Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

[Trausti]

 

[angelo]

Have any idea what it costs to create, test, then get a new drug into the market? The producer of any new drug needs to have a certain period of time with a monopoly on the new drug just to recuperate the development costs of the said new drug.

Source is Wiki..................................Developing a new prescription medicine that gains marketing approval is estimated to cost drugmakers $2.6 billion according to a recent study by Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development and published in the Journal of Health Economics.

Is the system that makes it so expensive to get life-saving medication to patients something we should preserve and try to accommodate with our policies, or overthrow and replace with something that works better?

Yea, perhaps give the patient homeopathic or herbalist potions instead! Apart from that, what on earth could possibly work better?

 

[angelo]

Seems she chooses her news sources, and bans those who may be critical.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

So she bans trolls. Good for her.

 

[ZiprHead]

I have a feeling she could beat Angelo with half her brain neurons tied behind her back.

 

[bilby]

Healthcare is different, though. You have a captive audience, or at least, you have consumers who must have medication to live. For example, I have to take my blood pressure medicine. The next thing you might consider is that there is competition which should drive down prices. But that isn't really what is at the heart of capitalism. What is at the heart is winning and monopolies and market barriers and price fixing and patenting and IP in order to block competition because that guarantees profit. Only through regulation is that nature of capitalism somewhat mitigated, and I say somewhat, because regulation thus far hasn't stopped market barriers. Much of Big Pharma, too, hasn't produced new drugs recently and so they acquire smaller companies which is another way of crushing competition. Maybe take a look at this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli

Competition does drive down drug prices--just look at the price of common generics. In fact, the price is driven too low in many cases (there isn't enough profit for the drug companies to care about ensuring supply, thus production glitches translate to patients not being able to get the medicine they need.)

The abuses we keep hearing about are uncommon drugs where there was so little profit that only one company was making them.

Also, the pattern we see these days with buying up smaller companies rather than researching is not a means of crushing competition. Rather, this is taking advantage of the stupidity of many investors. A company is formed to try to take a drug from a prospect to something on the market. These small companies exist only for this purpose, they do not have the ability to actually be viable in the marketplace. If the drug fails they're wiped out (all investors getting basically zero), if the drug succeeds they're bought out by one of the big players that can actually produce it, the investors get a big payoff. It's like playing the lottery, the big payoffs aren't enough to compensate for the flops but if investors will keep buying the big guys have no reason not to continue this model.

You realize you are making the tacit argument that an unregulated market does not work for pharmaceuticals: competition is harmful to patients because it drives prices "too low", and that market participants are too stupid to understand that size matters.

This is true. For any product where the end user doesn't have the ability to not obtain the item in question, but where the market incapable of supporting a number of competing suppliers, the only sensible way to provide that product is through government. Natural monopoly plus 'free' markets equal shortages - either because to little is made, or because the people who need it cannot afford it, or most often, both.

The idea that only one economic model is 'correct', and that we should apply it to all products, goods, commodities and services, is fucking stupid. You should no more have a 'free market' for pharmaceuticals, healthcare, road construction, or utility supply, than you should have a command economy to determine the availability and distribution of luxury goods, or mass-market high-competition essentials, like food. Both lead to undesirable outcomes. There's no one-size-fits-all economic model, and a mixed model is therefore the only sane way to go.

 

[lpetrich]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Before my primary, three women & I agreed to film our journey of trying to run for office without big money. Now, #KnockDownTheHouse hits Netflix & select theaters next week, May 1st. To find or host a local community screening, follow: @knockdownmovie https://t.co/THpgkzzqdc"
A movie about her and three other ordinary women running for office last year.

Bronx Republican eyes run against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ocasio-Cortez targeted by mystery multimillionaire donor

 

[Bomb#20]

You realize you are making the tacit argument that an unregulated market does not work for pharmaceuticals: competition is harmful to patients because it drives prices "too low", and that market participants are too stupid to understand that size matters.

This is true. For any product where the end user doesn't have the ability to not obtain the item in question, but where the market incapable of supporting a number of competing suppliers, the only sensible way to provide that product is through government. Natural monopoly plus 'free' markets equal shortages - either because to little is made, or because the people who need it cannot afford it, or most often, both.

Pharmaceuticals are a natural monopoly?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

 

[lpetrich]

 Joe Crowley was AOC's predecessor.

Joseph Crowley (born March 16, 1962) is an American politician and lobbyist who served as U.S. Representative from New York's 14th congressional district from 1999 to 2019. In 2018 he was defeated by Democratic primary challenger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in what was viewed as one of the largest upsets of the midterm elections.[1]

During his tenure, Crowley served as Chair of the House Democratic Caucus from 2017 to 2019, as well as the local chairman of the Queens County Democratic Party from 2006 to 2019. He previously served in the New York State Assembly from 1987 to 1998.[2][3] After leaving Congress, he joined the Washington, D.C., lobbying and law firm Squire Patton Boggs.[4]

 Squire Patton Boggs

Squire Patton Boggs is currently the third-largest lobbying firm in the U.S. after Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.[8] The lobbying arm, long managed by Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., is managed by former United States Senators John Breaux and Trent Lott.[9]

From September 2011, The King who hates Queens - JuniperCivic.com

Joe Crowley hates Queens. The Congressman, whose gerrymandered district includes parts of the Bronx and Queens has such distain for his home borough that despite wearing the hat of chairman of the Queens Democratic Party he has abandoned us for greener pastures, namely the affluent Washington suburb of Arlington, Va.

According to the New York Post, in 2004 Crowley bought the Virginia house, registered his car and enrolled his three children in the community's nationally renowned public schools ‒ foregoing New York City's educational system. Up until the July 8, 2011 article exposing this, Crowley claimed to live in his mother's house in Woodside even though neighbors never saw him.

From April 11 of last year, Joseph Crowley, 56 Years Young and Ready to Succeed the Old Guard

Current leadership at least two decades older than New York Democrat

When the inevitable generational change starts in the top ranks of the House Democrats, Joseph Crowley is planning to be first in line.

The rest of the article discussed this Democratic Party apparatchik's likely career future.

But it had no hint of what was to come a few months later.

Two and a half months later, on June 28, So Many Facets in the Downfall of a Single Democrat, calling AOC's win a "Rorschach test".

Former Rep. Joe Crowley Moves on to D.C.-Based Lobbying Firm, Resigns as Queens Democratic Party Chair | Sunnyside Post about where he went.

 

[bilby]

You realize you are making the tacit argument that an unregulated market does not work for pharmaceuticals: competition is harmful to patients because it drives prices "too low", and that market participants are too stupid to understand that size matters.

This is true. For any product where the end user doesn't have the ability to not obtain the item in question, but where the market incapable of supporting a number of competing suppliers, the only sensible way to provide that product is through government. Natural monopoly plus 'free' markets equal shortages - either because to little is made, or because the people who need it cannot afford it, or most often, both.

Pharmaceuticals are a natural monopoly?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Some are, yes. Where aggregate demand is sufficiently low, the market cannot support more than one manufacturer. And some diseases are quite rare.

 

[lpetrich]

How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Broke All the Rules of New York Politics - POLITICO Magazine - "She became a star without paying her dues to the city’s entrenched establishment. Now, longtime political insiders are starting to grumble."

She bypassed the NYC political establishment, where one advances by patiently working one's way up in it. Her predecessor, Joe Crowley, expected to move into the top leadership of the Democratic Party as openings appeared in it.

 

[Bomb#20]

Pharmaceuticals are a natural monopoly?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Some are, yes. Where aggregate demand is sufficiently low, the market cannot support more than one manufacturer. And some diseases are quite rare.

That doesn't make a lot of sense. If the disease is that rare and the patients' ability to pay is that low, how was it profitable for a supposed natural monopolist to develop the drug in the first place? "Natural monopolies arise where the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, has an overwhelming cost advantage over other actual or potential competitors". Well, what is that advantage? How can low aggregate demand give the first supplier an overwhelming cost advantage? Manufacturing costs are typically a negligible fraction of monopoly drug prices.

Like Don said, maybe take a look at this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli. He became the most hated man in America when he used his monopoly power to jack a drug price from $13 to $750. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrimethamine, "In 2016, a group of high school students from Sydney Grammar supported by Matthew H. Todd from the University of Sydney prepared pyrimethamine as an illustration that the synthesis is comparatively easy and the price-hike unjustifiable. His team produced 3.7 g for US$20, which would have been worth between US$35,000 and US$110,000 in the United States at the time." That works out to no more than 40 cents a pill. There are a number of actual pharma companies competing to provide it at lower prices than that. Just not in the U.S. Shkreli was gaming the regulatory system, not the market.

You may of course be right that there are some drugs out there just hard enough to make, and needed by just the right number of people, that the market would support one company but not two. But the conditions would have to be just right, which means they're probably so atypical that you can't actually name such a drug. Drugs are generally too easy to make and other natural barriers to entry are just too low to constitute a serious obstacle.

 

[bilby]

Pharmaceuticals are a natural monopoly?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Some are, yes. Where aggregate demand is sufficiently low, the market cannot support more than one manufacturer. And some diseases are quite rare.

That doesn't make a lot of sense. If the disease is that rare and the patients' ability to pay is that low, how was it profitable for a supposed natural monopolist to develop the drug in the first place? "Natural monopolies arise where the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, has an overwhelming cost advantage over other actual or potential competitors". Well, what is that advantage? How can low aggregate demand give the first supplier an overwhelming cost advantage? Manufacturing costs are typically a negligible fraction of monopoly drug prices.

Like Don said, maybe take a look at this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli. He became the most hated man in America when he used his monopoly power to jack a drug price from $13 to $750. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrimethamine, "In 2016, a group of high school students from Sydney Grammar supported by Matthew H. Todd from the University of Sydney prepared pyrimethamine as an illustration that the synthesis is comparatively easy and the price-hike unjustifiable. His team produced 3.7 g for US$20, which would have been worth between US$35,000 and US$110,000 in the United States at the time." That works out to no more than 40 cents a pill. There are a number of actual pharma companies competing to provide it at lower prices than that. Just not in the U.S. Shkreli was gaming the regulatory system, not the market.

You may of course be right that there are some drugs out there just hard enough to make, and needed by just the right number of people, that the market would support one company but not two. But the conditions would have to be just right, which means they're probably so atypical that you can't actually name such a drug. Drugs are generally too easy to make and other natural barriers to entry are just too low to constitute a serious obstacle.

You can't just dismiss the regulatory influences on the pharmaceutical market and expect your resulting arguments to reflect the real world.

I can synthesise all kinds of pharmaceuticals in my garden shed; But I won't be allowed to sell them for human use - and nor should I be.

The market is, and should be, highly regulated; And those regulations lead to the unprofitably of low volume products for second and subsequent suppiers.

Natural barriers may well be no obstacle; But in the pharmaceutical industry, natural barriers are a trivial part of the barriers that actually exist.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Patients Eagerly Awaited a Generic Drug. Then They Saw the Price.

edited for title of article.

 

[ZiprHead]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/health/valeant-drug-price-syprine.html

Please don't post blind links.

 

[angelo]

I have a feeling she could beat Angelo with half her brain neurons tied behind her back.

You mean she actually does have brain neurons?

 

[angelo]

The Green New Deal is possibly the least sane assembly of proposals ever to emerge from the wacky child Democrat. Among many things, the GND calls for upgrading or replacing every single building in the US.

From the Empire State building to a Macca's in downtown Chicago. For " state of the art energy efficiency." In true to form, The New York Times described this and her other wacky GND ideas as " ambitious," a novel idea.

Every Democrat front runner for president quickly endorsed the GND, evidently before reading further details of the plan in a now deleted post at AOC's website. These plans included decommissioning all US nuclear plants, adding high-speed rail lines at a scale where air travel
stops becoming necessary, replacing every combustion engine vehicle and, of course, the nationwide destruction or retrofitting of more than 120 million buildings.

And someone here is saying this wacko has brain neurons!

 

[PyramidHead]

Every Democrat front runner for president quickly endorsed the GND, evidently before reading further details of the plan in a now deleted post at AOC's website. These plans included decommissioning all US nuclear plants, adding high-speed rail lines at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, replacing every combustion engine vehicle and, of course, the nationwide destruction or retrofitting of more than 120 million buildings.

Oh god oh fuck don't stop

 

[angelo]

Every Democrat front runner for president quickly endorsed the GND, evidently before reading further details of the plan in a now deleted post at AOC's website. These plans included decommissioning all US nuclear plants, adding high-speed rail lines at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, replacing every combustion engine vehicle and, of course, the nationwide destruction or retrofitting of more than 120 million buildings.

Oh god oh fuck don't stop

Methinks you lot deserve the fruitcake!

 

[lpetrich]

Conservative group spent $32K in a day against Ocasio-Cortez

A conservative group with the single aim of unseating Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spent $32,000 on Monday to convince New York City voters that she doesn’t represent their interests.

The Stop AOC PAC, started in March by Virginia lawyer Dan Backer, plans to file its expenditure report Wednesday.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez impersonator cracks up the internet

An 8-year-old’s impersonation of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is taking social media by storm.

“Like, I want to talk about, like, climate change. Because, like, there’s no doubt cow farts are making the climate change,” Ava Martinez says in a video posted to Twitter this week.

“Like, in July, the climate was 96 degrees and in February the climate was 36 degrees. OMG, like that’s a huge change in the climate in only” — she pauses to count her fingers — “four months!”

“At this rate, the world is going to end in exactly 12 years,” adds Ava, who sports red lipstick and AOC-style glasses.

Can't they do any better?

AOC says her election bid wasn't 'rational' in Netflix trailer

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez admitted she was not “rational” for challenging powerful incumbent Joe Crowley, according to a trailer released Monday for a Netflix documentary about her win.

“If I was a rational person I would have dropped out of this race a long time ago,” the then-candidate says in the clip. “He’s gonna tell me I’m small. That I’m young. That I’m inexperienced.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plans to visit Kentucky even after a Republican politician changed his mind about his inviting her to do so.