My family are about 80% doctors. I can answer this for you. The majority of the "expenses" for R&D come from government funding, then these companies patent it and rake in dough at taxpayer expense.

My uncles in particular are particularly annoyed at the disingenuous claims pharma and medical device companies make about how "expensive" the R&D process is when the expense is on the backs of the taxpayers, not them.

You certainly live in a beautiful dream world.

each state in the union is utterly dominated by one or two insurance providers. These providers are also excluded from anti-trust laws, so they collude; you're essentially doing business with ONE firm under two names. It's like buying "broadband" in the US, only far far worse.

Pay out of pocket? do you REALLY want to go down this road? I have crohn's disease, can't buy coverage at any price, and have strained the collective finances of my entire extended family with medication that costs more per DOSE than most households pay in total monthly expenses.

Again, your dream world is wonderful, may I please have whatever souped up cocktail of opiates and hallucinogens you ingest hourly?

or maybe you STILL work for them and you're covering their public relations ass?

I hope you remember this when you think about the healthcare debate.
Many healthcare providers refuse to cover or severely limit coverage for depression, one more reason a public option is needed to keep them honest.

obligatory xkcd

There are very very powerful entities with vested interests in discrediting the well established evidence of climate change(cigs, cancer, and the tobacco institute anyone?).

Whether it's anthropogenic or not is besides the point, its important to err on the side of caution -- which means probable regulation -- something vested international conglomerates see as unprofitable/risky.

61 megs can be easily generated by a small staff interested in discrediting the conclusions of a debate which has long been over.

There's no coincidence about this at all, with cap and trade floating about washington. Just like the insurance lobbies with health reform, the worst polluters are pulling out all the stops to avoid being held responsible.

In the US there is this long-held myth, fed year after year by those who benefit from its proliferation, than anyone, if they work hard enough, can become as obscenely wealthy as the plutocrats which have purchased our legislature and plunder our populace in the most abusive manner their behavioral analysts have deemed is possible without eliciting armed rebellion.

This myth, that one day they can hold the whip and scream "MUSH!" at our elected representatives while unzipping their trousers to let their bounty "trickle down" upon the worthless peons, helps to keep the populace passive.

DHT and PEX support has been very slow to creep in to clients. It makes sense from a user popularity and user access perspective to resist switching fully to these systems until external pressure forces the issue, otherwise swaths of the community will get pissed and smear your site as refusing to conform to basic standards.

This is basically how every major jump in p2p technology has been implemented. P2p is forever a reactionary technology.

They have a public responsibility to inform our democracy. They should be required to do proper fact checking, and the best and most entertaining way to do that is to force the partisan hacks on both sides into the same room, thus compelling them to back up their arguments with more than fallacy and invective lest they be shot down by their counterpart.

When you go on the air and tell your audience it's "news" it better damn well center around the facts. Reporters should be constrained in this manner. If they want to toss out the opposition rather than face them fairly, they should be stripped of the "news" certification in the same way a meat packing plant would if they dispensed with the USDA inspectors.

how about you google "fox lies" or "jon stewart fox" or "daily show fox" or "media matters"

not the same station, the same room

right now there is no motivation to fact check. This has resulted in half the nation STILL believing iraq was the source of alqueda instead of afghanistan.

  Repeat a lie long enough and people will start to believe it.

You seem to have ignored every example i've provided.

Translated from corporatocracy-ese to english:

"once we've quashed the disruptive technological utopia people created on the web, the economic opportunity to carve it up and sell it back to only those who can pay abounds!"

no, i don't, unless warner brothers produces the exact same house episodes fox does.

you mean like the way the wall street financial giants regulated themselves?

How about putting oreilly or beck in the same room with olbermann?

If you put people of diametrically opposed ideology in the same room they will be HEAVILY motivated to do proper research, and their exchanges would quickly mete out the truth.