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The Public Shouldn’t Pay for Drugs Twice

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31–40 of 47 posts

Re: The Public Shouldn’t Pay for Drugs Twice

#31
post #30
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Didn't work for whom? Everyone from voting public in liberal democracies (Sweden, Canada, Germany), to the voting public in less liberal democracies (India), the Islamic world (Egypt), to communist regimes (China, Vietnam).

What do you mean didn't work for the voting public in Sweden?

The voting public didn’t like the slow economic growth and high taxes, which is why they voted for parties who promised to reform the system.

Re: The Public Shouldn’t Pay for Drugs Twice

#32
post #31
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean didn't work for the voting public in Sweden?

The voting public didn’t like the slow economic growth and high taxes, which is why they voted for parties who promised to reform the system.

So "heavy investment in state-owned industries just doesn't work" is actually just you drawing far-reaching conclusions over shifting economic policies and/or voting patterns. That line of reasoning doesn't even pass the most basic correlation is not causation test.

Re: The Public Shouldn’t Pay for Drugs Twice

#33

Well I've tried to set up a basic lab in an academic environment twice now. It took months every time and took ages to get tiny amounts of money, at big (European) universities. One out of the two times I did get money ... from a pharma company (and attention from several of their senior employees, which was even more useful than the money). So please, can the public ... well ... pay for drugs once?

> pay for drugs once

If only! Healthcare is somehow not a good or service one should pay for as a normal transaction.

Re: The Public Shouldn’t Pay for Drugs Twice

#34
post #27
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden's state-owned enterprises were sold purely because of politics. No one reversed course. It's just the right wing got majority and sold what they could when they had the chance including a large amount of public housing, schools and healthcare facilities.

No, it wasn’t some accident of Swedish politics. The same thing happened all over the world at the same time. It happened in India, it happened in China. It happened in Germany. The movement toward state owned enterprises in the 1960s and 1970s was reversed in myriad countries with myriad political systems because it didn’t work.

I didn't say anything about the rest of the world. You made a statement about Sweden, even highlighting that it was "every single country" which, unless you want to qualify that statement, simply wasn't accurate. State-owned enterprises in Sweden weren't sold off because they didn't provide service or even didn't make profits but because of shifting politics in Sweden and the EU. Politicians who never wanted state-owned enterprises came into power and the EU made many ventures outright illegal as unlawful state aid. The same politicians who privatized everything else and ended conscription so Sweden had no choice but to join Nato. You can of course argue that "it didn't work because it wasn't wanted" but then the same thing goes for anything else that was changed like government owned nuclear power plants. Which these days of course also requires approval from the EU.

Re: The Public Shouldn’t Pay for Drugs Twice

#35
post #32
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The voting public didn’t like the slow economic growth and high taxes, which is why they voted for parties who promised to reform the system.

So "heavy investment in state-owned industries just doesn't work" is actually just you drawing far-reaching conclusions over shifting economic policies and/or voting patterns. That line of reasoning doesn't even pass the most basic correlation is not causation test.

When many different societies with different political systems all try something around the same time, and all retreat from that approach a few decades later, that’s really significant real-world data. The country I’m from has socialism written into its constitution, but now is strongly neoliberal. Maybe that’s just correlation, but otherwise it has little in common with Sweden, reducing the possibility that some common third factor is in play.

Re: The Public Shouldn’t Pay for Drugs Twice

#36
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It surely is. The federal government ran a $880 billion deficit in 2018. You do realise the government is supposed to run a deficit, right? That's quite literally where money comes from. You can make the case that it's too big ... and it is, but it should run a deficit.

That’s not how it works at all.

Care to expand on that?

Re: The Public Shouldn’t Pay for Drugs Twice

#37
post #36
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not how it works at all.

Care to expand on that?

The M0 money supply increased from $350 billion to $900 billion from 1990 to 2008. During that time the federal debt increased from $3 trillion to $9 trillion. So the debt (due to the structural budget deficit) increased vastly faster than the portion of the money supply attributable to printing currency.

Moreover, most money is not created by the government printing money, it's created by federal reserve purchases of debt or bank lending. Neither of those are reflected in the deficit. The prior poster is thus incorrect to say that the government "needs" to run a budget deficit "because that's where money comes form."

Re: The Public Shouldn’t Pay for Drugs Twice

#38
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It surely is. The federal government ran a $880 billion deficit in 2018. You do realise the government is supposed to run a deficit, right? That's quite literally where money comes from. You can make the case that it's too big ... and it is, but it should run a deficit.

That’s not how it works at all.

Given inflation and GDP growth you would want some deficit spending in order to keep a constant debt to GDP ratio.

Re: The Public Shouldn’t Pay for Drugs Twice

#39
post #34
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it wasn’t some accident of Swedish politics. The same thing happened all over the world at the same time. It happened in India, it happened in China. It happened in Germany. The movement toward state owned enterprises in the 1960s and 1970s was reversed in myriad countries with myriad political systems because it didn’t work.

I didn't say anything about the rest of the world. You made a statement about Sweden, even highlighting that it was "every single country" which, unless you want to qualify that statement, simply wasn't accurate. State-owned enterprises in Sweden weren't sold off because they didn't provide service or even didn't make profits but because of shifting politics in Sweden and the EU. Politicians who never wanted state-ow…

> Politicians who never wanted state-owned enterprises came into power

And pray tell, how did that happen? How do people come into power in Sweden? I thought that it has a system where people propose what they will do, and the population votes on whose ideas and proposals they like the most, doesn't it?

Re: The Public Shouldn’t Pay for Drugs Twice

#40
post #34
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it wasn’t some accident of Swedish politics. The same thing happened all over the world at the same time. It happened in India, it happened in China. It happened in Germany. The movement toward state owned enterprises in the 1960s and 1970s was reversed in myriad countries with myriad political systems because it didn’t work.

I didn't say anything about the rest of the world. You made a statement about Sweden, even highlighting that it was "every single country" which, unless you want to qualify that statement, simply wasn't accurate. State-owned enterprises in Sweden weren't sold off because they didn't provide service or even didn't make profits but because of shifting politics in Sweden and the EU. Politicians who never wanted state-ow…

What happened in other countries is relevant because it shows that it wasn’t just something you can explain away as specific to Swedish politics and who got elected when.
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