The 'What would you cut?' game

[Sibling Chatty]

Here's an example...

A pharmaceutical company is testing a new drug for my cancer.

It was developed in a government lab, by government scientists, on our money. They wanted to have a group of government (state and federally funded) cancer hospitals/medical institutions with large cancer care concentrations do the testing.

Their drug was taken from them, their funding eliminated, and a pharmaceutical company was GIVEN the drug info.  They're testing it now at 6 locations, and will go to 18 locations for Phase 2. The Fed Gov has given the pharmaceutical company several million bucks to promote the clinical trials.

All indications are that this medication will be semi-worthless for my cancer, BUT it's shown some possibility for prostate cancer. If it is as successful as projected, there is a possibility that it will provide the Pharma with at least 3/4 billion a year in sales.

Their R&D costs? Almost nothing.

Previously, the way this was handled was that the NIH worked with a pharma as a production and marketing agent for the drug, but retained the patent and the government recouped some (actually all, and then some) of the costs to come up with the drug. Now, it is privatized.

I liked it better when the government made some money off the research/work/ownership of our national assets.
Right now, the big companies don't even pay the little bit of taxes they should be paying.

There are a zillion examples of taxpayer abuse, and every one of them concerns wasting the taxpayers money, and 99% of them end up being examples of SOMEBODY being greedy, from Archer Daniels Midland to Pepsico to Helliburton and beyond.

The people have a right to be mad. We're the ones being made to pay for what the corporations and their owners get to hoarde.

Welcome to the populist revolution!!

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I found a different pie from this website:

They seem to count debt in a different way (or the other site simply counts debt with the programs themselves).