The Watercooler for 10/30/09 1:00 AM

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK:

Burnett Pitches Game Of His Life; Teixeira, Matsui Homer In Yankees' 3-1 Win Over Phillies In Game 2 Of World Series

Is everybody happy?? 

Winners and Losers of House Bill

http://www.reuters.com/article/wtUSInvestingNews/idCNN2936154620091029

Geithner said the financial system was tragically fragile after experiencing the worst crisis since the 1930s, and the government must respond by adding new regulation as well as improving on current ones.

"It's a war of necessity, not a war of choice," he said at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association annual meeting in New York. "And it's a just war."

Geithner made the comments at the SIFMA event, where executives including JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon warned that overregulation could taint the financial sector's ability to aid economic growth. He said that Americans and Congress were behind the U.S.'s efforts, which will strike a balance between innovation and stability.

He also said that the financial industry is showing a strong interest in reform, overall.

"Of course, you will see people fight to preserve what will be in their short-term interests" but it's important that those efforts do not derail reform, he said.

Among reforms underway is a strategy that would make it easier for the government to seize control of institutions deemed "too big to fail" if they present risks to the financial system and the economy. The government would be able to oust managers, wipe out shareholders and restructure a firm's debt, an Obama administration official said on Monday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2727048720091027

from 5 pm thread.

Today, tomorrow, and beyond, we need to call these “managers” and insist that the Kucinich Amendment is restored into the healthcare bill. We also need to urge these leaders to exert pressure on Speaker Pelosi—and exert it on her ourselves—to follow through on her promise to put the Weiner Amendment to a vote.

The “gang” that holds our future in their hands includes:

• Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Washington, DC, office (202) 225-4965; San Francisco office (415) 556-4862
• Majority Leader Steny Hoyer: Washington, DC, office (202) 225-4131; Greenbelt office (301) 474-0119; Waldorf office (301) 843-1577
• Rep. Henry Waxman: Washington, DC, office (202) 225-3976; Los Angeles office (323) 651-1040
• Rep. Charles Rangel: Washington, DC, office (202) 225-4365; New York office (212) 663-3900
• Rep. George Miller: Washington, DC, office (202) 225-2095; Concord office (925) 602-1880; Richmond office (510) 262-6500; Vallejo office (707) 645-1888

It’s crucial for everyone in PDA to make these calls, to make them more than once, and to tell others to make these calls. Act NOW!

In solidarity,

Tim Carpenter, National Director

Jane continues:


But thanks to Representatives Anna Eshoo and Joe Barton, there will be no generic versions of these drugs. At least not for 12 years, if the House health care bill announced today passes. And because of an “evergreening” clause that grants drug companies a continued monopoly if they make slight changes to the drug (like creating a once-a-day dose where the original product was three times per day), they will never become generics. Instead of the Waxman-Deal amendment that granted much more reasonable terms to biologic patent holders, Speaker Pelosi chose the Eshoo-Barton amendment. And we could all be paying for that choice for the rest of our lives.

Breast cancer boards are filled with women who have been turned down by their insurance companies for Herceptin because they only cover generic drugs, or because they only pay a portion of the $48,000 a year (or more) that the drug costs.

.....

This is deeply, deeply wrong. It’s immoral for Congress to give endless monopolies to pharmaceutical companies on these cutting edge drugs in this bill. If an AIDS vaccine is found, it too will be a biologic.

These drug manufacturers argue that the cost of developing biologics is so expensive that they need the extra patent time to recoup their investment, or they won’t have any incentive to develop them. Hogwash. A study done by Drs. Joe DiMasi and Hank Grabowski, who are funded by PhRMA, concluded that the cost for developing biologics is $1.3 billion, as opposed to $1.2 billion for conventional drugs.

And as for incentive for development? As bleicher of Blue Mass Group notes, granting endless monopolies for slight changes encourages companies NOT to innovate:

(T)]hey will have far less reason or incentive to invest in patentable new cures, and will have every reason to invest in low risk, incremental development of existing products to reap (without taking risk) the same profitable rewards. In the short term, some of our local companies may like this protection of their products, but over the long term, as we fail to incent investment in new discovery research, our biotechnology edge will decline and the rest of the world will pass us by as they invent the next generation of products.

There is nothing good about this legislation, unless you’re Roche, Eli Lilly, Schering-Plough or any of the other giant pharmaceutical companies reaping huge profits off these blockbuster drugs of the future. About a quarter of new drugs, and half of important new drugs are biologics. This is nothing short of an attempt to sew up the future at the expense of you and your children.

So POP is joining to together with students like Laura Musselwhite and others in the AMSA for a Halloween “treat, not trick” demonstration this Friday at four locations around the country. I’ll be there with medical students in Washington DC at the Russell Senate office building as they arrive fully costumed in their white coats and give out “treats,” urging Senators not to “trick” the nation’s patients with a bad ‘biologic’ medicines proposal.

Please join us:

DATE: FRIDAY, OCT. 30

Washington, DC: Russell Senate Office Bldg, Constitution & Delaware at 3:00 pm

Baltimore, MD: Barbara Mikulski’s office, 1629 Thames St. at 2:30 pm

Raleigh, NC: Senator Kay Hagan’s office, 310 New Bern Ave @ 1:30 pm

Palo Alto, CA: Anna Eshoo’s office, 698 Emerson St, Palo Alto at 2:00 pm

These students are fighting for us, fighting for our future. Please join me in supporting them, and their commitment to being healers who want to give their patients the very best care that they can. They don’t want their hands tied by this bill. I have been helping them organize and they are just so wonderful.

Even if you’re not in close to one of the events, you can help out by joining the POP Facebook Group, Tweeting about the events and donating to POP.

And please call your member of Congress and tell them that this is a terrible bill that will sentence breast cancer survivors and others to financial ruin and death. For the sake of everyone in need of health care in the future, please tell them to vote “no” on this cruel piece of legislation crafted to maximize drug company profits at the cost of human lives.

I'm Jane, and I'm a breast cancer survivor

*************************

So if this is what's in store for  breast cancer patients, what's in store for the rest of the country? 

How could Howard say this is an OK bill...a doctor saying this is OK?  How do we get rid of Pelosi?

I'll be calling critters tomorrow.

Madfloridian's Journal

"Bright-Sided"...relentless "positive thinking" used as opiate by business leaders.

Thu Oct 29th 2009, 05:07 AM

Barbara Ehrenreich of "Nickled and Dimed" fame has a new book out called "Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America."

The St Pete Times Robyn Blumner had some interesting takes on the book this last week. Also earlier in October Ehrenreich wrote about it in the New York Times.

From the St. Pete Times' Robyn Blumner:

The impotence of positive thinking

There have been times in my life when I had to be positive and keep a cheerful outlook just to get through them. But I know what these two ladies mean when they apply it to the way it has used to keep workers satisfied when they should have been fighting against the grain. Blumner speaks about a book by pastor Joel Osteen.

The Democrats have squandered their mandate, and they (and unfortunately all of us) will pay the price.

Last chance for some real presidential leadership on health care

be able to find every flaw before I do, lol. I have been infected by a new virus, the St. John River bass paradise bug and wonder if it is covered.

Like many Americans I am going through the most difficult year economically for decades and so it is just a dream to retire at a place with a dock unless I hurry up and chuck the cows.

yesterday at the Sale Barn a big parade of trailers all from the same farm pulled in behind me and the guy doing the unloading shouted to the guy slapping the tags on their backs, "here comes another wave of the bank's cows" (and we all know bankers don't milk cows)