[Ip-health] HIF proposes $600 million annual budget to evaluate health impacts

[michael.davis@law.csuohio.edu]

> Following recent revelations in Canada, Mickey is of course free to make
> disparaging comments about the honesty of politicians as well.
>
> Aidan Hollis


What Aidan is referring to is what he knows to be my support of government
oversight (and funding) of all pharmaceutical research because, despite
the venality of politicians and their crimes as well, it does not approach
the venality and criminality of the pharmaceutical industry.

I am well aware of how politicians lie, but if Aidan thinks that their
lies somehow should consign our health to the (obscenely) overpaid CEOs of
Big Pharma, he doesn't understand how democracy works. Those lies are our
lies! We vote for them, and we can (and have recently) vote them out! That
is why I prefer the liars we vote for to the liars we don't. Aidan,
instead, offers us the alternative that government is bad, an argument
under which we have had to live miserably for the past 8 and more years.

But more to the point and frankly, because of how their sponsors are
basically funded by the health insurance industry, and remembering how the
Clinton health plan was sunk by our own health insurance industry, I can't
help thinking of Aidan and Thomas as the "Harry and Louise" of
international health care. With the best of intentions, they caused a lot
of damage (and an equal amount of private profit).

MD