Actually they are. Not only are they depriving people of monetary funds that could be used for actual medical help that could improve or save their lives, but they are also being given false hope that often will prevent them or delay them from seeking actual effective medical care until it's too late.
In short, they promote misery, ill health, and death to make money by basing it all on lies.

I've seen a number of people hospitalized because they O.D.ed on meds solely because they were also taking herbs in addition to real medicine.
They just couldn't understand that a Large percentage of our medicines are refined versions of the active component that's in the herbs they are using, and the medicines are without the other components in herbs that have other effects, including negative ones. Additionally, the medicines are of specific quantities, while the herbs are variable dosage, so you don't even have stable doses with herbs. End result, they eventually take too much. There may have been some that died because of it, but the cause of death isn't exactly news that reaches the pharmacy.

First rule, don't take multiple treatments for anything! Doing so just undermines the them both and can result in death.
Second rule, modern medicine is based on folk medicine and herbology after it's been filtered through testing and refinement. It's the difference between cutting a precise line in a board with a laser, and pounding on the board with a river stone. If you aren't clear on this yet, modern medicine is the laser, and the other stuff is the caveman method.

Funny, that's not what the homeopathy literature that I've seen distributed says, especially since most of it was claiming to cure or relieve various conditions that you have. Preventative treatment needs to be done before you acquire said medical issues, not afterwards.

I remember one that required 5 years experience on a particular software package. Too bad it had only been available for 2 years at that point.

The US military is about saving lives by being ready to fight anyone trying to take US lives.
You can complain about the political shitheads that give them their orders all you want, but the US military personnel all signed up to protect Americans.
Dissing them is like badmouthing the older older brother that's keeping the high school bullies from kicking your ass at grade school.

Besides, you are off-topic.
As to the military satellites, you know the military isn't going to give away their capabilities, even if it does mean a crashed plane won't be found. On the other hand, it's not as perfect as Hollywood would have you believe, and it's mostly pointed at places of interest, like foreign countries ports and bases, not the middle of the freaking ocean. Odds that the military have a pic that would help are slightly above zero, but not by much.

Add streaming data to satellites, wonderful.
However, getting rid of the black boxes would be really dumb.
In case you hadn't noticed, there are plenty of things that can disrupt satellite communications, including solar flares, and just plain normal storms. To have a recorded record of when shit really hits the fan is of a value beyond reasonable measurements for finding out what happened so you can take steps to prevent it occurring again.
After all, it's not one or the other, you actually an have both.

The battery was probably working, but it no longer had the same capacity it should have. If so, then when the drain increased due to additional activity, like having to ping or something, it died far quicker than it should have.

Did a battery issue in the black box cause the crash? No way.
Does a maintenance error of something basic like that indicate the possibility that there could be other far more serious issues? Emphatically yes.

If it's not important enough to mentally broadcast it loud enough for me to pick it up, it must not be that important. :P

I read some ancient American sci-fi from the 30s and 40s, and you'd be amazed at what ideas they cover.
I apologize for not being able to remember the names of any of them right now, but one story springs to mind rather easily.
A guy ends up going to the future (don't worry about how) from the when the author wrote the story. It's about the characters experiences in the imagined future.
In it, everyone was rather well off as your income was essentially a production dividend from the government. As one character put it, the populace is so productive the government is always looking for new and expensive projects to spend money on, they have too much and have to use it.

I know some people will freak out over that for various reason, but the idea is sound, even if it would never work with humans the way they are, just like any utopian ideal. However, one of the points on it is based on economics. Saving or hoarding money, especially by the government, just locks up potential resources for no good reason. If it is spent, it is in circulation and helps the entire economy. Anyone who has taken sufficient economics knows that the value of stashed cash is virtually zero to an economy, and can easily become a negative, while money in circulation is powerful.

Honestly, other than Liu Cixin being heavily influenced by his countrys political propaganda (all countries have that to varying degrees) I don't really seen any new ideas in his works, just variations. Still, I wish him success in his writing career.

If you want to read some other stuff that is eerily similar to his on occasion, hit up some of the old Soviet sci-fi.

Some gear has something called a chemical battery.
A chemical battery is a one use short duration power supply.
I've never heard of one being used in a satellite, but the military doesn't give out specs on their satellites, which conceivably might have a need for such a resource.

Too late, the military was publicly talking about doing something like that years ago with one making metallic parts for vehicles in the field.
This definitely does not reach the threshold of being non-obvious to someone versed in the field.

So those intending criminal activities will just find a way around it. I wonder if there is an ulterior motive for collecting all those fingerprints.

After all, who's going to arrest the cops?

There's a guy in jail for armed robbery who was unarmed. It's now possible to get convicted based on the belief of the victim instead of the facts. :(

sorry, .5gb, got distracted and typed the wrong thing.