I believe the reason insomnia sufferers clamor for (not just prefer) Zolpidem (Ambien) is because it is the one prescription sleep drug – that doesn't feel at all like a drug. No hours of lingering numbness (OTC antihistamines), no all day yucky feeling (most or all other prescription drugs) – nor all day, sleep deprived, brain fog (no medicine at all).
You can cut a 10mg into thirds and take one third to catch the last two hours of sleep (my most regular use) and wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed – no drug after haze whatsoever.
Why, then, does the whole medical profession, lately, seem down on Zolpidem? My doctor cut me off after 12 years on it (with different prescribers), my brother’s doctor cut him back from 10mg to 5 mg, my brother’s 60s age friend had hers cut off completely. A Zoom call nurse practitioner from Minded refused me down because of my age.
Doctor’s lately arriving qualms: reports of (maybe doubled) household falls and traffic accidents, memory impairments, weird sleep walking.
* * * * * *
Me – slips and falls: if you break out the numbers, most of the serious damage comes from traffic accidents. At my age (78) my mother was still bringing home the first place trophies from the amateur ballroom dance contests. A lot of deep athletic ability in my family.
Me – driving: 28 years driving taxicabs in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Enough said?
Me -- memory: Zolpidem doesn't make you forget what you already know, doesn’t make you forget how processes work that you newly learned, may inhibit ability to make new memories of simple facts (what movie you watched Sunday). “Clinically significant" harm visited upon less than 1%. After 12 years on the drug, if it causes me any impairment, any damage should have been visited very long ago.
* * * * * *
Today, 38 million Americans take Zolpidem (85% of all sleep med users). What is the medical profession going to do, take them all off Zolpidem just as they get old enough to need it the most – condemn them to an old age of hours of daily antihistamine numbness, all day yucky drug left-over, or 19 hours or more in sleep deprived fog?
Sensible legal goal, once patients get it nailed down (in court?) -- If a patient refused a new improved fracture cast, leaving only an old model wrap an option, a doctor could not ethically refuse to offer the old style -- drug ditto: doctors should not be allowed to refuse Zolpidem if it is the only sleep aid patients will accept – not if the patient would be better off with Zolpidem than without it. Goal #1!
Why do doctors today feel so ethically free to abandon insomniacs -- who will accept only Zolpidem – to no treatment at all?
I suspect it has to do with the incorporality of insomnia – it fails to light up their “midbrain radar" (that even migraine headaches show up on). They can’t measure it, can’t weigh it, can’t take its temperature, can't sew it up, no idea where to put it back. :-)
I recommend that insomniac patients make journals, day-by-day of their struggles living without Zolpidem – with or without substitutes. 30 day, 60 day, 90 day journals – will hopefully get past physicians' motivation-gates -- with the tale that insomniac patients have a deeply unhealthy condition that MUST be dealt with.
Typical trouble day: At 10:30AM, will need to drive mother downtown. No antihistamine in the middle of the night (main effect lasts 4 hours, unsafe driving, hours longer). Zolpidem would act for 2 hours after first 5 hours sleep (25 minute wait, 45 minutes sedated—can think if I wish to, 50 minutes more coming out of it), waking fit as a fiddle. Couldn’t sleep -- took Trazodone, barely able to drive, barely safely.
Once we nail down patients' legally and ethically entitled choice – not to exist in an antihistamine numbness or a permanent drug hangover or no drug at all brain fog – because the medical profession is afraid we might slip and fall – then, we can spread the word to every civil law firm in the country – and get our lives back!!!
PS My extra hours-numbing, OTC substitute -- Diphenhydramine: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/288546#Taking-anticholinergics-for-more-than-3-years-linked-to-higher-dementia-risk
Thursday, August 18, 2022
Let's get real about Zolpidem and Insomnia
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Putin is just Khrushchev-lite (very lite)
Debunk Putin’s “return-Russia-to-great-power-status” sales pitch to Russians: compare to Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev who was infinitely more dangerous to the world than Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Khrushchev put IRBMs in Cuba that could have wiped out the last of US Strategic Air Command bases housing 750 B-52s without warning. IRBMs had already made our 1400 B-47s vulnerable to 10 minute knockout in bases that needed to be right up against the borders of our eleven time zone adversary, given the B-47's intermediate range.
Khrushchev threatened to take West Berlin — surrounded by East German territory and vulnerable to tens of thousands of Soviet tanks. Khrushchev materially supported the communist insurgency in Laos. Just to name a few hot spots. Khrushchev ran around the world fomenting any serious trouble for us that he could.
Khrushchev was a true believer. Russians say Khrushchev was a communist before he knew the communists would win. Meaning Khrushchev meant well — he imagined he was fighting to free mankind from the oppression of capitalism.
https://www.amazon.com/Khrushchev-Man-His-William-Taubman-ebook/dp/B007DAP6IQ/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=khrushchev&link_code=qs&qid=1575044502&sourceid=Mozilla-search&sr=8-2
Putin in his bid to revive (at least the feeling) of Russian the super power attempts to build influence in the Middle East by aiding the pipsqueak president of Syria carpet bomb his own country from end to end for five years, killing half a million Syrians in the process. The true believer would not have perpetrated that. Putin landed a couple hundred troops in troubled Venezuela to prop up a socialist dictator who was about to abscond to Cuba (why we didn’t land a couple of hundred troops to neutralize them I’ll never guess — oh, I forgot; Putin does have big time influence one place in the world, in Donald Trump’s White House, but that’s not something he accomplished, it was given freely to him).
Putin is just Russia's Al Capone.
Kompare Khrushchev's gigantic reality to Putin's pipsqueak's PR: debunk Putin in one-step.
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Vladimir De Gaulle, Charles De Putin? The "glory" of France -- oops; I mean of Russia?
Recently I pulled apart the reality of the so-called Russian horde at the height of the cold war, supposedly ready to overwhelm Western Europe like Attila the Hun.
Performance of Russian armored equipment versus NATO equipment in the Gulf War -- need I dissect? Russian troops in mid-eighties probably no better than Arab troops -- 180 armored divisions to train in a country that cannot produce a respectable passenger automobile. Syria's Russian bought fighter jets went 0 to 90 against Israel's NATO planes in 1982.
Russia has first quality fighter aircraft these days, but I'm talking back when Europe was supposedly overrun-able by the hordes. Back then, Russia's most numerous front line fighter, the Mig-23/27 series, had the same high wing loading and low thrust to weight ratio as the original "iron butterfly", our F-105, which was never intended to take on other fighters, only deliver tactical nukes on hordes.
Rule of thumb is it takes 3 to 1 to successfully invade. In the mid-eighties, Russia and Warsaw Pact armies had 135 armored divisions facing NATO's 30 in Central Europe (4.5 to 1). Following the Reagan rebuild (M-1 tanks, F-16s, etc.) and going by comparative performance in the Gulf War it looks like any mid-80s Warsaw Pact invasion attempt would have been cleaned out. (It would have been hard to sneak 45 divisions across 11 time zones from China; ditto for 30 up back roads from Turkey.)
With all this unconsciously rattling around in my head for the last couple of weeks that old first impression of overwhelming hordes may have faded out of my head. Without such first impression, Putin's monkeying around in the Ukraine and fiddling with the Sea of Azov and sending two supersonic Blackjack strategic bombers to Venezuela to taunt us begin to look like France trying to hold on to Algeria -- if not trying as seriously. (Russia produced 36 of these 1987 bombers -- at our strategic air command's 1960s height it counted 750 B-52s, 1400 B-47s and 100 supersonic B-58s.)
Maybe it's time for Russia to consider that it never was a first class power and sit back and get over it -- time to settle back to watch our hegemony displaced by China and India who will in turn be displaced by a world with one language and one currency, etc. Just saying.
Saturday, December 8, 2018
1968 fed min wage, DOUBLE-indexed for inflation and per cap growth = $23.44 an hour
1968 fed min wage, DOUBLE-indexed for inflation and per cap growth = $23.44 an hour.
yr......per capita...real min...(nominal)...[1968 wage inflation indexed alone]...% per cap growth ... (DBL-index)
(2017 dollars)
68.....16,911.....11.49.....(1.60)...[1.60].........100%...........(11.49)
69-70-71-72-73
74.....19,983.....10.51.....(2.00)...[2.40]
75......20,015.....9.87......(2.10)...[2.58]
76.....20,705.....10.13.....(2.30)...[2.72]..........122%............(14.00) [11.49 X 1.22]
77
78.....22,320.....10.39.....(2.65)...[3.15]
79......22,639....10.40.....(2.90)...[3.53]
80......22,117.....9.76......(3.10)...[3.98]
81......21,997.....9.43......(3.35)...[4.38]...........130%............(14.94) [11.49 X 1.3]
82-83-84-85-86-87-88-89
90......26,244.....7.31.....(3.80)....[6.26]
91......25,728.....7.73.....(4.25)....[6.45]...........152%.............(17.46) [11.49 X 1.52]
92-93-94-95
96......28,306.....7.54.....(4.75)....[7.43]
97......29,395.....7.93.....(5.15)....[7.58].............174%...........(19.99) [11.49 X 1.74]
98-99-00-01-02-03-04-05-06
07......31,767.....7.08.....(5.85)....[9.80]
08......30,775.....7.60.....(6.55)...[10.16]
09......30,385.....8.41.....(7.25)...[10.16].............180%...........(20.68) [11.49 X 1.8]
10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17
18......34,489.....7.16.....(7.25)...[11.49]...............204%...........(23.44) [11.49 X 2.04]
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-people.html
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1.60&year1=196801&year2=201706
* * * * * *
Let Americans raise their wages naturally -- like other modern economies:
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule
Sunday, April 22, 2018
Ms. Foundation -- Annual Minimum Needs Budget Without Employment Health Benefits
From Ms. Foundation book Raise the Floor -- p. 44, table 2-3
Annual Minimum Needs Budget Without Employment Health Benefits -- two adults, one child (1999 dollars table adjusted for 2018 dollars at https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl -- health care skyrocketed since 1999 in mind)
Housing * 11,792
Health Care * 9,722
Food * 7,089
Child Care * 6,987
School Ave Care * 0
Transportation * 3,135
Clothing and Personal Expenses * 1,741
Household Expenses * 745
Telephone * 836
Subtotal Before Taxes * 42,052
Payroll Tax * 3,217
Federal Tax (including credits) * 1,759
State Tax (including credits) * 631
Total * 47,661
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
Will truckers be automated? (lifted from the comments of Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution)
Will truckers be automated? (from the comments)
by Tyler Cowen on February 4, 2018 at 12:03 am in Economics, Web/Tech
Dan Hanson writes:
I wonder how many of the people making predictions about the future of truck drivers have ever ridden with one to see what they do?
One of the big failings of high-level analyses of future trends is that in general they either ignore or seriously underestimate the complexity of the job at a detailed level. Lots of jobs look simple or rote from a think tank or government office, but turn out to be quite complex when you dive into the details.
For example, truck drivers don’t just drive trucks. They also secure loads, including determining what to load first and last and how to tie it all down securely. They act as agents for the trunking company. They verify that what they are picking up is what is on the manifest. They are the early warning system for vehicle maintenance. They deal with the government and others at weighing stations. When sleeping in the cab, they act as security for the load. If the vehicle breaks down, they set up road flares and contact authorities. If the vehicle doesn’t handle correctly, the driver has to stop and analyze what’s wrong – blown tire, shifting load, whatever.
In addition, many truckers are sole proprietors who own their own trucks. This means they also do all the bookwork, preventative maintenance, taxes, etc. These people have local knowledge that is not easily transferable. They know the quirks of the routes, they have relationships with customers, they learn how best to navigate through certain areas, they understand how to optimize by splitting loads or arranging for return loads at their destination, etc. They also learn which customers pay promptly, which ones provide their loads in a way that’s easy to get on the truck, which ones generally have their paperwork in order, etc. Loading docks are not all equal. Some are very ad-hoc and require serious judgement to be able to manoever large trucks around them. Never underestimate the importance of local knowledge.
[To read the rest click here]
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/will-truckers-automated-comments.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29
Friday, January 15, 2016
One more example why government support for ALL drug and medical device research should be the norm
Up until now a
spectacular argument for government taking over all drug and medical device
research has been the example of Sovaldi: the Hepatitis C cure. We all know the
story.
Now, for the first time ever, all three million Hep C sufferers can clean the virus from their system — for only $300 billion dollars ($100,000 each) with 84 pills that costs $1 each to manufacture.
Hep C — PS: 30% more likely to come down with Parkinson’s — and who knows what else. Jingle, jingle, jingle goes the cash register.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/304405.php
Now we have a story supporting gov research from the opposite angle — if you ask me anyway.
Until now, heart failure has been progressive and surely terminal. In 2012 a trial or an innovative medical device in England with 20 patients ended with 25% cured and everyone else improved. It involved a balloon like cuff wrapped around the upper aorta that aided pumping — and apparently allowed the less strained organs to heal.
Now, a much bigger trial on two continents is being arranged (hopefully) but may potentially fall apart for lack of private funding.
Link to very long — what I can only call a — prospectus below
[cut and paste]
Summary
Sunshine Heart develops the C-Pulse device for HF (Heart-Failure) patients. C-Pulse showed outstanding clinical results in the US feasibility study, and EU study, including improvement in HF condition, and recovery.
Heart Failure is poorly treated, resulting in 5 year mortality rate of 60%. C-Pulse targets a huge unmet market of 5.2 million patients in relatively progressed HF stages.
Slow enrollment in the US pivotal trial (the equivalent of an FDA phase III trial), and circumstantial pause and resumption of trial enrollment have lead to dwindling cash.
SSH share price fell rapidly, fueled by panic, tax purposes selling, inability to raise additional cash, fears of approaching bankruptcy, and a poison-pill mechanism preventing an otherwise likely take-over.
Sunshine Heart basically has no other option but pursuing a strategic move soon, that is explored in this article, and can result in substantial gains in the next 6 months.
[snip]
Heart Failure condition overview
HF (Heart Failure) is a terrible disease , but unfortunately is very common. It is currently poorly treated, and is one of few diseases that increase in mortality YoY. More than 7 million HF patients exist in the US, with more than 800,000 new HF cases every year. The number of HF patients is expected to exceed 10 million by 2030. The HF increase in prevalence is driven by the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Additionally, 7-10% of the aging population above 65 years old suffer from HF.
The outcomes of HF are very poor: 5 year mortality rate is higher than 60% – worse than many types of cancer. There are 1 million hospitalizations per year due to HF in the US. HF accounts from more hospitalization-days than any other disease. HF is the number 1 cause for readmission within 30 days – higher than 20% re-admission rates. The current annual cost of HF to the US economy is a huge $31B, with annual cost projected to reach $70B by 2030.
Figure 1 shows the poor outcomes of patient hospitalizations due to heart failure, as reflected by high mortality rates at 30 days, 12 months, and 5 years, and high rate of hospital readmissions. Figure 2 shows the poor and deteriorating median survival time after every HF hospitalization. Kidney failure accounts for more than 50% of mortality, as the kidneys heavily depend on sufficient blood pressure, and blood flow for their operation, which is obviously affected by HF.
[snip]
PS. The insertion procedure is minimally invasive and there is no risk of clots as with other pumping aids, the whole device being outside the bloodstream.
[snip]
Now, for the first time ever, all three million Hep C sufferers can clean the virus from their system — for only $300 billion dollars ($100,000 each) with 84 pills that costs $1 each to manufacture.
Hep C — PS: 30% more likely to come down with Parkinson’s — and who knows what else. Jingle, jingle, jingle goes the cash register.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/304405.php
Now we have a story supporting gov research from the opposite angle — if you ask me anyway.
Until now, heart failure has been progressive and surely terminal. In 2012 a trial or an innovative medical device in England with 20 patients ended with 25% cured and everyone else improved. It involved a balloon like cuff wrapped around the upper aorta that aided pumping — and apparently allowed the less strained organs to heal.
Now, a much bigger trial on two continents is being arranged (hopefully) but may potentially fall apart for lack of private funding.
Link to very long — what I can only call a — prospectus below
[cut and paste]
Summary
Sunshine Heart develops the C-Pulse device for HF (Heart-Failure) patients. C-Pulse showed outstanding clinical results in the US feasibility study, and EU study, including improvement in HF condition, and recovery.
Heart Failure is poorly treated, resulting in 5 year mortality rate of 60%. C-Pulse targets a huge unmet market of 5.2 million patients in relatively progressed HF stages.
Slow enrollment in the US pivotal trial (the equivalent of an FDA phase III trial), and circumstantial pause and resumption of trial enrollment have lead to dwindling cash.
SSH share price fell rapidly, fueled by panic, tax purposes selling, inability to raise additional cash, fears of approaching bankruptcy, and a poison-pill mechanism preventing an otherwise likely take-over.
Sunshine Heart basically has no other option but pursuing a strategic move soon, that is explored in this article, and can result in substantial gains in the next 6 months.
[snip]
Heart Failure condition overview
HF (Heart Failure) is a terrible disease , but unfortunately is very common. It is currently poorly treated, and is one of few diseases that increase in mortality YoY. More than 7 million HF patients exist in the US, with more than 800,000 new HF cases every year. The number of HF patients is expected to exceed 10 million by 2030. The HF increase in prevalence is driven by the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Additionally, 7-10% of the aging population above 65 years old suffer from HF.
The outcomes of HF are very poor: 5 year mortality rate is higher than 60% – worse than many types of cancer. There are 1 million hospitalizations per year due to HF in the US. HF accounts from more hospitalization-days than any other disease. HF is the number 1 cause for readmission within 30 days – higher than 20% re-admission rates. The current annual cost of HF to the US economy is a huge $31B, with annual cost projected to reach $70B by 2030.
Figure 1 shows the poor outcomes of patient hospitalizations due to heart failure, as reflected by high mortality rates at 30 days, 12 months, and 5 years, and high rate of hospital readmissions. Figure 2 shows the poor and deteriorating median survival time after every HF hospitalization. Kidney failure accounts for more than 50% of mortality, as the kidneys heavily depend on sufficient blood pressure, and blood flow for their operation, which is obviously affected by HF.
[snip]
PS. The insertion procedure is minimally invasive and there is no risk of clots as with other pumping aids, the whole device being outside the bloodstream.
[snip]
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3811136-sunshine-heart-a-speculative-biotech-play-for-substantial-short-term-gains?auth_param=17tckm:1b9fvn8:1e097e95787e20c025e6c8de8e008836&dr=1
THE LONG POST SCRIPT
Headline: Drug shortages in American emergency rooms have increased more than 400 percent
THE LONG POST SCRIPT
Headline: Drug shortages in American emergency rooms have increased more than 400 percent
[snip]
"Of the nearly 1,800 drug shortages reported between 2001 and 2014, nearly 34 percent were used in emergency rooms. More than half (52.6 percent) of all reported shortages were of lifesaving drugs, and 10 percent of shortages affected drugs with no substitute."
[snip]
"It seems simple enough: If companies produce more drugs, more drugs will be available to ERs. But given that the majority of drugs on shortage in emergency rooms are sterile injectables with low profit margins, don't expect that to happen anytime soon."
[snip]
http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/ct-emergency-room-drug-shortages-20160124-story.html
SEE ALSO (long):
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/us/drug-shortages-forcing-hard-decisions-on-rationing-treatments.html
MORE:
“ Less than a year ago, Pearson’s cheerleaders—many of them professional money managers, such as Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management—were saying that he was revolutionizing the pharmaceutical industry. Pearson had long argued that the industry wasted too much money on unprofitable research and development projects. He said drugmakers were better off buying other companies and exploiting their portfolios. Accordingly, he had turned Valeant into an acquisition machine and, though he rarely discussed it, a serial hiker of drug prices, another pillar of the company’s strategy. ” (my emphasis) ”
[snip]
" Other pharmaceutical companies learned from Pearson’s model, too. Pfizer, the maker of drugs such as Viagra, was essentially going down a path blazed by Valeant when it announced it would buy Allergan in a $160 billion deal that would be the largest in the industry and that would transform (or “invert”) it into an Irish-domiciled company, enabling it to avoid American corporate taxes. ”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/valeant-s-boss-is-back-can-the-ceo-save-the-day-again
EVEN MORE
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/10/an-old-drug-gets-a-new-price-to-fight-a-rare-disease-89000-a-year/?utm_term=.8da3618f14b3
"Of the nearly 1,800 drug shortages reported between 2001 and 2014, nearly 34 percent were used in emergency rooms. More than half (52.6 percent) of all reported shortages were of lifesaving drugs, and 10 percent of shortages affected drugs with no substitute."
[snip]
"It seems simple enough: If companies produce more drugs, more drugs will be available to ERs. But given that the majority of drugs on shortage in emergency rooms are sterile injectables with low profit margins, don't expect that to happen anytime soon."
[snip]
http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/ct-emergency-room-drug-shortages-20160124-story.html
SEE ALSO (long):
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/us/drug-shortages-forcing-hard-decisions-on-rationing-treatments.html
MORE:
“ Less than a year ago, Pearson’s cheerleaders—many of them professional money managers, such as Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management—were saying that he was revolutionizing the pharmaceutical industry. Pearson had long argued that the industry wasted too much money on unprofitable research and development projects. He said drugmakers were better off buying other companies and exploiting their portfolios. Accordingly, he had turned Valeant into an acquisition machine and, though he rarely discussed it, a serial hiker of drug prices, another pillar of the company’s strategy. ” (my emphasis) ”
[snip]
" Other pharmaceutical companies learned from Pearson’s model, too. Pfizer, the maker of drugs such as Viagra, was essentially going down a path blazed by Valeant when it announced it would buy Allergan in a $160 billion deal that would be the largest in the industry and that would transform (or “invert”) it into an Irish-domiciled company, enabling it to avoid American corporate taxes. ”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/valeant-s-boss-is-back-can-the-ceo-save-the-day-again
EVEN MORE
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/10/an-old-drug-gets-a-new-price-to-fight-a-rare-disease-89000-a-year/?utm_term=.8da3618f14b3
”
Less than a year ago, Pearson’s cheerleaders—many of them professional
money managers, such as Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital
Management—were saying that he was revolutionizing the pharmaceutical
industry. Pearson had long argued that the industry wasted too much
money on unprofitable research and development projects. He said
drugmakers were better off buying other companies and exploiting their
portfolios. Accordingly, he had turned Valeant into an acquisition
machine and, though he rarely discussed it, a serial hiker of drug
prices, another pillar of the company’s strategy. ” (my emphasis)
” Other pharmaceutical companies learned from Pearson’s model, too. Pfizer, the maker of drugs such as Viagra, was essentially going down a path blazed by Valeant when it announced it would buy Allergan in a $160 billion deal that would be the largest in the industry and that would transform (or “invert”) it into an Irish-domiciled company, enabling it to avoid American corporate taxes. ”
Read all about it here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/valeant-s-boss-is-back-can-the-ceo-save-the-day-again
* * * * * *
” … but my experience in med-tech tells me that there is almost always a way around IP and that good ideas (or what companies think will be good ideas) are copied pretty quickly – notice how many companies got into renal nerve ablation once that seemed promising or how many companies have launched clinical programs in transcatheter heart valves. ” http://seekingalpha.com/article/3934666-can-sunshine-heart-survive-see-dawn?auth_param=17tckm:1bd3k0r:1333c28776918ba740d9bea4d932addc&dr=1
Novel, implantable device ‘could slow, reverse heart failure’
Read all about first ever device to successfully treat or even for the first time ever even cure some patients with heart failure — with on add risk of stroke or clots because it is outside the bloodstream. Too bad under US research culture or whatever you call it it may lie neglected because investors are afraid it is too easy to copy. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/283566.php
* * * * * *
We all know the story of Sovaldi where the company paid $11 billion to a company who was going to sell the $1-to-make pills for $350 so they could sell it for $1000 a pill. Cure for Hepatitis C permanently put on hold so Wall Street can gouge. The first company relied on government research funds until it smelled money than it was able to find investors to finish the job. The chief scientist made $446 million for himself — enough to manufacture the virus out of business.
We’ll never do anything about any of this — or anything else — if we don’t return to the union density of the 50s and 60s.
- See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2016/03/open-thread-march-8-2016.html#comments
” Other pharmaceutical companies learned from Pearson’s model, too. Pfizer, the maker of drugs such as Viagra, was essentially going down a path blazed by Valeant when it announced it would buy Allergan in a $160 billion deal that would be the largest in the industry and that would transform (or “invert”) it into an Irish-domiciled company, enabling it to avoid American corporate taxes. ”
Read all about it here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/valeant-s-boss-is-back-can-the-ceo-save-the-day-again
* * * * * *
” … but my experience in med-tech tells me that there is almost always a way around IP and that good ideas (or what companies think will be good ideas) are copied pretty quickly – notice how many companies got into renal nerve ablation once that seemed promising or how many companies have launched clinical programs in transcatheter heart valves. ” http://seekingalpha.com/article/3934666-can-sunshine-heart-survive-see-dawn?auth_param=17tckm:1bd3k0r:1333c28776918ba740d9bea4d932addc&dr=1
Novel, implantable device ‘could slow, reverse heart failure’
Read all about first ever device to successfully treat or even for the first time ever even cure some patients with heart failure — with on add risk of stroke or clots because it is outside the bloodstream. Too bad under US research culture or whatever you call it it may lie neglected because investors are afraid it is too easy to copy. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/283566.php
* * * * * *
We all know the story of Sovaldi where the company paid $11 billion to a company who was going to sell the $1-to-make pills for $350 so they could sell it for $1000 a pill. Cure for Hepatitis C permanently put on hold so Wall Street can gouge. The first company relied on government research funds until it smelled money than it was able to find investors to finish the job. The chief scientist made $446 million for himself — enough to manufacture the virus out of business.
We’ll never do anything about any of this — or anything else — if we don’t return to the union density of the 50s and 60s.
- See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2016/03/open-thread-march-8-2016.html#comments
”
Less than a year ago, Pearson’s cheerleaders—many of them professional
money managers, such as Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital
Management—were saying that he was revolutionizing the pharmaceutical
industry. Pearson had long argued that the industry wasted too much
money on unprofitable research and development projects. He said
drugmakers were better off buying other companies and exploiting their
portfolios. Accordingly, he had turned Valeant into an acquisition
machine and, though he rarely discussed it, a serial hiker of drug
prices, another pillar of the company’s strategy. ” (my emphasis)
” Other pharmaceutical companies learned from Pearson’s model, too. Pfizer, the maker of drugs such as Viagra, was essentially going down a path blazed by Valeant when it announced it would buy Allergan in a $160 billion deal that would be the largest in the industry and that would transform (or “invert”) it into an Irish-domiciled company, enabling it to avoid American corporate taxes. ”
Read all about it here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/valeant-s-boss-is-back-can-the-ceo-save-the-day-again
* * * * * *
” … but my experience in med-tech tells me that there is almost always a way around IP and that good ideas (or what companies think will be good ideas) are copied pretty quickly – notice how many companies got into renal nerve ablation once that seemed promising or how many companies have launched clinical programs in transcatheter heart valves. ” http://seekingalpha.com/article/3934666-can-sunshine-heart-survive-see-dawn?auth_param=17tckm:1bd3k0r:1333c28776918ba740d9bea4d932addc&dr=1
Novel, implantable device ‘could slow, reverse heart failure’
Read all about first ever device to successfully treat or even for the first time ever even cure some patients with heart failure — with on add risk of stroke or clots because it is outside the bloodstream. Too bad under US research culture or whatever you call it it may lie neglected because investors are afraid it is too easy to copy. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/283566.php
* * * * * *
We all know the story of Sovaldi where the company paid $11 billion to a company who was going to sell the $1-to-make pills for $350 so they could sell it for $1000 a pill. Cure for Hepatitis C permanently put on hold so Wall Street can gouge. The first company relied on government research funds until it smelled money than it was able to find investors to finish the job. The chief scientist made $446 million for himself — enough to manufacture the virus out of business.
We’ll never do anything about any of this — or anything else — if we don’t return to the union density of the 50s and 60s.
- See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2016/03/open-thread-march-8-2016.html#comments
” Other pharmaceutical companies learned from Pearson’s model, too. Pfizer, the maker of drugs such as Viagra, was essentially going down a path blazed by Valeant when it announced it would buy Allergan in a $160 billion deal that would be the largest in the industry and that would transform (or “invert”) it into an Irish-domiciled company, enabling it to avoid American corporate taxes. ”
Read all about it here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/valeant-s-boss-is-back-can-the-ceo-save-the-day-again
* * * * * *
” … but my experience in med-tech tells me that there is almost always a way around IP and that good ideas (or what companies think will be good ideas) are copied pretty quickly – notice how many companies got into renal nerve ablation once that seemed promising or how many companies have launched clinical programs in transcatheter heart valves. ” http://seekingalpha.com/article/3934666-can-sunshine-heart-survive-see-dawn?auth_param=17tckm:1bd3k0r:1333c28776918ba740d9bea4d932addc&dr=1
Novel, implantable device ‘could slow, reverse heart failure’
Read all about first ever device to successfully treat or even for the first time ever even cure some patients with heart failure — with on add risk of stroke or clots because it is outside the bloodstream. Too bad under US research culture or whatever you call it it may lie neglected because investors are afraid it is too easy to copy. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/283566.php
* * * * * *
We all know the story of Sovaldi where the company paid $11 billion to a company who was going to sell the $1-to-make pills for $350 so they could sell it for $1000 a pill. Cure for Hepatitis C permanently put on hold so Wall Street can gouge. The first company relied on government research funds until it smelled money than it was able to find investors to finish the job. The chief scientist made $446 million for himself — enough to manufacture the virus out of business.
We’ll never do anything about any of this — or anything else — if we don’t return to the union density of the 50s and 60s.
- See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2016/03/open-thread-march-8-2016.html#comments
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
MY RECENT COMMENTS ON ECONOMIST'S VIEW
TODAY'S COMMENT ON ECONOMIST'S VIEW
RE: As Jobs Vanish, Forgetting What Government Is For -- Eduardo Porter
We could probably get a pretty good consensus together on how to turn our economy away from financialization and back toward higher end manufacturing a la Germany.
But don't bother until we take back the political and economic high ground a la Germany -- a la rebuilding union density -- to make possible doing it. SIMPLE AS THAT.
DO THAT OR DO NOTHING -- talk and talk as much as you want about everything else, you'll never do anything.
*********************
[snip]
It is unnatural and a pathological condition -- ipso facto -- not to have collective bargaining. This unnatural state is itself a result of missing checks and balances. There are no consequences at all for muscling workers in the American labor market.
Solution (to all this): (simply) make union busting a felony -- necessarily backed by RICO so employers cannot play at union busting for a while after laws are passed to see what they can get away with (thereby building up the "continuing" part of the indictment).
Easiest place to start -- the progressive states: WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, NY, MD.
[snip]
**********************
Manufacturing isn't the be-all and end-all for non-college people (2/3 of workforce!). Anyone ever hear of working for Walmart -- for $20 an hour. Probably push Walmart prices up 4-5% -- but everybody else who buys there will be getting an income shift from higher income people when their union can extract the max (might reduce employment where higher income people shop proportionately more than lower ;-O).
The Wage That Meant Middle Class
By LOUIS UCHITELLE APRIL 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/weekinreview/20uchitelle.html?_r=0
No reason Walgreens can't pay what supermarkets used to pay before Walmart (end the two-tier contracts!). No reason Chicago taxi drivers have to make half what they used to make (before Uber) -- no reason not to add one dollar a mile to the meter which is now fifty cents below what it was in 1981 (fifty percent higher per capita income later!); that's a purely government decision if ever there was one, made in a climate where low skill working people are expected to live in peonery to make life a little cheaper for everyone else.*
Where there is no political power there is no political will and will be no way. Rebuild union density first -- don't run with the ball before you catch it -- all this other conversation is putting the cart before the horse.
* After I explained the American labor market to my late brother John he came back with: "Martin Luther King got his people on the up escalator just in time for it to start going down for everybody."
****************************************
YESTERDAY'S COMMENT ON ECONOMIST'S VIEW
Re: The Economist as...?: The Public Square and Economists - Brad DeLong
" But you have nearly no ability to evaluate what you hear. "
But you can listen to your union leaders if you only had them. They are your advocates (as in an advocacy system) -- and they usually know enough economics to know what to do next.
It's usually all about checks and balances anyway (advocacy economics?).
It is unnatural and a pathological condition -- ipso facto -- not to have collective bargaining. This unnatural state is itself a result of missing checks and balances. There are no consequences at all for muscling workers in the American labor market.
Solution (to all this): (simply) make union busting a felony -- necessarily backed by RICO so employers cannot play at union busting for a while after laws are passed to see what they can get away with (thereby building up the "continuing" part of the indictment).
Easiest place to start -- the progressive states: WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, NY, MD.
More people might listen to economists if economist were pushing this simple solution to most all of our economic and political troubles (think Germany).
*************
Re: "The end of American meritocracy - FT.com "
Again, not a problem in Germany with 16% college -- but where auto manufacturing workers earn $60 an hour because they are (have themselves trained because they have so much market power) trained and retrained to be more and more productive -- not in Germany which manufactures ten times as many vehicles per person as the US and sells nine of them abroad.
Meanwhile Boeing is building its 787 Dreamliner wings and fuselage in Italy and Japan. A German level-unionized economy would never allow that to happen here.
Crazy problem: the US has an enormous immigrant population (have 5 Irish grandparents counting my mother's stepmother myself) which is to naturally willing to work for less. Throw that into our labor market malestorm and minimum wage jobs have been effectively outsourced to Mexico and India and my old taxi job (28 years in NYC, Chi, SF) has been outsourced all over the world.
Meantime, back at American born worker homes 100,000 out of (my guesstimate) 200,000 Chicago gang age males are in street gangs because they wont work for SECOND-WORLD WAGES. Chicago has 60% minority population (40% white, 40% black, 20% Hispanic). That makes for 30% of gang age Chicago males stuck at the bottom. Saw the statement that half of Chicago black males are out of work the other day (I think in Crain's Chicago business) -- fits this.
Nothing is being done. Simple solution: rebuild a healthy labor market (and healthy politics) where workers can test to see how much the consumer will pay. Wont put immigrants out of work -- the economy expands to fit new workers -- ask any economist -- oops; that's where we came into this movie.
.
RE: As Jobs Vanish, Forgetting What Government Is For -- Eduardo Porter
We could probably get a pretty good consensus together on how to turn our economy away from financialization and back toward higher end manufacturing a la Germany.
But don't bother until we take back the political and economic high ground a la Germany -- a la rebuilding union density -- to make possible doing it. SIMPLE AS THAT.
DO THAT OR DO NOTHING -- talk and talk as much as you want about everything else, you'll never do anything.
*********************
[snip]
It is unnatural and a pathological condition -- ipso facto -- not to have collective bargaining. This unnatural state is itself a result of missing checks and balances. There are no consequences at all for muscling workers in the American labor market.
Solution (to all this): (simply) make union busting a felony -- necessarily backed by RICO so employers cannot play at union busting for a while after laws are passed to see what they can get away with (thereby building up the "continuing" part of the indictment).
Easiest place to start -- the progressive states: WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, NY, MD.
[snip]
**********************
Manufacturing isn't the be-all and end-all for non-college people (2/3 of workforce!). Anyone ever hear of working for Walmart -- for $20 an hour. Probably push Walmart prices up 4-5% -- but everybody else who buys there will be getting an income shift from higher income people when their union can extract the max (might reduce employment where higher income people shop proportionately more than lower ;-O).
The Wage That Meant Middle Class
By LOUIS UCHITELLE APRIL 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/weekinreview/20uchitelle.html?_r=0
No reason Walgreens can't pay what supermarkets used to pay before Walmart (end the two-tier contracts!). No reason Chicago taxi drivers have to make half what they used to make (before Uber) -- no reason not to add one dollar a mile to the meter which is now fifty cents below what it was in 1981 (fifty percent higher per capita income later!); that's a purely government decision if ever there was one, made in a climate where low skill working people are expected to live in peonery to make life a little cheaper for everyone else.*
Where there is no political power there is no political will and will be no way. Rebuild union density first -- don't run with the ball before you catch it -- all this other conversation is putting the cart before the horse.
* After I explained the American labor market to my late brother John he came back with: "Martin Luther King got his people on the up escalator just in time for it to start going down for everybody."
****************************************
YESTERDAY'S COMMENT ON ECONOMIST'S VIEW
Re: The Economist as...?: The Public Square and Economists - Brad DeLong
" But you have nearly no ability to evaluate what you hear. "
But you can listen to your union leaders if you only had them. They are your advocates (as in an advocacy system) -- and they usually know enough economics to know what to do next.
It's usually all about checks and balances anyway (advocacy economics?).
It is unnatural and a pathological condition -- ipso facto -- not to have collective bargaining. This unnatural state is itself a result of missing checks and balances. There are no consequences at all for muscling workers in the American labor market.
Solution (to all this): (simply) make union busting a felony -- necessarily backed by RICO so employers cannot play at union busting for a while after laws are passed to see what they can get away with (thereby building up the "continuing" part of the indictment).
Easiest place to start -- the progressive states: WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, NY, MD.
More people might listen to economists if economist were pushing this simple solution to most all of our economic and political troubles (think Germany).
*************
Re: "The end of American meritocracy - FT.com "
Again, not a problem in Germany with 16% college -- but where auto manufacturing workers earn $60 an hour because they are (have themselves trained because they have so much market power) trained and retrained to be more and more productive -- not in Germany which manufactures ten times as many vehicles per person as the US and sells nine of them abroad.
Meanwhile Boeing is building its 787 Dreamliner wings and fuselage in Italy and Japan. A German level-unionized economy would never allow that to happen here.
Crazy problem: the US has an enormous immigrant population (have 5 Irish grandparents counting my mother's stepmother myself) which is to naturally willing to work for less. Throw that into our labor market malestorm and minimum wage jobs have been effectively outsourced to Mexico and India and my old taxi job (28 years in NYC, Chi, SF) has been outsourced all over the world.
Meantime, back at American born worker homes 100,000 out of (my guesstimate) 200,000 Chicago gang age males are in street gangs because they wont work for SECOND-WORLD WAGES. Chicago has 60% minority population (40% white, 40% black, 20% Hispanic). That makes for 30% of gang age Chicago males stuck at the bottom. Saw the statement that half of Chicago black males are out of work the other day (I think in Crain's Chicago business) -- fits this.
Nothing is being done. Simple solution: rebuild a healthy labor market (and healthy politics) where workers can test to see how much the consumer will pay. Wont put immigrants out of work -- the economy expands to fit new workers -- ask any economist -- oops; that's where we came into this movie.
.
Thursday, October 8, 2015
HERE COME DA DRUG MONOPOLIES
Sovaldi: Hepatitis C can be wiped out for $300 billion (that's a "b") -- the same amount we now pay for all other prescriptions. Cost to manufacture: half a billion dollars.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/280635.php
Now comes: "Amgen scores a victory for PCSK9, halving cardio risks after one year" " ... new [cholesterol] drugs could eventually add as much as $150 billion to the national health-care bill."
http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/amgen-scores-victory-pcsk9-halving-cardio-risks-after-one-year/2015-03-15
http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-type-of-cholesterol-drug-could-prove-costly-1426817085
[how much will we be willing to pay to cure the incurable?]
"Of the 2,644 patients, eight exhibited signs of dementia. Two were younger than 65, five were aged from 65-74 and one was aged between 75-84."
"for the first time in human subjects, our notion that calcineurin inhibition has a protective effect on the development and possible progression and even reversal of Alzheimer's disease,"
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/295047.php
C-Pulse - a cuff that wraps around the aorta and pumps blood from the heart around the body - has proved effective in reversing [formerly incurable] heart failure, even in some patients with severe cases.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/283566.php
[the list of potential pharma rent collectors grows by day]
"And they also found that azoramide greatly improved blood glucose levels in obese mice and mice with type 2 diabetes. They showed this improvement was the result of two things: better functioning of insulin-producing beta cells and greater insulin sensitivity in tissues."
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/295623.php
My $500 Pill Revealed -- Revlimid -- by Kevin Drum
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/07/my-500-pill-revealed
[just a sample of monopoly possibilities; more -- surely -- to come]
Potential target for future Huntington's disease treatment discovered
"... MNT reported on a study that confirmed an activating protein called Rhes plays a pivotal role in Huntington's disease. This protein could become a drug target in future treatments.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/297489.php
PLEKHA7 -- puts brakes on cancer -- better get ready to sell the Statue of Liberty back to France
"He notes this is like a speeding car that has a lot of gas (E-cadherin and p120) but no brakes (the PLEKHA7 complex), and concludes:"By administering the affected miRNAs in cancer cells to restore their normal levels, we should be able to re-establish the brakes and restore normal cell function. Initial experiments in some aggressive types of cancer are indeed very promising."
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/298513.php
[just another day for potential new drug monopolies -- we will all owe our souls to the corner drug store]
Why Insulin Costs So Much
July 19th, 2015 by David Mendosa
"Dr. Hirsch reviewed the cost of insulin from 1921 when Drs. Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered it. “In a generous gesture that unfortunately didn’t start a trend, they sold the patent for $1 so that cheap insulin would quickly become available.
"By 2005, people worldwide were spending more than $7.3 billion for insulin. “But no one could have predicted what would happen over the next decade,” Dr. Hirsch said. By 2013 we were spending $21 billion for it.
"Between 2005 and 2015 the cost of a lispro vial went up 264 percent, while a vial of insulin glargine went up 348 percent, and a vial of NPH went up 364 percent. That’s a lot, but other insulins went up even more.
"The cost of an aspart pen rose in this 10-year period by 389 percent. And the cost of a vial of U-500 regular insulin jumped a staggering 508 percent.
Price Fixing?
"Dr. Hirsch noted that one year ago Sanofi increased the price insulin glargine 16.1 percent. “And literally the next day, Novo Nordisk increased the price of insulin detemir (Levemir) 16.1 percent. In fact, this pattern repeated six months later, and this has actually happened 13 times for these two products that have total U.S. sales of $11 billion.”
http://www.mendosa.com/blog/?p=3529
[Such an collection of greed-driven price bleeding that I cannot encapsulate it -- yet.]
Drug Goes From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight
Andrew Pollack The New York Times
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/21/drug-goes-from-1350-a-tablet-to-750-overnight.html?__source=yahoo|finance|headline|headline|story&par=yahoo&doc=103012076&ref=yfp
That Guy Who Is Price-Gouging AIDS Patients (see just above) Also Did It to Kids with Kidney Disease
"The former hedge fund manager whose pharmaceutical company has come under withering attack for allegations of egregious price-gouging on life-saving medication (just above) ... and it turns out he once tried a similar price hike scheme ... During Martin Shkreli's tenure as CEO of Retrophin ... the company increased prices on a decades-old kidney medication by about 20 times its original cost ... ."
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/09/22/martin_shkreli_price_gouging_the_hedge_fund_bro_pulled_drug_price_hike_scheme.html
"Drugonomics is not Adam Smith’s invisible hand. It is Gordon Gekko’s visible middle finger."
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2015/10/blame-system-not-martin-shkreli.html
[One Washington Post story]
The drug industry wants us to think Martin Shkreli is a [unique] rogue CEO. He isn’t [unique at all].
Plant used for gout 3,000 years -- in pill form since 1800s. Pharma somehow got exclusive rights (normal apparently) -- price shot up from 9 cents a tablet to $4.85.
2013 increase in price of brand name drugs (higher every year): 12.9%. That approaches 200% added (300%) every 10 years.
Tetracycline, 1948 drug: 5 cents a capsule until 2013 -- now $11.
Clomipramine, 1960s antidepressent, 22 cents a pill up to 2012 -- now $8.17.
In Australia, 2010, Amedra Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to abendazole, off patent, intestinal parasite drug selling for $6 a day -- raised to $120.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/09/25/the-drug-industry-wants-us-to-think-martin-shkreli-is-a-rogue-ceo-he-isnt/
[Another day, another drug]
Nitropress, generic blood pressure drug went for $44 a vial way, way back in the year 2013. Now sold by Valeant Pharaceuticals for $806.
According to a spokesman, no one will ever be denied this medication: “These are drugs that are only used by hospitals — they are not sold in pharmacies — in accordance with specific surgical procedures. This means that whenever the protocol calls for use of these drugs, they are used.”
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/09/its-really-hard-not-hate-pharmaceutical-industry
[$2,000 in far away Canada -- $20,000 for us in the US]
"The price of a 30-milligram injection of the drug, according to the bill, was $19,827.90. Because at least four shots would be needed, they were looking at pharmacy charges approaching $80,000 and nearly $16,000 in copays.
"A 30-mg dose of Lupron Depot is available from Canadian pharmacies for under $2,000, according to the website PharmacyChecker.com."
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20151002-column.html
Ever elongating list grows from here.
[$250,000 a year breakthrough cystic fibrosis drug -- and more]
"A breakthrough new drug, Orkambi, for patients [with cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening genetic condition that causes severe damage to lungs] — along with sticker shock, at an annual price tag of more than a quarter million dollars.
"[A]t more than $300,000 a year, Kalydeco costs even more than Orkambi ... Both Orkambi and Kalydeco are made by Vertex, a Boston-based pharmaceutical firm ... "
http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/they-put-price-my-life-cost-cystic-fibrosis-drugs-sky-n440321
http://www.king5.com/story/news/health/childrens-healthlink/2015/05/19/cystic-fibrosis-cf-kalydeco-lumacaftor-orkambi-ramsey/27610791/
[Post Script]
Is it too late to recount the tale off a sleeping pill whose name I forget, but which cost $10 a month in 10mg dose -- and $200 a month in a lower 5mg dose: a "new drug"; trials having shown that some patients do better on the half dose. That's how today's law is written.
***********************
ADDENDUM
***********************
How the US Congress Hands US Corporate Taxes To Europe
02/08/2016 Jeffrey Sachs
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/how-the-us-congress-hands_b_9185988.html
" The present case of Gilead is even more absurd. The company owns the patent on blockbuster drug Sofosbuvir, the cure for Hepatitis C. The company bought the drug from the drug developer Pharmasett, which did all of its R&D in the United States. Yet the intellectual property on Sofosbuvir is claimed by Gilead to be in Ireland for tax purposes. When Gilead fleeces the U.S. government by charging $1,000 for a pill that costs $1 to manufacture, and the money is paid by the U.S. government to pay for treatment of a U.S. citizen in the U.S., Gilead has the chutzpah to book the U.S. profits in Ireland. And they get away with it.
" You can't make this stuff up.
" But here's the further twist. The European Governments are seeing how the U.S. companies are getting off without paying taxes. So now the European tax authorities are stepping forward to collect taxes on the profits earned by U.S. tech companies in Europe. And the companies are indeed settling with the European tax authorities for billions of dollars in tax payments -- taxes that should be paid, not to Europe, but to the U.S. Treasury.
"As I said, you can't make this stuff up.
" So the bottom line is as follows. In their interest to garner favor with U.S. companies (mainly in search of campaign funds), the U.S. Congress has allowed these companies to escape U.S. corporate taxes by magically declaring that their IP is located in some foreign tax haven. Yet instead of the money remaining with the U.S. companies, as Congress intended, it is increasingly going into the European tax coffers. "
That Guy Who Is Price-Gouging AIDS Patients (see just above) Also Did It to Kids with Kidney Disease
"The former hedge fund manager whose pharmaceutical company has come under withering attack for allegations of egregious price-gouging on life-saving medication (just above) ... and it turns out he once tried a similar price hike scheme ... During Martin Shkreli's tenure as CEO of Retrophin ... the company increased prices on a decades-old kidney medication by about 20 times its original cost ... ."
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/09/22/martin_shkreli_price_gouging_the_hedge_fund_bro_pulled_drug_price_hike_scheme.html
"Drugonomics is not Adam Smith’s invisible hand. It is Gordon Gekko’s visible middle finger."
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2015/10/blame-system-not-martin-shkreli.html
[One Washington Post story]
The drug industry wants us to think Martin Shkreli is a [unique] rogue CEO. He isn’t [unique at all].
Plant used for gout 3,000 years -- in pill form since 1800s. Pharma somehow got exclusive rights (normal apparently) -- price shot up from 9 cents a tablet to $4.85.
2013 increase in price of brand name drugs (higher every year): 12.9%. That approaches 200% added (300%) every 10 years.
Tetracycline, 1948 drug: 5 cents a capsule until 2013 -- now $11.
Clomipramine, 1960s antidepressent, 22 cents a pill up to 2012 -- now $8.17.
In Australia, 2010, Amedra Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to abendazole, off patent, intestinal parasite drug selling for $6 a day -- raised to $120.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/09/25/the-drug-industry-wants-us-to-think-martin-shkreli-is-a-rogue-ceo-he-isnt/
[Another day, another drug]
Nitropress, generic blood pressure drug went for $44 a vial way, way back in the year 2013. Now sold by Valeant Pharaceuticals for $806.
According to a spokesman, no one will ever be denied this medication: “These are drugs that are only used by hospitals — they are not sold in pharmacies — in accordance with specific surgical procedures. This means that whenever the protocol calls for use of these drugs, they are used.”
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/09/its-really-hard-not-hate-pharmaceutical-industry
[$2,000 in far away Canada -- $20,000 for us in the US]
"The price of a 30-milligram injection of the drug, according to the bill, was $19,827.90. Because at least four shots would be needed, they were looking at pharmacy charges approaching $80,000 and nearly $16,000 in copays.
"A 30-mg dose of Lupron Depot is available from Canadian pharmacies for under $2,000, according to the website PharmacyChecker.com."
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20151002-column.html
Ever elongating list grows from here.
[$250,000 a year breakthrough cystic fibrosis drug -- and more]
"A breakthrough new drug, Orkambi, for patients [with cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening genetic condition that causes severe damage to lungs] — along with sticker shock, at an annual price tag of more than a quarter million dollars.
"[A]t more than $300,000 a year, Kalydeco costs even more than Orkambi ... Both Orkambi and Kalydeco are made by Vertex, a Boston-based pharmaceutical firm ... "
http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/they-put-price-my-life-cost-cystic-fibrosis-drugs-sky-n440321
http://www.king5.com/story/news/health/childrens-healthlink/2015/05/19/cystic-fibrosis-cf-kalydeco-lumacaftor-orkambi-ramsey/27610791/
[Post Script]
Is it too late to recount the tale off a sleeping pill whose name I forget, but which cost $10 a month in 10mg dose -- and $200 a month in a lower 5mg dose: a "new drug"; trials having shown that some patients do better on the half dose. That's how today's law is written.
***********************
ADDENDUM
***********************
How the US Congress Hands US Corporate Taxes To Europe
02/08/2016 Jeffrey Sachs
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/how-the-us-congress-hands_b_9185988.html
" The present case of Gilead is even more absurd. The company owns the patent on blockbuster drug Sofosbuvir, the cure for Hepatitis C. The company bought the drug from the drug developer Pharmasett, which did all of its R&D in the United States. Yet the intellectual property on Sofosbuvir is claimed by Gilead to be in Ireland for tax purposes. When Gilead fleeces the U.S. government by charging $1,000 for a pill that costs $1 to manufacture, and the money is paid by the U.S. government to pay for treatment of a U.S. citizen in the U.S., Gilead has the chutzpah to book the U.S. profits in Ireland. And they get away with it.
" You can't make this stuff up.
" But here's the further twist. The European Governments are seeing how the U.S. companies are getting off without paying taxes. So now the European tax authorities are stepping forward to collect taxes on the profits earned by U.S. tech companies in Europe. And the companies are indeed settling with the European tax authorities for billions of dollars in tax payments -- taxes that should be paid, not to Europe, but to the U.S. Treasury.
"As I said, you can't make this stuff up.
" So the bottom line is as follows. In their interest to garner favor with U.S. companies (mainly in search of campaign funds), the U.S. Congress has allowed these companies to escape U.S. corporate taxes by magically declaring that their IP is located in some foreign tax haven. Yet instead of the money remaining with the U.S. companies, as Congress intended, it is increasingly going into the European tax coffers. "
Monday, April 21, 2014
My $15 an hour minimum wage/centralized bargaining "Magnum Opus" :-)
If average Walmart nonsupervisory pay were raised to $100 an hour, the price of $10 items would only rise to $15. Walmart labor costs are 7%. Nonsupervisory workers average $12 an hour. $12 X 8 = almost $100. One of the $12s is there already. 7x7% = 49%.
Double current Walmart nonsupervisory pay to $24 hourly, throw on 25% for benefits to make it $30 and prices rise about 10%.
Somebody challenged me that raising Walmart prices 10% (at $30 -- only 3.5% at $15 min wage) would charge low income consumers $26 billion more a year ($260 billion sales). I pointed out they could take it out of the $560 billion raise they would get from a $15 minimum wage.
A $15 minimum wage would shift about 3.5% of income from the 55 percent of the workforce who garner 90% of income to the 45% who scratch only 10%. $8,000 average raise X 70 million (45% of 140 million + 5% at minimum now) = $560 billion out of $16,000 billion GDP. BTW, 45% of workforce not going to be sent home over a 3 1/2 percent shift in income share.
100,000 out of (my estimate) 200,000 gang age, Chicago males are in street gangs – I say because they wont work for a minimum wage several dollars below LBJ’s 1968 minimum wage ($10.95) after per capita income about doubled. A $15 an hour minimum wage might actually put American born workers back to work at America’s McDonald’s.
* * * * * * * * * *
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/business/international/living-wages-served-in-denmark-fast-food-restaurants.html?_r=0
”Denmark has no minimum-wage law. But Mr. Elofsson’s $20 an hour is the lowest the fast-food industry can pay under an agreement between Denmark’s 3F union, the nation’s largest, and the Danish employers group Horesta, which includes Burger King, McDonald’s, Starbucks and other restaurant and hotel companies.”
What Denmark does have – along with most of continental Europe and French Canada and Argentina and Indonesia -- is a labor market setup called centralized bargaining where every employee doing similar work (e.g., retail clerk) negotiates one common labor contract with all employers doing similar business (e.g., Safeway, Best Buy, Walmart).
$20 an hour + benefits: it’s the centralized bargaining/truly-free market! Supemarket workers (think Walmart gutted two-tier contracts) and airline employees (think regional pilots making $500 a week) would kill for centralized bargaining. The only practicable way to re-unionize -- by law. Only way to reconstitute political democracy as well.
Check out Only One Thing Can Save Us by Chicago labor lawyer Tom Ghegeogan.
* * * * * * * * *
FROM A CONVERSATION I HAD ON "OPEN THREAD" AT ANGRY BEAR:
”Denmark has no minimum-wage law. But Mr. Elofsson’s $20 an hour is the lowest the fast-food industry can pay under an agreement between Denmark’s 3F union, the nation’s largest, and the Danish employers group Horesta, which includes Burger King, McDonald’s, Starbucks and other restaurant and hotel companies.”
What Denmark does have – along with most of continental Europe and French Canada and Argentina and Indonesia -- is a labor market setup called centralized bargaining where every employee doing similar work (e.g., retail clerk) negotiates one common labor contract with all employers doing similar business (e.g., Safeway, Best Buy, Walmart).
$20 an hour + benefits: it’s the centralized bargaining/truly-free market! Supemarket workers (think Walmart gutted two-tier contracts) and airline employees (think regional pilots making $500 a week) would kill for centralized bargaining. The only practicable way to re-unionize -- by law. Only way to reconstitute political democracy as well.
Check out Only One Thing Can Save Us by Chicago labor lawyer Tom Ghegeogan.
* * * * * * * * *
FROM A CONVERSATION I HAD ON "OPEN THREAD" AT ANGRY BEAR:
I am not
talking about
collective
bargaining
alone — you
understand I
am talking
about every
employee doing
the same kind
of work
negotiating
one common
contract with
every employer
doing the same
kind of
business (in
the same
geographic
locale unless
nationwide is
appropriate).
I’m not sure
that is we are
both talking
about the
same.
Well, imagine you are running for Congress and you want to support putting some real teeth into the right to organize. Whatever that would mean has got to be real complicated and unfortunately in a country that has forgotten about collective bargaining not a real hot topic.
OTH, centralized bargaining promises to improve so many employees lot (everybody’s lot?) so simply and quickly that it would make a very exciting — and very novel (as in big fun) — issue. Come to think of it polls show 50% want to unionize so maybe its just a matter of the right kind of union issue — and this might be the real killer app. Democrats taking a pasting because they aren’t making anything any better as our world goes down the drain — might be just what they need.
- See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2014/11/open-thread-nov-7-2014.html#comments
I
am not talking
about
collective
bargaining
alone — I am
talking about
every employee
doing the same
kind of work
negotiating
one common
contract with
every employer
doing the same
kind of
business (in
the same
geographic
locale unless
nationwide is
more
appropriate).
Well, imagine you are running for Congress and you want to support putting some real teeth into the right to organize. Whatever that would mean has got to be real complicated and unfortunately in a country that has forgotten about collective bargaining not a real hot topic.
OTH, centralized bargaining promises to improve so many employees lot (everybody’s lot?) so simply and quickly that it would make a very exciting — and very novel (as in big fun) — issue. Come to think of it polls show 50% want to unionize so maybe its just a matter of the right kind of union issue — and this might be the real killer app. Democrats taking a pasting because they aren’t making anything any better as our world goes down the drain — might be just what they need.
- See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2014/11/open-thread-nov-7-2014.html#comments
Imagine running for Congress and you want to put some real teeth into the right to organize. Modifying current labor law could be off-putting complicated -- unfortunately in a country where collective bargaining has become a forgotten topic.
OTH, legally mandated, centralized bargaining promises to improve so many employees lot (everybody’s lot?) so simply and quickly that it would make a very exciting — and very novel (as in big fun) — issue. The political "killer app." As I always say supermarket workers and airline employees would kill for centralize bargaining.
We have socialists, we have Austrian economists and every flavor of economic/political opinion in between. Where are America's "centralized bargain-ists" (should be a movement all over the world even in labor organized countries) -- pushing the one labor market system that, world-wide for three-quarters of a century (starting with the Teamsters Union in Detroit in the 1930s), has consistently delivered fair and balanced economies and societies?
Everybody better get together to come up with something real soon -- or else:
If the top 1% income continues to receive all the economic growth, then, by the time the output per person expands 50% (25-30 years?) the top 1% income will “earn” half of a half-larger economy (25% + 50% = 75% of 150%). By the time output per person doubles (typically 40-50 years) the equation will read 25% + 100% out of 200% = 62.5% of a twice-as-large economy.
ADDENDUM
double-indexed is for inflation and per capita income growth:
yr per capita real nominal dbl-index %-of
(2013 dollars)
68 15,473 10.74 (1.60) 10.74 100%
69-70-71-72-73 [real, low point- 8.41]
74 18,284 9.47 (2.00) 12.61
75 18,313 9.11 (2.10) 12.61
76 18,945 9.44 (2.30) 13.04 72%
77 [8.86]
78 20,422 9.49 (2.65) 14.11
79 20,696 9.33 (2.90) 14.32
80 20,236 8.78 (3.10) 14.00
81 20,112 8.61 (3.35) 13.89 62%
82-83-84-85-86-87-88-89 [6.31]
90 24,000 6.79 (3.80) 16.56
91 23,540 7.29 (4.25) 16.24 44%
92-93-94-95 [6.51]
96 25,887 7.07 (4.75) 17.85
97 26,884 7.49 (5.15) 19.02 39%
98-99-00-01-02-03-04-05-06 [5.97]
07 29,075 6.59 (5.85) 20.09
08 28,166 7.10 (6.55) 19.45
09 27,819 7.89 (7.25) 9.42 40%
10-11-12 [7.37]
13 28,829 7.25 (7.25) 19.32 38%
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