Well, she's at least as qualified as Al Gore...

our pictures. This is a bit of a scam as they, in essence, are storing them with this latest invasion.

Sorry, it did look a bit overboard.
Your are correct in that the drug company should be compensated for their costs in bringing a drug to market. But, really, don't you feel that they go way overboard to the point of gouging the public. We are all entitled to compensation for our efforts but there is a limit especially if we paid for the foundation work. Patent protection does not mean thousands of $ per month for a drug that returns its costs many times over in the first year of a 17 year patent with the remaining 16 years being almost pure profit...

Whos'e that walking on my bridge? Fox what?

Seems to me that anything - books, medical procedures and devices, pharmaceuticals, etc. - belong to the public and we should not have to pay for them...

Have a look at the Tesla roadster and sedan.

I turned 65 this week and am developing. Go for it!

Now there's an oxymoron.

I have to agree with most of what you say and I too believe that national healthcare is inevitable. I particularly agree that getting the for profit insurance companies out of the picture would reduce costs big time.

I do not believe the $3-5 cost figure to send and process a claim. I worked for years in an independant laboratory where I was responsible for all of the claims processing using our computers. We filed 80 to 1000 claims at a time at the click of a button and received the claims outcomes the same way. The only human involvement being handling the exceptions. While there were numerous exceptions they did not bring our cost to anything near $3-5 per claim. We even handled paper bills to patients using an electronic service which took my file, printed the bill to our specification, stuffed it in an envelope and mailed it for less than $0.50!

IMHO there is a broad gulf between the cost of healthcare and the price of healthcare. To use my experience again the lab provided numerous tests for a very low price. Our average cost was just about $9.00/test offered including panels. Our prices were not far over that and the company had around $5,000,000 in annual revenue. The lab was sold and the group that purchased it immediately raised the prices several fold generating a mountain of profit at the expense of the healthcare consumer. This group consisted of a local "non-profit" hospital and another independant laboratory in another city.

Another example: I looked up the cost of flu shots on the CDC site today and the cost including the syrenges and needles was not over $1.60 yet you cannot get a flue shot where I live for less than $20.00!

I believe national health care is coming but, with regards to the upcoming election, I do not see anyone with the strength to get it going.