See, now the beauty of the program is that no matter how many people die from cancer, AIDS, influenza, or whatever, there's always gonna be more people out there who get sick and perpetuate the cycle. Better still, people who've already been treated for terminal illnesses usually end up broke by the time they die or would get cured, so the infusion of new sick people with money is more desirable than keeping bankrupt, really sick people alive.

Regardless of who foots the individual bills for treatment, the government just keeps paying and paying for all the research, whether a cure is found or not, so long as the researchers keep publishing new data.

See how perfect this conspiracy logic stuff works! Go on, toss me another one, I'm on a roll...

The problem with it being a conspiracy is size. You'd have to keep literally hundreds of thousands of people quiet. Couldn't happen, someone would blow the whistle. Too many people who actually believe their Hippocratic oath would be involved.

Your "logic" completely ignores that.

So you want to go back to 1900? When most people died before age 40 when you factor in the child mortality rates? When those who died of old age did so in thier early 50s unless they were rich? When women died not from old age but in childbirth? When every cut was a potential death sentence from tetanus? When smallpox, TB, plague, cholera and typhoid were alive and well in the United States of America?

Let's face it, the system isn't perfect and it has a ton of room for improvement. Like paying the guys at the top something "reasonable", say a half million dollars a year rather than ten million dollars a year (factor in the perks). Like capping malpractice settlements (NOT malfeance- if you don't know the difference, look it up).

But if you take government funding out of it, please tell me where the money would come from. Don't point a finger at a group, put your damn finger on a number. The non-profits have open books, show me where the money would come from. It's one thing to run your mouth, it's another to actually find a solution. If you could find a couple extra billion dollars a year that don't have, they'd fund more research- they already put a hell of a lot of money into R&D. But those couple of extra billion dollars don't exist.

You'd also be taking out the regulation of pharmaceuticals. Yeah, the FDA has dropped the ball a number of times. But they also do things like keep rat poison out of aspirin- before there was government funded regulation of pharmaceuticals, you could sell people kerosene cut with enough cheap booze, perfume and sugar to cover the smell, and it was legal. And it happened, and people died. There was no licensing of doctors, no accountability. ANYONE could hang up a sign that said they were a doctor, and if they could blind enough people with brilliance and baffle the rest with BS, they were fine. And there was no guarantee that there wasn't arsenic in your aspirin, any more than there was a guarantee that there wasn't finger in your sausage. Do you really want to go back to when the difference between russian roulette and your medicine cabinet was mess it made if you were wrong?

And if anyone thinks I sound like I'm taking this personally, no crap. I was born twelve to thirteen weeks premature- 30 years later, while your odds are surviving your first year still suck, I helped test some of the techniques that mean you have a chance. My little brother was born deaf, and he was given hearing by what was a new procedure 26 years ago. I have a strong history of cancer in my family, it contributed to the deaths both of my maternal grandparents, and my mother is a cancer survivors. If you want to spit and whine like a pig ignorant peasant about doctors and medical research, you are whining about me being alive and my brother not being a cripple- and you are spitting on my mother. You are spitting on every cancer survivor you know. Every person you know with diabetes. Every person you know who wasn't killed or maimed by TB, typhoid, cholera, or polio. Every person you know who has ever had an infection that should have killed them beaten by an antibiotic. Every person you know who's had an organ transplant. And every person with a prosthetic limb that is more than a peg leg or hook. ALL of this medical technology was paid for, in no small part, by government funding. ALL OF IT!

Go ahead, spit in their faces. Just be careful you don't spit on yourself or your children.

More & more places are doing exactly that. Tobacco at least used to be one of the cash crops in this area. The state just passed or is passing a ban on smoking in most public places and IIRC by a margin where the govenor couldn't stop it if he tries. The only exemptions are bars, private clubs, and workplaces with less than three employees.

IRONRAVEN, no, you shouldn;t take it personal. The point I was trying to make has nothing to do with your history or anyone elses. The point is that our Government should not fund what the people will do on their own. It's an opinion, nothing more.

My father died of cancer. A number of people in America have died of HIV. Cholera and smallpox were once a plague here. The list goes on, but I could not (with any degree of honesty) blame the Government for not funding cancer and other research "enough". In fact, the research that found "cures" for most of yesterday's maladies were not funded directly by any government, domestic or foreign.

Some things make us feel good. One of those things is thinking that someone is working on a problem that we feel strongly about. The fact is, most research goes on quietly in the background without advertisement. Our Government knows this. But, they support legislation that is PAC-driven because, if they don;t, they appear callous and un-caring.

So, please don;t take it personal. It's an opinion of mine about taxes and Government spending.

I don't agree with Stretch's general statement either, but I think your post (and not just the quote above) steps over the line of civillity and the forum rules. "Pig ignorant peasant"? "You are spitting on my mother"? Posts like this just lead to flame wars, bad feelings, or just make ETS look bad in general. Obviously, this particular topic seems rather personal to you, but that is no excuse for your choice of words and the manner in which you expressed your feelings towards another member.

Well, dang it, there's always something that just don't jibe about them there conspiracy theories, isn't there? If it weren't for the fact that so many would have to be in on it, then it would've been almost scary. Of course, I hope you could tell I was being a bit sarcastic, just to add a little humor to the mix. I'm not really that out of touch to think that something that big could be hid for long.

However, I do believe more in free enterprise. I think it is this aspect of our economy that has put us at the top of the medical development for the past hundred years or so, despite what some socialists might have us otherwise believe. Government, any government, has no business collecting and administering funds that would be used to promote and develop medicines and procedures for treating the sick, save for pandemic sized events, in which case funding would be used to augment already existing private sector programs. Yes, there will always be a need for some level of scrutiny, and I suppose it will have to be a government agency that will have to do that sort of thing, one of those necessary evils we must still live with.

As far as the rest goes, you're preaching to the choir with me. I'd much prefer to live a nice long, healthy life.

Now, what other conspiracy pot can I stir...

Hi benjammin,

Undoubtedly, the US has some of the finest medical care to be had in the world. It also has some of the highest costs as a proportion of the countries GDP and yet there is a substantial minority of the population who have no access to this medical care at all.

In the UK we have the National Health System (NHS), which was established by a PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. government after WW2 in 1945. It is a government run health service with mainly free access to everyone in the UK. The medical services are rationed on a medical basis, that is medical needs of the individual come first in the queue rather than on the sum assured on the medical insurance contract. UK subjects pay for their medical care through general taxation. Any attempts by UK governments to introduce any free markets in to the UK health service NHS generally mean that they are not elected the next time around. It is electoral suicide to attempt to privative the NHS in the UK. Medical research is paid for through government grants through the Medical Research Council and charitable organizations such as the Welcome Trust as well as the research being carried out by the UK based pharmaceutical Companies.

The UK has some of the largest and most innovative medical pharmaceutical companies in the world with GlaxoSmithKline being the largest in the world. These companies have profited substantially because of the NHS.

As for Susan's comments, I don't think that she was putting forward any conspiracy at all. I fully understand the reasoning. Here in the Scotland, we have a reputation for some of the finest medical teaching and biomedical research in the world and yet the country has some of the worst medical problems in the population in the Western World including high rates of cancer and vascular disease. The issue is not to do with medically curing these diseases, it is to take another approach, to ensure that a naturopathic approach is taken. Try to reduce the incidence of disease rather than find a cure for difficult to treat diseases. That is one of exercise, clean air, good nutritious wholesome food and clean water and to dissipate the social stresses rather than trying to mask them with pills and potions, which everyone seems willing to pay a fortune for to wealthy pharmaceutical companies.

If there was a general cure for cancer it would most likely have been discovered over here in Scotland anyway. I've not heard anything about a general cure for cancer in the pubs in Dundee so far.

Sorry, it was quite a long post and I wanted to spare everyone the length. While the UK's system has pros and cons, one of the big things that most Americans probably wouldn't stand for is the "greater good" concept. I've heard that after a certain age, if you get sick in the UK, you're pretty much SOL. Have lung cancer? You're sent home. Diabetes? I'm not sure about that one. But the UK's system won't "waste" money on a person that's reached a certain age, with certain diseases. Also, you failed entirely to mention that people carry supplemental insurance. I'm not sure how that works, but it seems that it allows you more than just the basic service; feel free to correct me.

That's a big part (not the only part) of where the US is different. The elderly in the US make up something like 25% of the health care costs, and 8% of the patient population. Yeah, it's disproportionate, but they tend to have long, chronic diseases. Medicine can't cure lots of them, but it can give a fairly decent quality of life for many.

Another problem in the US is that Americans demand everything "the best" in care. "Fix Grandma! Do CPR!! It works on Baywatch! If you can't bring her back we'll sue!" So drug companies research big-name diseases as well as make equipment and tests. But the problem is, lots of people and insurance companies don't pay what they're charged, which leads me to.....

What other profession in the world gives out a service, but can do little if it isn't paid?

Can you imagine picking up your dog from the vet, or your car from the shop, and saying "I'll just pay $10, cuz that's all I can afford." YEAH RIGHT!!! Your car will be sold to pay your bills, and you won't get any of the money left over. Not so with medicine.

That's a BIG reason why prices are so high in the US. You charge Mr. Smith $100 for an aspirin, because Mrs. Jones, Mr. Cleaver, and Miss Harriet all skipped out on their bills (for everything, not just their aspirin dose). Medicaid and Medicare don't pay anywhere near what the office charge is. That's why so many hospitals have closed down, and why many hospitals are operating only with state and federal funding. The system as it is in the US needs change. Some physicians are starting to become "cash only" services, like they were before the mid-1900s brought about insurance companies.

I'll get off my soapbox. Who's next in line?

Keep in mind that DoD spends almost as much on medical R&D as Health and Human Services. Most of how we treat lung issues was derived from either TB or mustard gas inhalation treatments.

I love the "save for pandemic" bit- Ben, you've got enough of a technical background to know how long things take to develop. Yes, more money makes it go faster, but if you've got a pandemic, it isn't a lab work any more. Or am I missing your point?

Personally, I don't think I'm kosher with using tax payer funds for specifically like things like ED meds. But if it is something like MS, MD, or cancer research and there is surprise that is produced as a result, that's science. Most of what we know we learned while we were looking for something else. Plastic surgery was perfected to conceal horrific scaring from combat injuries- if that means some dowager can now get her ears pulled back until they are bow, that's just the way the ball bounces.

If you want a conspiracy, here's my personal think on JFK- Jackie whacked him. Point blank, with a pocket pistol, for all the cheating. The Governor and his wife didn't talk, probably too scared to.