Barack W. Bush

[Logan Darklighter]

From a post on Hot Air.

First broken a few hours ago by WaPo, now confirmed by the AP, a little Friday evening care package from The One while the
media's busy obsessing over Jacko and cap 'n trade.

Do bear in mind that, contrary to leftist talking points, it's not just the fact that some of the evidence against these turds was obtained through
"torture" that makes them untriable in regular courts. Other evidence is either classified or was obtained from foreign intel - points that WaPo,
to its credit, acknowledges but which our nutroots superiors tend to gloss over.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws
of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the
officials said…

Some of Obama's top legal advisers, along with a handful of influential Republican and Democratic lawmakers, have pushed for the creation of a
"national security court" to supervise the incarceration of detainees deemed too dangerous to release but who cannot be charged or tried.

But the three senior government officials said the White House has turned away from that option, at least for now, because legislation establishing a
special court would be both difficult to pass and likely to fracture Obama's own party…

"Legislation could kill Obama's plans," said one government official involved. The official said an executive order could be the best
option for the president at this juncture. Under one White House draft that was being discussed earlier this month, according to administration officials,
detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil but their ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review. U.S. citizens
would not be held in the system…

One administration official said future transfers to the United States for long-term detention would be rare. Al-Qaeda operatives captured on the
battlefield, which the official defined as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and possibly the Horn of Africa, would be held in battlefield
facilities.

Thank goodness future captives will be spared the military-run horror that is Gitmo for the cushy pleasure palaces that are military-run battlefield
prisons. We've known this was in the works for months now, but I confess, I'm still
surprised that Obama's willing to bypass Congress. It makes sense politically, I guess - a left vs. center battle on national security in the House and
Senate is a headache he doesn't need right now - but (a) taking sole responsibility via an executive order pits him squarely against the ACLU crowd and
opens him up to charges of being too Bush-like and (b) the constitutionality of indefinite detention will be jeopardized by not having congressional backing
per Justice Jackson's analysis in Youngstown v. Sawyer. Although, who
knows - maybe that's The One's plan. By putting himself on the worst possible legal footing, he increases the chances of the Supreme Court declaring
the program unconstitutional, which in turn will put pressure on Congress to bless it, thereby giving him political cover. Bottom line: No matter how much
the left pouts, Barry O's not risking a second term on letting questionable jihadis go until some other branch of government makes him.

How about that Hope and Change? Working out for ya?

Looks like reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic to me.

[Valles]

Well, whatever else you say about the man - and I decline to comment on the issue because I don't have the resources at hand to do proper research on it
right now - he's got more brains than a rutabaga.

That's a great positive change in its own right. ^_^
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Bluemage]

I realize that former Vice President Quayle wasn't that bright, but do you have to keep insulting the poor guy?

Seriously, though, Bush wasn't stupid. Not an orator by any stretch of the imagination, religious to the point that it affected his decision-making
ability, saddled with a contradictory set of policy positions, and not a genius, but not the moron that haters make him out to be.

(I almost said "blithering idiot" instead of "moron", but he did blither.)

Besides, VP Biden makes up for any smarts Obama has. At least Cheney was frightenly intelligent.

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Ayiekie]

Cheney was frighteningly intelligent? I didn't see a lot of evidence that he was any more intelligent than any other ruthless businessman. Nor have I seen
any evidence that Biden is stupid. Prone-to-put-foot-in-mouth, but not stupid.

I'm not too disappointed in Obama since as he's a Democrat I never expected him to be anything but a somewhat centrist right-winger. But that's
still better than the alternative. And hey, health care. I'm amused that the guy who supports all the illegal Bush administration policies about detainment
of prisoners is now criticising Obama for continuing them. But that's partisanship for you.

[Logan Darklighter]

Did I say I was criticizing him? Oh no. I think he's RIGHT to continue this policy! A stopped clock can still be right twice a day, after all.

No, It's not HIS hypocrisy and lying I'm amused at.

It's that people on the left have a choice - either be hypocritical by continuing to support him, or choose to not support him because he has utterly
turned 180 on this.

Hearing the distant and continuous *pop* of heads exploding all across the country fills my black heart with the warm fuzzies.

[Morganite]

I think the point of the criticism isn't the policy itself, but that Obama isn't practicing what he preached. Which doesn't strike me as an
unreasonable position, if in fact this policy does not represent a significant change in the actual conditions.

It may be a bit premature to make that judgment until the order is actually issued though.

-Morgan.

[Bluemage]

A common Democrat suggestion was that Cheney was the 'evil mastermind' behind Bush Also, Cheney has been successful in business at a high level, and
has recently made some extremely articulate and thoughtful speeches about the Bush Presidency and Obama's policies. Maybe 'frighteningly' was a
bit of hyperbole, but the man is quite smart.

Obama, though, promised his constituency the wrong things. He made a lot of promises (514, according to the Obameter (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/)), and now he's finding that some of them are
simply not possible, not worth pursuing, or downright harmful to America and her interests. Don't get me wrong- he's doing a good job keeping most of
his promises, but some, like this one, are just not happening. I predict we'll see a few more issues like this, where Obama has to quietly stop trying to
do things he said he'd do, over the next year or so.

It would be nice if the healthcare and 'stimulus' packages won't be among them, if only because it would save the country a choice between
inflation worse than the 1970s, taxation not seen since WW2, unsustainable debt/insolvency, and economic collapse. I'd like to see everybody have health
care, and I want to see the recession end, but this isn't the way to do either.

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Ayiekie]

It's totally awesome how many people only got suddenly concerned about unsustainable debt when it wasn't being run up paying for two wars, including a
preemptive war of aggression (well, except that it still is, of course).

Incidentally, that site seems to indicate there's no promise he made that he's breaking here. It's sort of like the support for gay marriage thing
that was a big betrayal for many people despite the fact Obama has been openly against gay marriage for years.

I'm not quite certain why people vote for a centre-rightist and expect him to behave like a leftist. For a centre-right politician, he's done alright
so far. It's not really surprising the local reactionaries and neo-cons find stuff to support in Obama's policies, because they're not as far apart
on the political spectrum as people and pundits apparently like to believe.

[Bluemage]

You're right that it wasn't a campaign promise he made. I apologize for that inaccuracy. It is something that he's said he'd do, and I
conflated it with his campaign promise list.

As for the debt, don't think I'm letting Bush off the hook for that, either. "Wars of aggression" aside, the fact that Bush felt like he
could spend more money when the government is already spending more than it makes was a disgrace. And he called himself a conservative! No, just no.
Bush's attitude towards spending is a mockery of conservatism, and I'll have no part of it.

Why do you call Obama a "centre-rightist"? By American standards, he's solidly left of center, what with his nationalizing of the auto industry,
plans to nationalize the health care system, and the new taxes he's working on passing. Obama believes that the government can do better than the private
sector- and individual citizens. He's quadrupled the deficit from what Bush racked up, bringing it up to nearly $2 trillion, an increase which he himself
calls "unsustainable". This is before his health care plan is enacted, mind you. How is he going to pay for that, let alone all the deficit
he's racked up? Higher taxes.

It may be a trite phrase, but I feel it's fairly safe to call President Obama a 'tax-and-spend liberal'.

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Ayiekie]

Because I'm not American, and by the standards of everyone else in the world, he and every other mainstream Democrat are right-wingers with pretensions
towards centrism. It is hilarious watching American pundits throw around words like "socialist" when they have no idea what it means.

Incidentally, it's probably worth noting that a public health care system would probably cost you less than the current mess you have. Canada, for
instance, pays less per capita for their universal health care system (hardly ideal, but better than the US by a wide margin) than Americans pay for theirs. To
say nothing of the enormous and numerous side benefits of universal health care to the health/welfare of the population, and the incidental side benefit that
it would remove one of the factors that is destroying what's left of the US auto industry. Not that I'm drawing any judgements on Obama's health
care plan until more details of it come out.

Every politician in the world is "tax and spend". Obama isn't a liberal by the modern definition of the term. "Tax and spend" does beat
"don't tax and spend", however.

[Logan Darklighter]

To say nothing of the enormous and numerous side benefits of universal health care to the health/welfare of the population

Gotta love those Canadian Health Care benefits.

A critically-ill premature-born baby from Hamilton is all alone in a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital after she was turned away for treatment at local facility
and transferred across the border without her parents, who don't have passports.

Ava Stinson was born Thursday at St. Joseph's Hospital, 14 weeks premature.

A provincewide search for an open neonatal intensive care unit bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two pound, four ounce baby to
Buffalo.

Her parents Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson couldn't follow their child because as of June 1, a passport is required to cross the border into
the United States.

They're having to approve medical procedures over the phone and are terrified something will happen to their baby before they get there.

Uh huh. They're "guaranteed" care, but - oops oops oopsie - couldn't get it under their system. Which, of course, only
proves that our system - y'know, the one these people actually did get care under - is the "inferior" system.

This sort of situation is precisely the correct time to get into the "relative merits" of the two systems - in fact, it's crucial we do,
lest we fail to understand that government health care isn't a means for delivery of care to all, but the establishment of a bureaucracy to oversee
rationing of it.

And it damned sure does mean that the US system is better - otherwise, there wouldn't have been any need to ship the kid here for care in the
first place. Despite the fondness of disingenuous or foolish "progressive" types who shriek otherwise, critical care is never denied to
anyone in the US because of lack of ability to pay - unlike in Canada or other nations with socialized medicine.

Incidentally, it's probably worth noting that a public health care system would probably cost you less than the current mess you have. Canada, for
instance, pays less per capita for their universal health care system (hardly ideal, but better than the US by a wide margin) than Americans pay for theirs.

Oh yes. So very much more cheaper. Why wasn't there a NICU bed for the child in the entire nation of
Canada? The government of Canada won't pay for more. They don't exist to expand supply to meet demand; the
single-payer system exists to ration care as a cost-saving mechanism (but it's FREE HEALTH CARE!). In a
free-market system, supply expands to meet demand, which is why Canada could subcontract out to a US hospital for capacity. These parents are separated from
their child at the moment through the fault of Canada's government and not the US.

Under a government health system, even the mediocre health care you're guaranteed by your government may not be available to you at all. And once the US
goes down this dark road, there'll be no place left to go when your failed system fails you - as it inevitably must.

"The study showed that for many of the medical specialities in Canada examined, we don't even come close to meeting that target," said
Bellan. "There remains a great deal of unfinished business when it comes to addressing wait times in Canada."

For cancer patients, the study found that the median wait time for radiation therapy was almost seven weeks,
exceeding the benchmark of four weeks.

...


"Right now, patients receive excellent care, but too often it is in spite of the system, rather than because of it," said Ouellet.

The Wait Time Association
report (.PDF link) found the following wait time in days for the following specialties:

Corneal transplant: 636 days

Adult strabismus surgery: 450 days

Total knee arthroplasty: 312 days

Chronic diarrhea or chronic constipation: 260 days

Pelvic prolapse: 250 days

Urinary incontinence: 247 days

Total hip arthroplasty: 247 days

Oh but it gets better, still! Canadians have higher incidents of cancer because that national health
system rations screening. So not only will you have to wait to be screened to see if you might have
cancer, but once you're diagnosed, you may have to wait for treatment for weeks or months! Time
you do not have!

But the American system is inferior to the Canadian. Yeah. Right.

When the United States health care system is as regulated and as rationed as the Canadian model, where will you go when you can't afford to wait? Will
there be anyplace left on the planet that you even CAN go?

[Bluemage]

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Great Britain and New Zealand have similar systems.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200903/postrel-drugs

Consider New Zealand. There, a government agency called Pharmac evaluates the efficacy of new drugs, decides which drugs are cost-effective, and negotiates
the prices to be paid by the national health-care system. These functions are separate in most countries, but thanks to this integrated approach, Pharmac has
indeed tamed the national drug budget. New Zealand spent $303 per capita on drugs in 2006, compared with $843 in the United States. Unfortunately for
patients, Pharmac gets those impressive results by saying no to new treatments. New Zealand "is a good tourist destination, but options for cancer
treatment are not so attractive there right now," Richard Isaacs, an oncologist in Palmerston North, on New Zealand's North Island, told me in
October.

There's an even worse example of the problem with government-managed health care being quoted in the news right now: the NHS has decided not
to pay for a drug that tens of thousands of cancer patients are currently in need of, effectively dooming them in the name of "efficient" health
care.

The American system certainly could be better; health care costs too much, and the array of cost-deferring devices we use to defray that aren't available
to everyone. The system is tied up in too much red tape right now, and that limits its efficiency. For one thing, we have a shortage of doctors and nurses,
when compared to the amount of care we provide; medical school is expensive, after all. Also, since practicing doctors determine who is allowed to practice in
individual states, they prevent applicants from being officially recognized in order to keep the supply low and the fees they can charge high, reducing the
supply still further. If we can make it easier for doctors to be educated and begin practicing, the cost of health care will drop. It would be cheaper for
the government to reduce regulation, provide reforms, and create incentives for prospective doctors than it is for it to pay for medical care, and it might
even improve quality, to boot! Health care in America is, like Winston Churchill once said about democracy, the worst form of health care out there, except
for all the others that have been tried.

I'm with Logan on this one- don't tell us that your system is better than ours and we should adopt it, when the people of your country have to come use
our "inferior" health care system to get treatment.

When you have a health care system that can give them the treatments that the doctors think they need, when they need it, for less than our system costs,
I'll be the first one to promote it. Until then...

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Bluemage]

Also, we do know what socialism means. We know that what the Democrats in America propose right now is nothing compared to a true socialist cluster**** -I mean, *system*, but then, you have to consider the context. Anybody who proposed that America move to a
full socialist state 200 years ago would probably have been shot dead where he stood. 150 years ago, it would've gotten you beaten senseless/driven out of
town. 100 years ago, a small minority would've agreed with you, but everybody else would bully/insult/look down on you. Now, though, a good part of the
country thinks that the purpose of government is to take care of them.

American leftists have been getting progressively more statist over the lifespan of the nation. Their proposals are always just on the edge of what the
country will accept, and often framed as ways to get the country out of some crisis or another. Look at the New Deal, the Great Society, the War on Drugs, the
War on Terror (I don't know what Bush was smoking when he did that, but it should be illegal), Obamacare, and the "stimulus package"; they are
all 'solutions' to some type of crisis, and all of them boil down to one thing: bigger government.

Every politician in the world is "tax and spend". Obama isn't a liberal by the modern definition of the term. "Tax and spend" does
beat "don't tax and spend", however.

The trick to all of this is that, while it's easy as pie to get any bureaucracy (and expecially government) to expand exponentially, it's devilishly
hard to shrink it by even a fraction of a percent. The most conservative US presidents in recent history have only managed to slow the rate of expansion.
Actual reductions in government size (except for the military) are myth. While no leftist in modern America will admit to being a socialist, most of the truly
liberal (American liberal) leftists are putting a socialist state into place, one program at a time. Some may not even realize it, but if you read what some
of the extreme left have said in speeches, books, and letters, a good number are actively working for the establishment of a true socialist state in America.

I'd rather have "tax less, and spend no more than that". I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for that, but apparently the only
politicians that agree with me have been safely marginalized by the ones in power. After all, that's what this really boils down to: the acquisition,
expansion, and usage of power by politicians.

A state where candidates were chosen and campaigned for by the people, without the input of the candidates themselves,
would be ideal. Nobody who got elected (assuming the system was correctly implemented) would desire power, so they might actually act in the best interests of
the nation, instead of themselves.

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Valles]

*Dirty pinko commie Socialist is indeed present*
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Epsilon]

Sigh.

Start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...th_care_systems_compared

Also this:

http://ats.ctsnetjournals...i/content/full/84/5/1435

Or how about this:

http://www.reuters.com/ar...ne/idUSTRE5530Y020090604

Also good article on how fucked your system is:

http://www.economist.com/...amp;source=hptextfeature

Finally, there will of course be statistical outlier in any system. I'm certain you could find some person who wasn't given proper care in Japan,
Sweden or France too.

However, do you REALLY want to start going down that road? I can do that, if you want. I can start listing every single fucking case of American Health care
outright REFUSING people care. Not delaying it. Refusing it. I can cite dozens, maybe even hundreds of cases where your
"HMOs" or other insurance programs have screwed people out of what they justly paid for. I can cite dozens of case (and I'll invite them over
personally, so they can say it to you here) where people where just outright refused medical insurance period. I
personally know human beings, friends of mine who would be dead or crippled for life if it weren't for Canadian health care. My grandfather just got out of
the hospital two days ago after having major knee surgery. He is basically shit poor (being a retired coal miner whose pension vanished thanks to assholes). He
was scheduled for surgery, admited, had his surgery, had his recovery and was released and is feeling much better in under three months. He paid not one dime.

Do you have any idea how expensive health care is in your country? I can qoute people who have had to pay upwards
of $4000 for a 20 minute ambulance ride. It is quite posisble for a treatment like major heart surgey to run upwards of
$15,000,000 (that's FIFTEEN MILLION). Do you have that much money just lying around? The only hope for 99% of Americans is to hopefully get cadilac health
insurance from their job but even then most job paid plans are shit compared to what we have up here in Canada. Before you start quoting wait times at us start
looking up articles for people in the states who are outright refused medical care period.

Could our system be improved? Hell yes. Is it better than yours? By a wide fucking margin.

------------------

Epsilon

[CattyNebulart]

One of the basic problems with American healthcare is that there are a lot of perverse incentives, for instance there are incentives to make healthcare as
expensive as possible, and for hospitals not to treat sick people.

Switching to public healthcare would probably remove some of these wrong incentives, and a little of smart legislation could remove the rest. Knowing how much
congress is bribed I'm not holding my breath though.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Bluemage]

A person who dies waiting for care, or because the government won't pay for the care he needs, is just as dead as a person who is refused care. It's
the same problem- people aren't getting the care they need- but we're getting there from opposite directions.

As for "perverse incentives", I agree. There are a good number of negative behaviors that are actually rewarded in our system. Public healthcare
isn't the answer, though: we need to clear out the counterproductive regulations that make our system inefficient (like the fact that many doctors are
literally afraid to perform risky procedures, because failure would wipe them out with malpractice suits), and return regulation to its original purpose:
making the incentives provided by the health care system line up with the standard of care we want our doctors providing.

Switching to public health care removes some of those negatives, but it also destroys many of the positive aspects of the American system. Look at the British
system- doctors there have a specific required amount of patients that they are required to serve in a year. After they finish their quota, they are given no
material incentive to help any more patients for the rest of the year. The British, despite having more dentists per capita than America does, provide less
dental treatment per capita because the dentists finish their quotas early in the year, and take the next 6-8 months
off! That's a perverse incentive right there, and one that's a heckuva lot harder to fix than the problems we have in America!

Which requires the least effort- running everything yourself, or letting others run everything, and stepping in when they do something wrong? If your talents
lie in a different field than the setup you're trying to run, which produces the best result- running it yourself anyway, or letting experts do it for you?

If you're trying to build a bridge, you should have a civil engineer running the operation, because you'll get a strong, solid bridge. You
wouldn't put an artist in charge of building the bridge- at least, not if you wanted it to support its own weight when it was done. If you're teaching
kids, a teacher will have a better idea of how to run a school than a lawyer will; the teacher knows what teachers do, and what they need to do it, whereas the
lawyer would give the teachers at the school what he thought they needed, instead. So why do all these people want to
put clerks, lawyers, politicians and accountants in charge of health care? What experience do these bureaucrats have with treating the sick? What motivation
do they have to get it right? A doctor interacts with his patients face-to-face- why should we give bureaucrats, who don't see people, but statistics-
more authority than the doctors in determining what treatments to use and not use? If an American doctor screws up, and a patient dies because of it, it has a
direct negative impact on him. If an NHS bureaucrat makes a decision that kills 10,000 patients, will he even know? Wouldn't he be commended, or even
promoted, for cutting costs?

If I had a choice between entrusting my health to a first-year med school student, or putting it in the hands of a government agency, I'd choose the med
student every time.

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Valles]

Personally, I think that having an actual system for health care, as opposed to a snakepit of competing corporations, would have one priceless advantage: it would make it infinitely more difficult for those who delude themselves into thinking that ungoverned societies and institutions produce anything but anarchy and suffering to damage the orderly process, since corruption would naturally serve as a lightning rod for such attitudes and ground them out beneficially.

Corporate operations - which is what we have, and which we are not otherwise going to be able to get rid of - directly and strongly reward people for disassociating actions taken in the corporate name from their personal morality and responsibility. Corporate operations rarely look beyond the next quarter, and if they do, only to the next year. Health care, pensions, water without toxic waste in it, any kind of accountability, - all of them come right out of the almighty fucking bottom line, and maybe one in a hundred companies would provide them without a Federal fucking gun to their head and those'd be lucky to survive the short term because those truly insane 'choices' are good for that, god help us all.

Damn straight I'll trust a bureaucrat over that. No, his decisions aren't going to be perfect, and no, they're probably not going to be very efficient.

But fuck, man, anyone who expects anything perfect out of human beings is a loon, and compared to umpty-bazillion automobiles and ten times as many tons of trash wasted every day, a few paper pushers aren't even worth noticing.
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Epsilon]

Bluemage wrote:

---

A person who dies waiting for care, or because the government won't pay for the care he needs, is just as dead as a person who is refused care. It's
the same problem- people aren't getting the care they need- but we're getting there from opposite directions.

The number of people who are outright refused medical care far outnumbers the number of people who die
waiting for medical care. Once again, Canadian health care is objectively better than American health care. period. Every peer
reviewed study says so.

If I had a choice between entrusting my health to a first-year med school student, or putting it in the hands of a government agency, I'd choose the med
student every time.

There is nothing stopping the government from hiring doctors to run their health care. In fact, that's what they do.

What you are doing is arguing that the government can NOT run health care. This is manifestly untrue, as demonstrated by every
developed country that isn't the United States.

--------------------

Epsilon

[ECSNorway]

Consider New Zealand. There, a government agency called Pharmac evaluates the efficacy of new drugs, decides which drugs are cost-effective, and negotiates the prices to be paid by the national health-care system. These functions are separate in most countries, but thanks to this integrated approach, Pharmac has indeed tamed the national drug budget. New Zealand spent $303 per capita on drugs in 2006, compared with $843 in the United States. Unfortunately for patients, Pharmac gets those impressive results by saying no to new treatments. New Zealand "is a good tourist destination, but options for cancer treatment are not so attractive there right now," Richard Isaacs, an oncologist in Palmerston North, on New Zealand's North Island, told me in October.

And this is one of the largest reasons that drug and treatment costs in America are so high - we're making up for the discounts other countries get, out of our own pockets. This, and the high cost of malpractice insurance - itself driven by the massive need for tort reform in malpractice cases - are the primary reasons cost of care is so high, and insurance companies are so reluctant to pay for expensive treatments.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[CattyNebulart]

Switching to public health care removes some of those negatives, but it also destroys many of the positive aspects of the American system.

The only positives of the American system are for a)Big Pharma companies, b)Health Insurance companies. unfortunatly those two have quite a lobby so i don't see much hope for fixing it while congress works like a third world Kleptocracy.

a large part of why the cost is so high is also the cost of marketing, the pharmaceutical industry gets 80% of it's revenue from governments, and yet the research and manufacturing of drugs is less than 45% of their expenses, and 2/3'rds of their research is on how to bypass patents held by other companies. Their biggest expense is marketing. it seems to me as if governments could cut back their payments (ie demand lower prices) quite a bit still before governments are just paying for research and production.

Also a big portion of the price is due to monopoly granted by patent, since it's not as if people usually can choose not to pay. It's why many big health plans can demand that drugs by priced at a few percent of what the drug company would price it at, because even at that point the company is still turning a profit by selling the drug.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."