Capitalism is failing medical field -- Need to nationalize or make public medicine

The following is my comment in response to above video:

By Glen Wallace

It wouldn't have to be a public company. I often compare the idea of public manufacture and distribution of pharmaceuticals to the longstanding US Government Printing Office, AKA Government Publishing Office, that for many decades has manufactured and sold printed materials from pamphlets to books and sells those materials to the public. So we could potentially open a US Government Pharmaceuticals & Medical Devices Office that researches, develops, manufactures and distributes meds and medical devices at cost or no cost to patients according to need. But yes, regardless of what it is called, we need a public pharma that is patient need based instead of the current Big Pharma medical system that is market profit based. The current US medical system relies on the unsafe assumption that what is good for the corporation is also going to be good for the patient and the general public. We need only look at the price gouging with insulin to prove wrong that assumption of a symbiotic relationship between capitalism and good medicine. Insulin prices show there is often an antagonistic relationship between capitalism and good medicine. And yet most of the medical field mindset is in the monkey trap that traps the monkey by putting a sweet nut inside a cage, monkey puts its hand into a small hole to grab the nut but finds it can't get its hand out while its hand is clenched on the nut and is thus trapped by the cage tethered to the ground because it doesn't occur to the monkey to just let go of the nut. Similarly it doesn't occur to the vast majority of the members of the U.S. medical field and the politicians governing the field to just let go of the nut requiring meds and medical devices only be delivered by way of the capitalist market -- they remain fixated on the idea that they must have med products go through this Rube Goldberg device of capitalism first before the products can possibly get to the patients. And a public pharma shouldn't have to limit itself to just generic drugs. Laws could be passed exempting the public sector from patent restrictions for meds and medical devices. Any complaint that such an exemption would disincentivise research & development with private pharma, could be countered by nationalizing the research & development of medicine and medical devices also. Most of the scientists go into the field with the goal of finding cures and helping people anyways; making their research part of the public sphere would just give them the resources to find those cures along with allowing them to better direct the research according to public need instead of current private for-profit research that is directed by the corporate bean counters that will veto any research if it doesn't have good promise of big profits regardless of how much promise the research may have at finding a cure.

Open letter to Senator Klobuchar regarding insulin prices

by Glen Wallace

Hi Senator Klobuchar, I just saw a feature on the KSTP news featuring some comments by you about the recent run-up in the price of insulin recently. I believe an ideal solution is one you and your colleagues on capitol hill have not even considered legislatively. The solution to spikes in the price of pharmaceuticals and medical devices would be for the government to take on the production and distribution of those pharmaceuticals and medical devices at cost. Currently there seems to be a habit of thinking among healthcare policy makers that traps them into assuming that the only option to getting a needed healthcare product to the patient is by way of the commercial markets.

But there shouldn't be any barriers to the federal government taking on the role of the production and distribution of at least the medicines and devices that are outside of patent protection. And keep in mind many of the most notorious recent cases of price spikes occurred with products that were already outside of patent protection -- including, but not limited to insulin and the epipen.

Also, there is a long standing precedent of the federal government owning and operating the means of production and distribution of a product -- the US Government Publishing Office, also known as the Government Printing Office, has been around for many decades manufacturing, printing, publishing and selling to individuals and institutions everything from books to pamphlets to posters and just about everything printable in between.

Therefore, there should be nothing stopping the Senate and House from mandating the opening of a Government Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Office to bypass the market and get the needed healthcare products directly to the patients at the mere cost of production.

For years now I have been seeing hearings and statements from representatives such as yourself ranging from scolding to pleading of manufacturers to try and keep their prices down. I ask you; who's in charge here? When I hear only talk from you in the form of scolding and pleading to some Big Pharma executive, it sure looks like it is the Big Pharma companies that are the ones in charge. I thought we were a country of, by and for the people. If they will not bring the prices down, then we the people should engage that American can-do spirit, and make those products ourselves.

And this could be just the beginning -- we could start building a medical system that is entirely patient driven instead of where it is now in being market driven. I think people that go into the medical profession do it first and foremost because they care about people. With a patient driven, patient based system we can have as the primary decision makers, about what medical drug or device goes into production and their prices, be those medical professionals that care about the patients and not some bean counting CEO with only a legal fiduciary responsibility to some distant shareholders.

Referenced news story about insulin prices featuring Klobuchar comments

Socialize the Social Network & End the Facebook Monopoly

by Glen Wallace

“Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes we can turn to another.”

- F.A. Hayek 'The Road To Serfdom'

Should social networking sites be considered monopolies? I contend that Facebook and similar sites effectively prevent competition not through deliberate monopolistic trust efforts but just by being successful. While there may be competition in the fight to become the dominant social networking site, once any site has achieved that status then the choices of the consumer become very limited. For instance if I want to announce something to my friends online at one website, then I have no other option, if I want them to see the message, other than posting it on Facebook. I mean, I suppose I could post something on MySpace or Google+ if I prefer either, but who is going to see the post? Where is the competition induced meritocracy that is supposed to exist in commerce when it comes to online social networking? The very nature of such sites prevents competition to exist much at all. A fundamental difference exists between a site like Facebook and other sites whether it be a search engine like Google or a news site such as nytimes.com. If I want to search for something on Google or read a news article on the New York Times online site, it doesn't matter if I'm the only one using the site, the quality of the content remains the same. But with a social networking site, the quality deteriorates according to how much less other people use the site.

While one might point out that with some products, the only way for a company to provide a product is if they have a large number of customers to provide the revenue to make the capital intensive product. The difference there, however, is that it is still practical to have more than one vendor for any given ordinary product. There may not be as many vendors to choose from as compared to a less capital intensive product, but still there should be at least a few vendors that are able to raise sufficient funds to run a business that provides any given product or service. But with social media, it is so inconvenient for multiple users to use multiple vendors that a certain degree of cooperation is necessary among all the consumers to use just one portal as a vendor. A similarity emerges between a general social media website like Facebook and a public utility that acts as a well regulated monopoly. The problem of course is that Facebook is not regulated like a public utility even though it still behaves and functions like one.

Personally I would rather such a de facto public commons website be either a non-profit like Craigslist, or a government, citizen owned public website or some sort of cooperative. People often complain about the changes that Facebook makes and their use of users information and posts. But really, the users have little to no control over what the behemoth Facebook corporation does, leaving users at their mercy.
I also don't like the fact that I am inundated with all the ads on Facebook that pay for the huge executive salaries and helped turn Mark 'Hoodie Boy' Zuckerberg into a billionaire, and many of his minion of employees into multimillionaires. Why should we the users be made to feel like ungrateful users when complaining about a free site that has so many ads, when in fact it is us users that are really the givers, providing the valuable content that drives the hundreds of millions of visitors to the site to see the ads that provide the fortune of revenue to Facebook?  Without the content that us 'users' provide, with all of our 'status updates,' without any expectation for remuneration from all those Facebook millionaires, the whole Facebook website would be completely worthless and all those young Facebook employees would all be just another worker bee struggling to make ends meet instead of being in the very comfortable financial position they are today. They should be on their knees thanking us 'users' for doing all the work that made them so rich. It is, after all, our content about our daily lives and thoughts that is unique and special and not the ordinary glorified cloud database software that is Facebook that the engineers there seem to be constantly busying themselves trying to fix what aint broke. Or to provide an another analogy, we the users are providing the goldmine of data and interesting personal stories and the Facebook corporation is providing an ordinary utilitarian mineshaft that has nothing special about it and any other mineshaft builder could have just as easily built and maintained just as well or better than Facebook has done. But in the field of social networking, I may want to use someone else's 'mineshaft', but if almost everyone else is using another mineshaft builders shaft (Facebook), it doesn't matter how much better the others mineshaft is to use, without the gold at the other end, it's of little use.

That's why I'd like some other choices, but know that effectively I do not due to their monopoly over social networking. In terms of commercial user input websites, I would prefer something like wordpress.com were the default social networking site due to their minimalist approach to placement of ads. While wordpress is more of a blogging site, because it already allows 'following' and user updates, it wouldn't take much modifications to turn it into a social website also. But despite the assurances provided by Hayek's quote at the opening of this essay, even though Facebook refuses to satisfy my wishes there is no other social networking website out there to turn to that both satisfy my wishes of minimalist ads and also a goldmine of online socializing. No freedom of choice exists because there is no competition due to the unique nature of online social networking.

So what is the solution? The situation is unique here compared to other monopolies such as the famous Standard oil which was simply broken up into smaller parts that could compete with each other. But how would one go about doing that with a social networking site? Would you have to have your friends list get broken up into separate parts with each part going to a new social networking site that could compete with Facebook? That wouldn't make much sense. The only viable solution that I see is to nationalize Facebook (and Twitter for the matter) I think I would then change the name of the site to something more appropriate, like 'The Public Commons.' The only problem I see with such a nationalization is that, even though we are supposed to be living in a democracy, the federal government and its programs, often has become too much of an ivory tower organization, distancing itself from public input as to how it operates. Therefore I would insist that new 'Public Commons' website be a truly of-the-people organization with a barrier of control separating itself from the rest of the federal government. Therefore the new website would be one run entirely by a combination of open source and referendum votes on implementation of various open source solutions to the websites problems and proposed improvements.
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Why capitalism can be a disincentive to good medicine

By Glen Wallace

There have recently been some prominent news stories featured on the mainstream media about shortages of certain drugs faced by hospitals and emergency rooms.  In addition to shortages there has also been problems with price gouging by pharmaceutical manufacturers of certain prescription drugs.  And one more problem that I recently saw featured on the mainstream network national news was about the growing problem of antibiotic drug resistant bacteria. What all those problems have in common is an inability of the drug companies to adequately respond to the needs of the public using those drugs.  The drug companies are not responding to the public's needs because they are not directed by those needs but are instead being driven and directed solely by the profit motive. Drug companies price gouge because they can get away with it because the drug patents can provide a total monopoly in cases where there are no comparable alternatives.  New antibiotics are not being developed at the rate that is needed to respond to drug resistance because there is not enough money to be made off of any new antibiotics to justify the enormous cost necessary to bring them to market.  And shortages are occurring because production capacity may be more profitably utilized by some other drugs. Once they are done making their money makers then if they have time maybe they will make more of the less profitable drugs for which there is a shortage. All this is recognized by the media and the medical field but few seem to put two and two together and realize that capitalism has been an abject failure at promoting good medicine.

So far I've only discussed the problems between capitalism and medicine that are already readily recognized by mainstream media and medicine.  But if one turns to alternative medicine one sees further evidence of the antagonism between Capitalism and good medicine.


The problem is that drug companies will not spend money at all on research that they cannot see a potential return on.  The only goal of the big pharmaceutical corporations is to make a profit, not benefit mankind.  Therefore, if there is already some research showing promise on an herb or compound that cannot be patented then there is no incentive to spend all the money on further research to bring the product to market.  Additionally, keep in mind that most big pharmaceutical companies are publicly traded corporations and therefore have a legal obligation to act in the financial interests of shareholders and not in the medical interests of the users of the pharmaceuticals that those corporations produce.

For instance I heard of a study of mice where their Alzheimer's disease was halted and reversed when the mice consumed caffeine in an amount that was the human equivalent of 5 cups of caffeinated coffee per day. 
 I have also read anecdotal reports of Alzheimer's patients improving just through the consumption of coconut oil.  Currently pharmaceutical corporations are enjoying a nice gravy train of profits from drugs for Alzheimer's that are not a cure but a treatment where the patient continually takes the medicine and therefore pays for the medicine over a period of time that will likely amount to years.  Why would the for-profit pharmaceutical corporations want to spend money to research something like caffeine or coconut oil that they wouldn't be able to patent, but instead if the caffeine was found to be as useful in humans as it is in mice for Alzheimers, or if the anecdotal reports about coconut oil and Alzheimers were scientifically verified, the drug companies would  be facing an elimination of the currently reliable long-term revenue stream that they already enjoy with their prescription Alzheimer meds?

As another example, there is an alternative medicine doctor by the name of Dr. Tullio Simoncini from Italy, that is using ordinary baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to treat cancer with what he claims is very successful results.  Currently the cancer treatment industry is very profitable as is; but if drug companies were to explore and find baking soda is indeed superior to any of their current chemotherapy meds, then billions in revenue would be eliminated if cancer patients were to be prescribed a non-patentable product like baking soda that can be had for fifty cents a pound.

There is a great deal of collusion and cronyism between such organizations as the FDA, the AMA, University research facilities, the mainstream media and congress.  Any close examination of those organizations reveals that they are clearly working together with the goal of maximizing the profits of big pharmaceutical corporations.

Have you ever watched the commercials during the breaks on the big network national TV news?  Those commercials are filled with ads for prescription pharmaceuticals still under patent protection that offer huge monopolistic profits to the big pharma companies buying the expensive ad space from the large TV networks.  The networks want to keep their largest sponsors happy so you'll regularly see features on the national news badmouthing any alternative medicine that would replace big pharma's monopoly profits if those 'supplements' became 'replacements'.

Anyone trying to bring a non-patentable drug to the mainstream medical market with FDA approval,  will be going against the collusion of cronies mentioned above.  Just to get a drug approved by the FDA requires investments of 100's of millions of dollars by an organization that is already set up to do the research.  Much more if you're not already a drug company or University that has the facilities and know-how to do the enormous research required for FDA approval.  As for universities, they are either already getting grant money from big pharma or they are already enjoying profits from patent medicines.  Universities get a lot of their funding from patents for medicines they own. 

There is a widespread assumption that there is always a synergistic relationship between capitalism and good medicine.  But the evidence indicates that the opposite is true; there is an antagonistic relationship between capitalism and good medicine.  If only the medical field would apply the same testing standards to the for-profit medical paradigm as they do to individual drugs, they would soon discover widespread refutations of the belief in the necessarily benevolent nature of the overall for-profit capitalistic setup of the mainstream medical system.

The only solution as I see it is to eliminate medical patents and nationalize most medical research.  There already are plenty of people that go into medical research with the highest of ideals, but only their ideas that have the potential to profit the company they work for, will be supported.  Instead, we need to set up a system that eliminates the profit variable and allows those idealistic individuals to act as both the researchers and executives in the medical development field, whose decision making control of what avenues to pursue is only measured by other members of the medical field and the citizens observing and funding their work.

The NIH has already set up a division to study alternative medicines, but even though I've seen promising results from at least one of their studies, it seems like we only hear about the the results on the mainstream media that are not so promising.  In Germany they've set up a government run organization called the E commission, that studies and gives rulings on herbal medicines and what they can be prescribed for.  Those are a couple of examples of the nationalization of medical research that are good starts in that direction.  But to achieve the ideal of  good medicine, the profit motive from patent monopolies needs to be completely eliminated.  The allure of those patent monopolies is too corrupting because there is just too much money that can be made with them.