@Lash,
Lash wrote:Why didn't we use the one developed by the World Health Organization?? Germany did and look at their numbers.
The CDC wanted to come up with a more ambitious test that would also catch close relatives of COVID-19.
Their test was a little too broad though, and it had to be scrapped because it was coming up with too many false positives. So their time spent on it was wasted, and they had to go back to the drawing board and start over.
@oralloy,
Obviously not true because Germany is using it and the proof is in the pudding.
@Lash,
G...I...L...E...A...D. Profits before all, this is why we didn't use the WHO test.
Quote:The Big Biotech will “work to ensure affordability and access so that remdesivir is available to patients with the greatest need” if it’s approved, CEO Daniel O’Day wrote in an open letter Saturday. But with a large pool of potential patients, that still leaves plenty of room for revenue.
The pledge comes shortly after Gilead rescinded its request for an FDA orphan drug designation, which comes with the perk of seven-year market exclusivity. Critics lamented that it would allow Gilead to charge high prices for remdesivir for years.
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/gilead-ceo-pledges-affordable-remdesivir-as-promising-covid-19-drug-expects-clinical-data
@layman,
Who would rely on China, to begin with, I ask ya?
Quote:On March 7, FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn stressed the importance of quality, noting that diagnostic tests in some other countries have been flawed. He did not specify which countries he meant, but China’s test may have produced lots of false positives, according to a recent publication by Chinese researchers.
@Lash,
Lash wrote:Obviously not true because Germany is using it and the proof is in the pudding.
Germany is using the CDC's test?
@layman,
This Wapo article chronicles all the CDC ****-ups in developing a test. It also notes:
Quote:But even a small firm, like Landt’s, is capable of producing a lot of high-quality tests and could have helped the efforts in the U.S., Landt said. His company, known as TIB for TIB Molbiol Syntheselabor GmbH, based their tests on the methods the German researchers published in January.
Though it has just 55 employees globally, TIB had experience in developing tests for SARS and the swine flu. It began producing the coronavirus tests in mid-January, just days after the Chinese researchers posted the virus’s genome, Landt said. It can produce about a million of them a week.
Which is it? Let private companies do what they do best, or be sure that the incompetent government officials, who pretend to "work" in a medicare for all system, control everything?
Commies have one answer. Other's don't have the same answer.
@Brand X,
I didn't know the test kits were tied to the Gilead antiviral.
But, I should know it's tied to $$$.
I just want to throw up.
@Lash,
Lash wrote:But, I should know it's tied to $$$.
I just want to throw up.
I don't know the current figures, but at one time 60% of every tax dollar allocated to entitlement welfare programs went to the bureaucrats who doled it out. Nobody works for free, and that includes the over-bloated government.
But they are notoriously lazy, corrupt, and inefficient. One guy at the EPA got paid millions of dollars over an 8-10 year period when he never showed up for work for even a day. And he sho nuff aint the onliest one.
There's no incentive for a dull bureaucrat to be productive or efficient. They get paid just to show up--if they show up.
No one can fire them. That's why they're there. They wouldn't last a week in a private company.
Quote:DOJ's FISA report contradicts claims by Dems
New findings by the Justice Department inspector general that the FBI has repeatedly violated surveillance rules stood in stark contrast to the years of assurances from top Democrats and media commentators that bureau scrupulously handled Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants -- and prompted Republican lawmakers to caution that the FBI seemingly believes it has "carte blanche to routinely erode the liberties of Americans without proper justification."
The DOJ watchdog identified critical errors in every FBI wiretap application that it audited as part of the fallout from the bureau's heavily flawed investigation into former Trump advisor Carter Page, who was surveilled in part because of a largely discredited dossier funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). An FBI lawyer in that case even falsified a CIA email submitted to the FISA court in order to make Page's communications with Russians appear nefarious, the DOJ inspector general found; and the DOJ has concluded that the Page warrant was legally improper.
But, the DOJ's new assessment indicated that FISA problems were systemic at the bureau and extended beyond the Page probe. In four of the 29 cases the DOJ inspector general reviewed, the FBI did not have any so-called "Woods files" at all....The other 25 applications contained an average of 20 assertions not properly supported with Woods materials; one application contained 65 unsupported claims. The review encompassed the work of eight field offices over the past five years in several cases.attorneys from the National Security Division comb through the application to verify all the assertions made in it.
Under proper 'Woods procedures' attorneys from the National Security Division comb through the application to verify all the assertions made in it.
Grassley added: "Based on the inspector general’s audit, the flawed Page case appears to be the tip of the iceberg. Not a single application from the past five years reviewed by the inspector general was up to snuff. That’s alarming and unacceptable.
Nevertheless, for several years, Democrats and other analysts at The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN have repeatedly claimed that key claims in the Clinton-funded anti-Trump dossier had been corroborated and that the document was not critical to the FBI's warrant to surveil Page. Horowitz repudiated that claim, with the FBI's legal counsel even describing the warrant to surveil Page as "essentially a single source FISA" wholly dependent on the dossier.
The cheese-eaters cheer on all civil rights violations so long as Trump is the victim. Their hatred overwhelms any possibility of rational analysis.
@Lash,
That is simply not true. the government Bureaucrats who run Medicare set arbitrary limits on what they will pay for various services including hospitalizations. These rates are well below what most first line insurance Plans pay and in effect private, self funded and commercially insured people are subsidizing Medicare patients. In principal that's OK. However an undesirable effect is that hospitals and other service providers are all incentivized , indeed forced to eliminate reserve or surplus capacity and the costs associated with it. We have seen the widespread consolidation of small hospitals into large health care systems. The usual result is lower cost, closer to what Medicare will allow, and significantly reduces reserve capacity foe epidemics such as what we are seeing now.
Under your scenario everyone would have the right to immediate care, but the staff and resources required to provide it would not exist.
Hardly an improvement.
In short it is precisely the Medicare system that has created the lack of reserve capacity to which you refer.
@georgeob1,
the costs charge Americans with privst insurance are substantially higher often several times higher than the same procedures in countries with government controlled health plans.
hSince the medical providers in those countries cannot offset their costs by gouging American insured, they haave to make do with what they charge there to stay in business, which they do. Which invalidates your offset theory..
@layman,
Looks like Trumps long campaign to politicize the DOJ has finally been successfully completed, to the detriment of the country
All insurance providers set limits on what they will pay for services and procedures. This is common practice and has been in the more than 40 years during which I worked in hospitals, and then as a business manager. The medical profession has also a long history of price gouging and billing attempts for procedures which the patient has not consented to. On several occasions on which I have suffered an injury (usually playing baseball--I no longer play baseball), I have received bills for reviews of my x-rays to which I had not consented, and which were allegedly conducted (something which cannot be verified) without my prior knowledge. I have always ignored such billings, or communicated to these sharks that I would not pay. There has never been any collection attempt, not even an attempt in small claims court. They need your signature on a form saying you know what they intend and a separate form to consent. Without the consent form, they don't have a legal leg to stand on.
As a business manager, acting on behalf of my employer who provided medical coverage, I have followed the same procedure, and not only have there been no collection attempts, and no small claims court, the insurer to which we paid premiums has refused to pay, and explicitly threatened fraud processes against these crooks. It's not just phony radiological review claims, either. Doctors will sweep through wards an semi-private rooms in hospitals, look at peoples' charts, make a note--and then send a bill. These clowns never attempt collection if you refuse to pay, something which I have seen again and again over the decades. When insurance providers send them desist orders, they immediately back down, because those providers have experienced legal departments which know how to deal with attempted insurance fraud.
After three years in the Army Medical Corps, I worked in hospitals for three years after my ETS. I finally got out of that in disgust, largely at the padding of bills and phony claims by both individual doctors, doctors' group corporations and hospital corporations. Medical care as big business adds incredibly enormous costs to medical care in the United States, and when combined with the greedy ghouls in big Pharma it is a wonder anyone can afford medical treatment.
The medical care system in the United States is not broken--it functions exactly as intended. Of course, it is intended to fleece the patients, and when insurance providers refuse to pay the padded costs or the phony claims, individuals who know no better end up paying the claims. The hospital corporations and outpatient medical care delivery corporations put vampires to shame when it comes to sucking the life's blood out of their victims.
@Setanta,
That was brilliant dude. For some reason i had you pegged as a limey.
(No offence meant to whoever, the possibilities are endless these days.)
@Setanta,
I worked at an orthotic/prosthetic/surgical supplier/manufacturer for four years , two years of that as their purchasing agent....the profits on everything would choke a horse. I don't remember seeing any margin less than 300% and this was in the mid 80's. These items then would go to orthotic/prosthetic brace shops and hospitals where it got marked up who knows how much more.
Six warehouse workers pulled and packed shipments everyday for international and domestic orders, by end of every work day there would be enough to fill an empty UPS truck. Printing money.
Quote:Russia sending plane filled with medical equipment to US amid coronavirus pandemic
Russia is sending a plane filled with medical equipment to the United States to help fight the coronavirus following a phone conversation between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday.
Trump taking bribes from his owner, Putin, again, eh? Has Schiff heard about this!? Impeach that ************!
Quote:Meghan Markle, Prince Harry's $2.5M security costs to be paid by Prince Charles after Trump refuses
When the couple initially moved to Canada after their infamous “Megxit” announcement earlier this year, there was controversy there over the fact that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had provided them and their infant son, Archie, “intermittent” security.
"It was reported that Harry and Meghan, who left the Kingdom, would reside permanently in Canada. Now they have left Canada for the U.S. However, the U.S. will not pay for their security protection. They must pay!" Trump exclaimed.
The outlet claimed Markle and Harry's protection could cost up to £4 million in total per year, which translates to nearly $5 million.
Once again, Trump pisses all over our supposed "allies," eh? Obama would have paid, gladly. Impeach that ************!
