No reason people who create/operate this kind of stuff should not be hunted down and summarily executed.
The FBI operates in all countries outside of ISIS territory now, and can be invoked to do your bidding so long as you can show that the ransomware violated someone's copyright.
Slapdash procedure like this is a hallmark of socialized healthcare systems. Such systems are good at delivering basic care to the masses at low cost. You just have to forgiving about such things as queuing up for heart surgery and having your hospital bed be out in the hallway because of overcrowding. Complainers will be reminded of Grandma's stories about the Blitz, and how much conditions have improved since then.
For an example of a free market that has the same large research component and the same indirect marketing (as in "Intel Inside") as medicine, I give you electronics. This is what US medicine could look like if it were a free market.
" Because in the Army we were issued an autoinjector in case of exposure to some kind of gas (I don't remember which one) which you were supposed to inject into the muscle in your butt cheek."
This exact Army device is the autoinjector used in Epi-Pen. The patent was wrongly issued because of this government-developed prior art, but Merck and later Mylan have been making billions off this error ever since.
No, the FDA's power to keep products off the market is the problem. The health insurance industry only has the power it enjoys now because it's the patient's only bulk bargaining agent in the current monopoly environment. Except for major medical like heart problems and cancer, the industry isn't even functioning as true insurance - it's just a prepayment system with bargaining power.
The real price of any medical procedure, device or compound is the contract price the insurance company pays for it. Unless you're on Medicare and get a regular EOB statement of payments, patients never even know what this contract price is. As an example, my wife's kidney dialysis sessions are billed out at $3,925 each, for a total of about $600,000 per year. The insurance company's "real price" is $290 per session.
If we had a competitive market in medicine the importance of insurance companies would diminish. Health insurance would go back to being the "major medical" it once was, indemnifying us against hospital stays and catastrophic diseases. The governments and charities which pay for medical services now would save correspondingly, which alone is why competition will be forced on the industry as prices become intolerable.
The pharma argument that high US prices subsidize lower prices in other countries is bullshit. Drugs are sold at a profit in every market, except for charitable giveaways in Third World epidemic emergencies. Each market is assessed for what price it will bear.
The other often-repeated myth is that Canada imposes price controls. It doesn't. Its single-payer organization bids for the medications it wants, attracting low prices because it buys a nationwide supply of each device and compound at once, handling its own distribution. Those products it deems to be too expensive are just skipped.
Did you know that the excuse the FDA gave for pulling Primatene Mist off the market was because the propellant was the type that damages the famed ozone layer? Nothing to do with the epinephrine in it. http://asthmaallergieschildren...
"So Republicans are fighting for price controls and the Democrats are letting the market set the price?"
No, mainstream Never-Trump Republicans are paid for by pharma, and are in favor of doing nothing. Democrats will use price controls and rationing to 'solve' the problem. In Venezuela, these techniques have been great at eliminating patients.
"Can you imagine if this crap happened with something far more common like insulin injections? "
Actually this same sudden price jump is taking place for insulin, which has been generic for over fifty years. Like Daraprim, insulin is made and sold cheap all over the world - except in the US.
"Point is, while I usually consider libertarians to be deserving of the label libertard..."
Hi, I'm a libertard. The vital business of the FDA is getting compounds and products tested. Let that be its only business. Everything submitted to the agency would get a label, indicating whether or not the product was approved. The label would contain a QR code pointing to online detail about what the testing revealed about the product. My version of the FDA would have no other powers. Doctors, patients and insurance companies would be able to make up their own minds on whether to take FDA recommendations as a gold standard or whether to accept, say, the approval of European or Asian testing organizations as being equally authoritative.
In the Epi-Pen case, Sanofi and Teva submitted their own epinephrine autoinjectors. Sanofi's product has a problem with dosage control, and was recalled. The FDA rejected Teva's product for reasons that have never been made clear. Under my system, GDA would have to explain exactly what it didn't like about the Teva product, while at the same time allowing users to make up their own minds about the importance of the FDA's objections when weighed against how much they need the product and the price of alternatives..
This is not the same problem as the high price of newly branded medications. This is a product that has been on the market for more than a generation, price steadily sliding down the learning curve as competing products came onto the market. Then, suddenly, there are no more competing products because Mylan, by influencing the FDA, is using governmental power to force out its competitors.
It has been pointed out that Mylan's CEO is a donor to the Clinton Foundation, but ultimately we can't blame Mylan for taking advantage of the legal power the government has handed it any more than we can blame a hungry whitetip shark from eating people. The real blame should fall on the FDA and its locking out of the competition, and only when we strip it of that power will there be any hope of bringing prices back to earth.
A lot of other Windows 10 users also came to this conclusion, but ran up against the very limited device driver support in 3.1 . Most of them are now back on Windows 7.
It's goddamn brain-dead Bloomburg paywalling. As soon as you see the text in your browser, hit Escape. You can then read the article without disabling your adblocker.
California has given up on bringing new power generation online, so it turns to the popular Seventies idea of paying people to conserve more. Conservation is fine is a short-term solution to shortage - of anything - but in the long run there is no substitute for generating more power by the cleanest feasible means. If CA continues to be short of water it will have to start desalinating, and just by itself that will require new capacity. Arizona can't supply all of California's power needs.
Here is one Gmail bug that has been around for literally years: you're used to running Gmail on a computer, and have set up mailing lists. If you are on the road with a mobile device and find that you have to use the Gmail app to communicate, you will find that although you can message with any person in your Gmail contact list, your existing mailing lists are inaccessible.
It would be nice if home and small business WiFi could supplement the traditional role of ham radio in disasters. Does a safe disaster protocol exist that can be deployed in routers worldwide for emergency public use of nodes while keeping the owner safe from cyberattack? Routers might be equipped with physical switches that place them into Public Communications mode when needed, perhaps with entry of a PIN for security.
Now consider that many disasters will involve loss of at least local power. Is there an accompanying safe way of allowing public use of tethered cellphones as WiFi nodes? One charged tethered phone could relay communications for a field infirmary for hours even in a 'dark' city.
Because heat pumps are just as expensive a way to heat as a way to cool, they are used only in places where the annual number of heating days is small compared to the number of cooling days.
No, the Intertropical Convergence Zone is the stormy sky directly above the equator, a row of thunderheads running around the world that can rise so high that they once batted an Airbus 330 out of the sky at full cruising altitude (Rio-Paris). The desert zones center on about the 30th parallels. Even at sea, sailing ships would tend to get becalmed in these latitudes and without wind or drinking water would have to throw their horses overboard to survive. Hence the name 'horse latitudes'.
I used to commute through Siberia. The dry, mountainous part is the eastern third. The rest of it looks like Minnesota, or rather what Minnesota would look like if there were no people: green meadow, stands of pine and birch, lots of small round lakes.
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No reason people who create/operate this kind of stuff should not be hunted down and summarily executed.
The FBI operates in all countries outside of ISIS territory now, and can be invoked to do your bidding so long as you can show that the ransomware violated someone's copyright.
There's another Unix-based operating system out there, you know.
Slapdash procedure like this is a hallmark of socialized healthcare systems. Such systems are good at delivering basic care to the masses at low cost. You just have to forgiving about such things as queuing up for heart surgery and having your hospital bed be out in the hallway because of overcrowding. Complainers will be reminded of Grandma's stories about the Blitz, and how much conditions have improved since then.
There's nothing 'free' about this market.
For an example of a free market that has the same large research component and the same indirect marketing (as in "Intel Inside") as medicine, I give you electronics. This is what US medicine could look like if it were a free market.
" Because in the Army we were issued an autoinjector in case of exposure to some kind of gas (I don't remember which one) which you were supposed to inject into the muscle in your butt cheek."
This exact Army device is the autoinjector used in Epi-Pen. The patent was wrongly issued because of this government-developed prior art, but Merck and later Mylan have been making billions off this error ever since.
No, the FDA's power to keep products off the market is the problem. The health insurance industry only has the power it enjoys now because it's the patient's only bulk bargaining agent in the current monopoly environment. Except for major medical like heart problems and cancer, the industry isn't even functioning as true insurance - it's just a prepayment system with bargaining power.
The real price of any medical procedure, device or compound is the contract price the insurance company pays for it. Unless you're on Medicare and get a regular EOB statement of payments, patients never even know what this contract price is. As an example, my wife's kidney dialysis sessions are billed out at $3,925 each, for a total of about $600,000 per year. The insurance company's "real price" is $290 per session.
If we had a competitive market in medicine the importance of insurance companies would diminish. Health insurance would go back to being the "major medical" it once was, indemnifying us against hospital stays and catastrophic diseases. The governments and charities which pay for medical services now would save correspondingly, which alone is why competition will be forced on the industry as prices become intolerable.
The pharma argument that high US prices subsidize lower prices in other countries is bullshit. Drugs are sold at a profit in every market, except for charitable giveaways in Third World epidemic emergencies. Each market is assessed for what price it will bear.
The other often-repeated myth is that Canada imposes price controls. It doesn't. Its single-payer organization bids for the medications it wants, attracting low prices because it buys a nationwide supply of each device and compound at once, handling its own distribution. Those products it deems to be too expensive are just skipped.
Did you know that the excuse the FDA gave for pulling Primatene Mist off the market was because the propellant was the type that damages the famed ozone layer? Nothing to do with the epinephrine in it.
http://asthmaallergieschildren...
"What prevents an American from buying EpiPens (or any pharmaceutical) on the international market [webmd.com]?"
It's illegal, but do it anyway. Break the system by massive noncompliance. That was how we got out of Vietnam.
"So Republicans are fighting for price controls and the Democrats are letting the market set the price?"
No, mainstream Never-Trump Republicans are paid for by pharma, and are in favor of doing nothing. Democrats will use price controls and rationing to 'solve' the problem. In Venezuela, these techniques have been great at eliminating patients.
"Can you imagine if this crap happened with something far more common like insulin injections? "
Actually this same sudden price jump is taking place for insulin, which has been generic for over fifty years. Like Daraprim, insulin is made and sold cheap all over the world - except in the US.
"Point is, while I usually consider libertarians to be deserving of the label libertard..."
Hi, I'm a libertard. The vital business of the FDA is getting compounds and products tested. Let that be its only business. Everything submitted to the agency would get a label, indicating whether or not the product was approved. The label would contain a QR code pointing to online detail about what the testing revealed about the product. My version of the FDA would have no other powers. Doctors, patients and insurance companies would be able to make up their own minds on whether to take FDA recommendations as a gold standard or whether to accept, say, the approval of European or Asian testing organizations as being equally authoritative.
In the Epi-Pen case, Sanofi and Teva submitted their own epinephrine autoinjectors. Sanofi's product has a problem with dosage control, and was recalled. The FDA rejected Teva's product for reasons that have never been made clear. Under my system, GDA would have to explain exactly what it didn't like about the Teva product, while at the same time allowing users to make up their own minds about the importance of the FDA's objections when weighed against how much they need the product and the price of alternatives..
"Current IP law has little to do with logic"
This is not the same problem as the high price of newly branded medications. This is a product that has been on the market for more than a generation, price steadily sliding down the learning curve as competing products came onto the market. Then, suddenly, there are no more competing products because Mylan, by influencing the FDA, is using governmental power to force out its competitors.
It has been pointed out that Mylan's CEO is a donor to the Clinton Foundation, but ultimately we can't blame Mylan for taking advantage of the legal power the government has handed it any more than we can blame a hungry whitetip shark from eating people. The real blame should fall on the FDA and its locking out of the competition, and only when we strip it of that power will there be any hope of bringing prices back to earth.
As the medical monopoly prices itself out of the market, capitalism busts through with the same irresistible force it does whenever this happens.
They call it the black market, and we call it the real market.
One early application could be emergency desalination for boaters lost at sea.
"Windows 3.1 was a major step forward..."
A lot of other Windows 10 users also came to this conclusion, but ran up against the very limited device driver support in 3.1 . Most of them are now back on Windows 7.
It's goddamn brain-dead Bloomburg paywalling. As soon as you see the text in your browser, hit Escape. You can then read the article without disabling your adblocker.
California has given up on bringing new power generation online, so it turns to the popular Seventies idea of paying people to conserve more. Conservation is fine is a short-term solution to shortage - of anything - but in the long run there is no substitute for generating more power by the cleanest feasible means. If CA continues to be short of water it will have to start desalinating, and just by itself that will require new capacity. Arizona can't supply all of California's power needs.
Here is one Gmail bug that has been around for literally years: you're used to running Gmail on a computer, and have set up mailing lists. If you are on the road with a mobile device and find that you have to use the Gmail app to communicate, you will find that although you can message with any person in your Gmail contact list, your existing mailing lists are inaccessible.
It would be nice if home and small business WiFi could supplement the traditional role of ham radio in disasters. Does a safe disaster protocol exist that can be deployed in routers worldwide for emergency public use of nodes while keeping the owner safe from cyberattack? Routers might be equipped with physical switches that place them into Public Communications mode when needed, perhaps with entry of a PIN for security.
Now consider that many disasters will involve loss of at least local power. Is there an accompanying safe way of allowing public use of tethered cellphones as WiFi nodes? One charged tethered phone could relay communications for a field infirmary for hours even in a 'dark' city.
Because heat pumps are just as expensive a way to heat as a way to cool, they are used only in places where the annual number of heating days is small compared to the number of cooling days.
No, the Intertropical Convergence Zone is the stormy sky directly above the equator, a row of thunderheads running around the world that can rise so high that they once batted an Airbus 330 out of the sky at full cruising altitude (Rio-Paris). The desert zones center on about the 30th parallels. Even at sea, sailing ships would tend to get becalmed in these latitudes and without wind or drinking water would have to throw their horses overboard to survive. Hence the name 'horse latitudes'.
I used to commute through Siberia. The dry, mountainous part is the eastern third. The rest of it looks like Minnesota, or rather what Minnesota would look like if there were no people: green meadow, stands of pine and birch, lots of small round lakes.
"But at least this new automated-lawsuit system will keep a lot of lawyers employed."
Me, I would rathe see lawyers unemployed. We could use them as compost or for ginning cotton ("...Premium organic hand-ginned cotton...".
In Silicon Valley, employees feel the hot breath of age discrimination when they hit thirty.