I'm Off to Run with Betty White

Er, make that Max and Tobie.  It’s about like running with an octogenarian.  Speedy Gonzalez, we ain’t!

Update on Sunday, August 9, 2009 at 12:28PM by Queen1

Tobie left us in the dust, and it took multiple bribes to get Max to finish the whole two miles.  The weather is pretty hot and muggy, but mind over matter only works if you don’t focus on how much you don’t want to be doing what you’re doing.

Nonetheless, mission accomplished (and then I did another 4.5 on my own), so now we’re off to find the bribe materials I promised (“Jumanji” and the Apollo 13 movie).

Anyone at the Top of Pharma Has Had a Lobotomy

Or never had a functional cortex to begin with. Almost assuredly, he never carried a bag or spent much time actually selling pharmaceuticals. Benjamin Zycher has posted this over at the Corner, and I thought it worth reproducing in its entirety:

How Stupid Can They Possibly Be? Part Two [Benjamin Zycher]

 Readers of the Corner will recall my earlier postabout the “negotiations” over how much the feds will be allowed to steal (at first) as part of the “reform” effort to bring health-care socialism to America, and the utter stupidity of those smart businessmen who tried to induce theWhite House and congressional alligators to devour someone else first. It was easy to see that this tactic wouldn’t work. Can a deal with the White House be imposedon the Waxman/Pelosi/Reid Axis?Would Obama veto a bill that failed to honor, say, the “negotiated” $80 billion limit on the “contribution” to be made by the pharmaceutical industry?Did those smart businessmen not ask themselves these obvious questions?

So obvious indeed are the questions that they answer themselves. From yesterday’s New York Times: “Democrats Say No to Cost Cap for Drug Makers.”Thundered the ineffable Pelosi (through a spokesman): “Ms. Pelosi supports House efforts ‘to squeeze more money out of … the pharmaceutical industry.’”Also spake Comrade Waxman: “I think that PhRMA [the drug makers’ industry group] should contribute more than PhRMA wants to contribute.”

“Contribute” is an interesting euphemism forwealth transfers coerced by the federal government. In any event, it is truly amazing that the pharmaceutical industry actually believed that the $80 billion ceiling it negotiated with the White House would not become a floor in a Congressthat has not patients but instead interest groups.That observation leads inexorably to the realization that price controls are the real issue to be negotiated, with current patients the winners and future patients the losers.(For my paper on the adverse effects of such price negotiations for pharmaceuticals, go here.)

One would think that those smart businessmen could have see all this coming, particularly after having spent decades or centuriescumulatively inside the Beltway.And one would be wrong.

— Benjamin Zycher is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.

Whenever I watch the high-up muckety-mucks at my company and elsewhere in Pharma, I don’t know whether to spit or go blind.  I find it depresseingly hilarious that the industry’s lobbyists possibly believe a word the government says.  For instance, those of us peons out in the field knew the Medicare Part D plan was a boondoggle that would seem like a boon to pharma, but turn out to be an insidious path to generic-only prescribing for seniors.  (Which is exactly what has been happening.)  How could pharma think it was a good deal?  Answer:  Because they are idiots who have never actually done the job of the people they employ.  Answer #2:  Because they are inbred products of the Beltway mentality who have lost their survival instinct.  Answer #3:  Because they’re just not that bright.  Now we are at “Medicare Part D: Redux.”

My Body of Death

I posted this below, but it was just lost in the ramblings of a margarita-addled mind (of course, there’s nothing wrong with tequila)…so I wanted to give it standing all by itself. This is an important discussion, and one which ties in with the whole government takeover of our bodies argument.

Are people really surprised by the idea that they’re going to die? That’s what I wondered while watching “Funny People.” George Simmons was reduced to tearful isolation by the news that he had probably terminal cancer. Is this news to most people? Do most people manage not to think about death for most of their lives, until it’s right there, calling “shotgun” for the passenger seat? I think about it all the time—always have, as far back as I can remember, at least. (Then again, maybe that’s why I was not a popular kid at school.) We are all inhabiting bodies of death, from the moment of our conception. I would rather put it off (or die trying), but every time I look in the mirror, I see death gazing back at me. (Maybe I’m just too skinny.) I shrug Death off with humor, mostly, with existential absurdity, but ultimately with a surrender to grace. If, when, I survive Death, I will do so through grace. We all will die. My parents will; I will; my kids will—and their kids—and so on. And we all will live, because God, but not just God—God and Man—vanquished the grave and tore the sting from the serpent. I am already dead, but thanks be to God—I am also already and forever alive in Christ. My fervent prayer every night is to share the Kingdom with my children. Sooner rather than later.

Malevolent Alchemy: We Need to Reframe the Healthcare Debate

This isn’t about the healthcare system and who can run it best.  This is a question of personal liberty:  Who is going to control your body?  We couldn’t be asking a more profound question than this, and we are going to lose this fight unless we get Americans to see that having the government “take care” of our health is an irreversible and fatal blow to our most inalienable rights—the right to life and self-determination. 

Obama has recognized this; of course, diminishing individual liberty for the sake of the community is his whole schtick.  Democrats in general are fine with decreasing the freedom of the individual in order to promote the common good; Obama is a true-believer.  Somewhere I read (was it in an article about his speech on single-payer care in Illinois?  I can’t remember; I’ll look for it) that he acknowledged (paraphrasing) that Americans are deeply committed to the value of individual liberty and that part of his agenda is to shift that commitment to “concern for the community.”  In other words, socialize the American psyche, in the political sense of the word. 

Right now, as we can see from the townhall protests, Americans are not persuaded that their individual good is served by a government dealing with a vague, statistical “community good.”  But I have heard few people, from average Americans to sophisticated conservative pundits, express the issue succinctly:  the question at hand is whether you are willing to relinquish your personal liberty.  I encourage you, whenever you talk to your neighbor or workmate, to phrase the debate in those terms.  Forget arguments about economics and efficiencies (even though those are compelling arguments against government involvement) and focus on the question of whether we want to relinquish the value of individual liberty.  Say that if medicine is “socialized,” it will be only because the federal government has succeeded in its nefarious alchemy—taking gold and transforming it into lead.

(And where are all those angry NOW folks declaiming against YOUR laws on THEIR bodies?  Just wondering.)

Update on Saturday, August 8, 2009 at 06:19PM by Queen1

And the fact that this is a battle to retain the unique fingerprint of the American mind is why the argument about insurance company obstacles to care is irrelevant. My insurance company cannot deny me care. It may deny payment for my care, but I am free to seek that care by any other means necessary, including public shaming of the insurer for refusing payment. I can take a second mortgage on my house; I can sell my assets; I can run up a credit card; I can find charity-payment. If the government becomes a single payer, the government can make it a criminal act for a physician or a hospital to provide care for me that the government has denied. Think I’m crazy? Read the House bill. In it, a physician loses his license for providing care not sanctioned by the government. When the government controls your body, you lose every scintilla of your individual freedom. Every molecule of your being will fall under the control of the faceless bureaucracy. Give me an insurance company every time.

One Last Thought: Meet Dana Loesch

I have no idea who he is, except he—like I—is part of the wascally-wabbit mob identified as so dangerous to democracy by Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.  He has fabulous pictures of our fellow mobsters (I love the baby labelled “Paid GOP hack”) posted on his blog, so go look!

And hat tip to David Kahane (whoever the hell HE is; he’s part of the mob, too, though), for the link from FaceBook!