companies think that the US will put in place the same kinds of price controls that exist in Canada and Europe, then far fewer candidate drugs will meet the required return hurdle, and far fewer will be developed.

 

[sunmaster14]

You are wrong about this, and pretty much everything you have ever posted.

I am also unable to offer anything to support my assertion right now, but hope to get back to this later. In the mean time, can someone else do my work for me?

Let me know when you're ready to discuss. The bite marks on my ankles are already starting to heal.

 

[sunmaster14]

Let me point out a key sentence in your diatribe:

"Diatribe?" First of all, you're talking about a quote from a research paper, not a diatribe. Second of all, it wasn't even my research paper. Do you even know what a diatribe is?

"For instance, the researchers' best estimates suggest that life expectancy would fall by somewhere in the range of 0.2 years for Americans age 55–59 in 2010 and by approximately 0.1 years for Europeans in the same cohort and year."

I agree with Emily's Cat from our earlier conversation:

We spend far too much money on end-of-life care. Is it REALLY worth it to spend thousands of dollars extend your life by about a month or two? I'm not all that sure that it is. You do know that the life expectancy increase is very tiny, to almost non-existent, right?

I see that the concept of life expectancy is new to you. It is an average. A 0.1 year drop in life expectancy doesn't necessarily mean that people are spending one less month lying in a vegetative state than they ordinarily would before they died. It could mean that 99% of the population is unaffected, but 1% of the population dies 10 years earlier than they ordinarily would. Or 99.8% of the population is unaffected, but an unlucky 0.2% of the population dies as a young adult when they would have lived a full life with a new drug. 0.1 years of life expectancy is rather significant actually, especially when you are comparing apples to apples.

I would also be interested to see the error factor on that. I would bet top dollar that those numbers fall within the range of error. Which means those numbers are meaningless. Therefore, you have not proven your own point. Like. At all.

I suggest you not betting any real money on this kind of stuff. Your understanding of it is really very poor.

 

[sunmaster14]

I'm not taking sides here, you two can bicker all you want. But since I've been brought up, I would like to say that I didn't find Nihilianth's statements to be indicative of some dogmatically held belief. I interpreted them as statements made based on incomplete understanding of a very complicated topic.

Well, you probably missed the discussion that began earlier. He was pretty rude to me right off the bat. He even had to edit out an uncivil remark that would have been a rule breach.

I don't feel I showed any extraordinary patience. Rather, I can't refrain from being pedantic if given the change . I enjoy my work, and I enjoy sharing my knowledge with other people who also enjoy learning.

I feel the same way, but I play the tit for tat game with people are uncivil to me. I've noticed that you do too.

This isn't a case where I would personally expect a retraction or apology. The simple "thanks for explaining, that makes sense" that Nihilianth provided was more than sufficient for me, personally.

Well, he was civil to you. For my efforts to educate him, I get nothing but incivility in return. The same is true for others here as you can see.

Of course, I've found that I view these threads as far more of a casual discussion between skeptics than as a formal debate. Your expectations may vary

Of course. It's an internet forum for the discussion of ideas, not a scientific journal. Not every claim has to be documented every time it is made. The people who demand that kind of thing, I think are usually acting in bad faith. If they were genuinely interested in the subject matter, they would do a little investigating themselves.

 

[sunmaster14]

lol, this is not the first time that sunmaster said someone is "ignorant," but "didn't have time to explain." It's at least the second time he did that in this thread. (He's also asked others to do his work for him a couple of times.)

These are lies. I have not said that anybody is ignorant, and there was only one time when I said that I'll have to get back to it later because I was rushing out (to catch a plane, actually). I don't think there is a single poster in this forum who has followed up his promises to answer a question or followup on a point better than I.

Johnny Karate and RF were pointing this out.

ETA: This is my 3000th post! I'm now "Illuminator!" Woot! And just a day after my 32nd birthday too!

It's really a shame that such a milestone post was a dishonest personal attack.

 

[RandFan]

Political reality is that people have in mind solutions that are more reasonable than what actually gets implemented. To suggest that taxing the rich would stop at "just enough" is an oxymoron. We have transit authorities here adding express lane tolls to toll roads, and one of the case studies didn't add any new lanes to the affected thoroughfare, just deducted one to make the express lane. The new toll lanes are essentially just another tax when they're already receiving enough revenue to do the projects and improvements needed. And more are being added to other thoroughfares...

I do agree on the moderation, suggested... just don't have optimism it'll follow into application because of both precedent with other efforts, and indications provided by this law.


Short term... this law has done what it was designed to do. Long term... there are some bigger issues. And I think they are large enough to affect a single payer solution as well if not addressed

Reading your links now....

Okay, I understand you better. Sorry. You make some fair points and I agree about the long term viability of the ACA.

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

This inspires my curiosity: is there any study done showing what percentage of taxes goes to political salaries, benefits, &tc, by nation? If the UK is doing more with less taxes, could it be due to lower political overhead?

I really don't know. But I wouldn't necessarily say the UK is doing more with less. Income tax in the UK is higher than the Federal income tax in the US. But as Elf Grinder has mentioned, in the US you also have state income taxes and SS. So he's paying about the same in the US, including State and SS taxes, that he would in the UK including National Insurance contributions. Higher income people would end up paying more in the UK (although 200K is already way above the median income in both countries), and low income people would end up paying less in the UK. And capital gains is also significantly higher in the UK.

Actually, the only source I could dredge up, was the National Salary Calculator. According this website, the National Insurance is nearly 8 grand. Between that and the taxes, a person making 200,000 lbs (sorry, I dunno how to use the "pound" symbol on my keyboard.) would expect to pay about 58%.

I just checked those numbers using that same calculator. You got it backwards. They would expect to take home about 58%, which puts the total tax rate (which remember includes all health care costs) at about 42%. And that's for 200,000 pounds a year, which is about $300,000 a year. It's a progressive tax system, so of course the overall percentage is higher when you go from about 4 times the median income to about 6 times the median income. Using that calculator, an income of $200,000 a year works out to about 40% tax, which is about 10% higher than what Elf Grinder is paying in the US. Of course, that is without any additional deductions. I have no idea what deductions Elf Grinder is taking, or would have access to in the UK.

 

[Z]

I'm a little confused, please elaborate on:

<snip>
Your argument that people will die on the streets isn't convincing to me because people weren't dying on the street before 1965. Get it? I'm saying that if we get rid of welfare people won't die because they didn't before welfare existed. This is what you would call an argument with evidence, it isn't a lie. Hint hint...

Wasn't the Great Depression before 1965? I understand quite a few people died in the streets then. Likewise, I seem to recall that people died of poverty in almost every decade that we've been a country, from reading what history I could find on the subject.

Or is that just Liberal Propaganda? Please, explain.

I'm not saying that welfare is necessarily good or bad; it's definitely a flawed system, being exploited by a large group of unscrupulous people on both ends; but it definitely helps some people in need, and does keep some people from starvation, sickness, homelessness, and so forth. And it is certainly better than leaving it up to the wealthy and powerful to do themselves - because, historically, there are thousands of years of examples as to how the wealthy and powerful ignore, oppress, and abuse the poor. Or, again, is that just Liberal whitewashing of true history, where the wealthy landowners and nobles actually kept their peasants well-fed, healthy, happy, and entertained? I'm honestly not sure - please, enlighten me.

 

[RandFan]

Where am I going wrong?

Ignoring history, facts and evidence.

I'm saying that if we get rid of welfare people won't die because they didn't before welfare existed. This is what you would call an argument with evidence, it isn't a lie. Hint hint...

[citations missing] [argument by assertion]
What evidence? You've provided no evidence. Only argument by assertion.

This is what evidence looks like:

New study finds 45,000 deaths annually linked to lack of health coverage

 

[Nihilianth]

Not sure what that has to do with anything. Outside the US, there are price controls. Drug companies are often given a choice between selling their drugs at a level that is modestly higher than the marginal cost of production and not selling them at all. Of course, they would choose the former. But when it comes time to making a decision to invest in a new drug, they have to determine if they will make enough profit in the future to give them an acceptable return on their investment. Selling drugs at a modest premium to the marginal cost of production ain't going to do it. The marginal cost of production is often extremely low. It is swamped by the amortized cost of the R&D.



This shows a profound misapprehension of how economics and finance works. R&D budgets are constrained by how much capital a company might have access to, which includes profit (among many other things), but they're certainly not determined by current revenue or even profits. They're determined by expectations of future profits.

That is, nobody says, "hey, the company is awash in money, so let's double are R&D budget because the industry standard is to spend 10% of revenues on R&D." Instead they say "ok, if we invest $5B in developing this new drug, we estimate that we can sell such and such amount at such and such a price, after spending such and such to market it and get doctors to prescribe it, and that gives us a nice return." Then they say "ok, let's go ahead with the investment," but only if the estimated numbers work on paper.

So current R&D budgets are based on expected market conditions in the future. If drug companies think that the US will put in place the same kinds of price controls that exist in Canada and Europe, then far fewer candidate drugs will meet the required return hurdle, and far fewer will be developed.

Oh, cry me a friggin river already! Screw drug companies and their obnoxious profits, and their obnoxious caring only of profits.

Besides, most advances in medicine....in fact, the vast majority of advances in medicine....have been due to people who either:

A) Are scientists by nature. They are driven by CURIOSITY. Not by GREED.

B) Care about how to heal the afflicted. They are driven by wanting to CARE for people. Not by GREED.

 

[Nihilianth]

I just checked those numbers using that same calculator. You got it backwards. They would expect to take home about 58%, which puts the total tax rate (which remember includes all health care costs) at about 42%. And that's for 200,000 pounds a year, which is about $300,000 a year. It's a progressive tax system, so of course the overall percentage is higher when you go from about 4 times the median income to about 6 times the median income. Using that calculator, an income of $200,000 a year works out to about 40% tax, which is about 10% higher than what Elf Grinder is paying in the US. Of course, that is without any additional deductions. I have no idea what deductions Elf Grinder is taking, or would have access to in the UK.

Thanks for the clarification. My fault on that one. So, we have a way to prove EG wrong about how he would pay LESS under the current health care system in the US than in at least the UK.

That website I provided, does state on the home page that it is simply meant as guideline. Not something you can base your actual taxes around in detail. Of course, EG would end up paying significantly less, most likely, due to whatever he gets to cheat...eerr....I mean....get a tax break on. Ahem. Excuse me.

One thing that eternally pisses me off about tax write-offs here in the US, are "business expenses" for the rich business people. Why in the hell do they get to write off, on their taxes, going out to eat as a "business expense," when most of us cannot write-off fresh vegetables from grocery stores that so many people cannot even afford on their meager $7/hour!?

And here, I thought that attempting to keep people healthy is a goal to bring down medical expenses in this country. I know that most poor people can get access to food stamps to pay for those fresh veggies, and that "many people abuse" those food stamps by going to McDonald's. But what about those of us that happen to be in the middle class, or lower middle class such as myself? I make too much money to qualify for food stamps, yet I can't afford to purchase fresh vegetables from the grocery store every single day.

Then I see jackass rich ******** writing off as a "business expense" when they go out to dine at a local 4-star restaurant (33 East) where they spend $200 on a plate of overly priced, so-called "gourmet" foods. You want to go out to eat with your "business associates" at such an expensive restaurant? PAY FOR THE DAMNED THING YOURSELF!

Conservatives are right: We DO need to cut back on welfare.

 

[Z]

<snip>

And here, I thought that attempting to keep people healthy is a goal to bring down medical expenses in this country. I know that most poor people can get access to food stamps to pay for those fresh veggies, and that "many people abuse" those food stamps by going to McDonald's.</snip>

You can't use food stamps at McDonald's. But you can use food stamps for food, and divert money you would have spent for food into going to McDonald's, I guess... is that what you meant?

You can, however, buy things like cola and salty, high-fat Cheezy-Poufs, various Starbucks grocery items, etc. on food stamps, in most places.

What I always thought was strange, is that you cannot buy anything freshly prepared at a grocery store - no sliced meats or fresh seafood, no deli-prepared dishes, nothing like that - at least, until they've been shrink-wrapped and price-stickered for later sale. THEN you can buy them.

 

[Elf Grinder 3000]

Ignoring history, facts and evidence.

[citations missing] [argument by assertion]
What evidence? You've provided no evidence. Only argument by assertion.

This is what evidence looks like:

New study finds 45,000 deaths annually linked to lack of health coverage

Study Welfare encourages poverty:
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/more-welfare-more-poverty
http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2013-03-13/study-welfare-programs-discourage-work-marriage

Welfare encourages out of wedlock births
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/1996/08/childrenfamilies-akerlof

Out of wedlock births lead to poverty
http://www.usnews.com/news/newsgram...reau-links-poverty-with-out-of-wedlock-births

Welfare discourages work - I provided evidence
Welfare encourages out of wedlock births, and out of wedlock births result in poverty.

YOU ARE WRONG NOW APOLOGIZE!

 

[RandFan]

Study Welfare encourages poverty:
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/more-welfare-more-poverty
http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2013-03-13/study-welfare-programs-discourage-work-marriage

Welfare encourages out of wedlock births
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/1996/08/childrenfamilies-akerlof

Out of wedlock births lead to poverty
http://www.usnews.com/news/newsgram...reau-links-poverty-with-out-of-wedlock-births

Welfare discourages work - I provided evidence
Welfare encourages out of wedlock births, and out of wedlock births result in poverty.

YOU ARE WRONG NOW APOLOGIZE!

I beat you to this with the SIME/DIME studies over a year ago. There is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to providing social services. None of this proves your contention that social services are only bad.

You obviously have never looked at my evidence or you would not have bothered with that.

NOW YOU APOLOGIZE.

 

[RandFan]

The Economic Case for Food Stamps


Poverty leads to out of wedlock births in idiot states that do not teach sex education.

Teen Pregnancy Is Higher in Red States Than in Blue States

Welfare Reform Was, and Still Is, a Good Idea - Bloomberg

 

[Nihilianth]

You can't use food stamps at McDonald's. But you can use food stamps for food, and divert money you would have spent for food into going to McDonald's, I guess... is that what you meant?

You can, however, buy things like cola and salty, high-fat Cheezy-Poufs, various Starbucks grocery items, etc. on food stamps, in most places.

What I always thought was strange, is that you cannot buy anything freshly prepared at a grocery store - no sliced meats or fresh seafood, no deli-prepared dishes, nothing like that - at least, until they've been shrink-wrapped and price-stickered for later sale. THEN you can buy them.

I know a while back, a lot of Republicans were poo-pooing that someone bought fresh lobster on an Access card. Like, wtf? Fresh lobster is not only delicious, but it's quite healthy.

(BTW, I forgot to explain that when I say "McDonald's," I use that as an adjective, describing unhealthful foods in general.)

 

[Elf Grinder 3000]

I beat you to this with the SIME/DIME studies over a year ago. There is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to providing social services. None of this proves your contention that social services are only bad.

You obviously have never looked at my evidence or you would not have bothered with that.

NOW YOU APOLOGIZE.

I'm not apologizing because you accused me of not providing evidence. I just did and all you did was change the subject.

If I provided evidence then you lied when you said I didn't. This seems to be a tactic you use often, you are presented with an argument then you claim its not a study, demand a link, or repost some "survey" that you say proves that we must keep our welfare program.

Now you apologize

 

[RandFan]

I'm not apologizing because you accused me of not providing evidence. I just did and all you did was change the subject.

If I provided evidence then you lied when you said I didn't. This seems to be a tactic you use often, you are presented with an argument then you claim its not a study, demand a link, or repost some "survey" that you say proves that we must keep our welfare program.

Now you apologize

I didn't say you would never provide evidence. I said you had not provided evidence. That statement is true. But sure, you copied and pasted links. I'm not apologizing for that. I will wait to see if you continue to ignore requests for evidence.

I'm sorry but it's absurd that you never post evidence and then one time post it and demand I apologize for telling the truth.

No, it does NOT work that way.

 

[Elf Grinder 3000]

I didn't say you would never provide evidence. I said you had not provided evidence. That statement is true. But sure, you copied and pasted links. I'm not apologizing for that. I will wait to see if you continue to ignore requests for evidence.

I'm sorry but it's absurd that you never post evidence and then one time post it and demand I apologize for telling the truth.

No, it does NOT work that way.

I have posted evidence throughout this thread.

You are lying like Bill Clinton over the definition of sex or "the' or whatever he was lying about.

Google it