Yuku free message boards

Yeah, Terry - her name seems to be Flo. But I do not follow the reference to Jessie. Who is Jessie? What lap robe? Is there a progressive commercial with Jessie as a character?

Well, I want to know why it costs so much.

This I can explain, sort of, because I worked for major, minor and middling Pharma companies.

It is simply the cost involved in Phase 1, 2 and 3 and other drug trials. The Pharma Companies must go through them to show that the drugs are safe first of all, and effective too in placebo-controlled trails. These trials are very, very costly. And yet, *some* of the Pharma companies manage to hide results, claim efficacy where there are none and market the drugs at high rates any way. They get away with doing such unethical things until patients are either hurt or killed. (If you look up anything to do with Merck in recent times, you will see examples of this.) They get away with doing such things because the watch-dog agency, FDA, had been very much under the thumb of big Pharma, selling us all out - the process started (IIRC) in 1996 or thereabouts.

I have no sympathy for the big Pharma and little Pharma complaining about how much it costs to bring drugs to market. They get all manner of tax breaks to do precisely that, for the greater good of the American people, but the huge profits they make are not even paid out to pay their rank and file employees all that well. The profits are used in executive bonuses (at least in the companies where I worked), are used for management bonuses even in very lean years, for partying like there is no tomorrow by the execs and abuse of very expenisve privileges such as the use of a corporate jet by the married CEO to go visit his Brazilian mistress (honest, this actually happened in a company where I worked; we were all tightening our belts at the behest of the CEO, taking pay-cuts and paying more for our health coverages while he was doing this, and we all had to read about it on the cover of Business Week).

This is precisely why I stopped working in Pharma companies many years ago and went to work for non-profit companies which pay much less, to use my education to help sick children.

What I do begrudge is that people want healthcare for free(when they don't pay anything into it) when the rest of us have to pay for it.

No one has the guts to address this issue, if you ask me. In CA, huge amounts of health-care dollars go towards taking care of the enormous population in the prisons, and yet, the Public clamours more and more for locking people up and throwing away the key even for nonviolent criminals. I am not sure what the solution ought to be, but I think it is highly unethical that my tax dollars go towards paying for prisoners' Viagra prescriptions (honest - that is what I hear as being allowed by MediCal from one of the nurses at my Allergy Clinic - I don't really know if this is true) when law-abiding women have always had to pay out of pocket for contraceptives in my state while paying for private insurance, and while abuse of women and pregnancy of women are considered 'pre-existing conditions.'

I am not sure what the solution is for the prisoner healthcare problems. I am simply appalled that someone who may have been convicted of heinous crimes can get cadillac health coverage which is unavailable to hard-working and law-abiding poor Californians.

Again, I am not sure how State Govt. Employees' health coverage works in your great state of Louisiana, MASAJ, but in California, it is heavily taxpayer-subsidized. It used to be that California State Government employees had low salaries and in order to attract them to the low-paying jobs, the Govt. made their health benefits package very attractive and also, available to them for their life-time. I believe that these workers actually deliver very essential services to the rest of us and ought to be handsomely compensated on par with employees in privately owned businesses. I also believe that it is unconscionable that their pays (especially at the mangerial level) went up sky-high while the rest of us kept taking pay-cuts, we had to pay higher and higher amounts of money for our health insurance but the State Workers got to keep their cadillac coverages as well as retirement benefits ...

Anyway, that is my POV, and it is very specific to California. I have no idea what happens in your state.

Oh, having worked very hard to become a legal immigrant to this country and knowing that many of my friends who are trying to do the same getting stuck in their immigration queues by the major influx of illegal aliens in my state, it has always burned my skin that while children of law-abiding friends are not eligible for free public education nor resident tuition in state universities, but children of illegal immigrants are.

As for your other comment about the other volatile subject as well as the healthcare for illegal immigrants - this all seems to be a function of not asking people for Government IDs when they show up for treatment at any healthcare clinic or hospital, period.

All I can do to show that I disapprove of anyone breaking the law including illegal aliens is to never employ any unlicensed contractor, nor any contractors who cannot show me that whomever works for her or him and is a subcontractor is also licensed. Anyway, I do not blame the illegal aliens as much as I blame the employers who knowingly employ them and make illegal entry into this country a viable option for many poor people. Exploitation and illegal practices - we have no one to blame but our own coyotes and our own so-called "law-makers" who make all of this a possible "way of life."