You read it first, kids- John Navas tells you not to bother acquiring skills. Of course, John has waltzed through life without any skills- he'd have to be about 120 years old to have even minimal skills in all of the things he's boasted about being an expert on in the last few years.
Open mouth, insert foot:
[one] of my points is that the financial makeup of the healthcare industry has changed massively over that period of time, now ceding a great deal of our personal health decisions to insurance companies, for example.
This doesn't necessarily have to be.
Neither does this have to be. Many drugs are much cheaper than they were 30 years ago, and many of the recent drugs (ie anti-depressants and antibiotics) are highly over- prescribed.
Nice try.
The massive multi-billion-dollar advertising industry is a testament to the fact that people are indeed quite susceptible to advertising.
Nice try to trivialize my position. Keep trying.
Seriously, you make no logical sense. Assuming that a person must be either 100% "pro government intrusion" or "anti government intrusion" is simplistic, either self-serving or childish nonsense.
Yes, and DDT "has benefits", but that doesn't change the fact that it's considered deadly and dangerous enough to be banned for agricultural use in the USA and many other places.
1) The study cited was compiled by a professor of marketing. Excuse me if I take it with a very small grain of salt. 2) The study cited was based on the New Zealand market, one of only two places at the time (other was the USA) that direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising was legal. (can you guess why the other 269 world nations have banned it, including the USA up until very recently?) More specifically, the New Zealand market is not the USA market. 3) The study identified 3 groups of doctors, the older and more experienced who tended to vehemently oppose such advertising, the younger and typically female who were inclined to support it, and a group of "nonchalants". From this, the authors concluded that it justified the advertising. Rather strange conclusion. 4) The study itself points out a preceding and widely-covered call by medical academics in New Zealand to ban this sort of advertising.When you have a document that purports to prove that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages in the US market, based on the opinion of the experienced medical community, then maybe I'll bother to pay attention.
I cannot possibly compete with your ability to patronize the "average person", or to discount their concerns.
A red-herring that is not being disputed here.
You are making some sort of bizarre connection that the mere presence of pharmaceutical advertising somehow makes patients "informed" who can't be otherwise. (Which would be utterly laughable if it weren't such a dangerous and bizarre logical fallacy.)
Ah, more quotes from the Heritage Foundation. Forgive me if I immediately relegate them to the bit-bucket, as their bias is well-known, as has been mentioned here many times before.
Nonetheless, just to prove the point one more time for our friends in alt.cellular, alt.cellular.verizon and alt.cellular.cingular and alt.internet.wireless:
This is a self-serving twisting of the facts, because the claim has never been simply that "wages are declining", but that the living standard is declining for the lower and middle classes, which is a well-established fact.
A lot of nice posturing that says nothing. Once again, when you start using terms like "unfulfilling", you get to define the term almost any way you want. The simple fact is that despite much greater participation in the job market by women over the period, real household income has been either stagnant or declining. (when taking into consideration the cost of living) In other words, the living standard is deteriorating for everyone but the very rich, where it has been increasing dramatically. This is no secret to anyone who has seen the numbers.
Actually it would under normal circumstances be pretty much an impeachable offense, given the massive deception engaged in by the US administration to "sell" this fishing expedition. Now Bush wants to install a military regime at the CIA to further ensure that there is less objective analysis going on over there, to be replaced by more self-serving pap generated primarily to support executive-branch policy objectives.
(The gutless Congress comes in for their fair share of the blame by allowing themselves to be blackmailed into supporting this escapade for fear of being viewed as "unpatriotic", not to mention the lapdog media for similiarly being cowed into complacency and complicity by not doing their job and exposing all the hypocrisy and lies.)
Which probably explains why, despite massive geographical and other disadvantages that Japan has compared to the USA, Toyota is now poised to take away from GM the title of largest carmaker in the world (held by GM for the last 75 years), and foreign (primarily Japanese) carmakers now have a higher share of the cherished automobile market in the USA than ever before in history.
The "US business model" has various positive aspects (and certain negative ones), but such empty hubris as demonstrated above does little to help foment objective discourse on the matter.
Let's see who on the "far left" is quoting their research approvingly. Cites?
Exactly. There he goes with those contradictions again.
Hell, we'll settle for someone from the center, just not from the far right.
So-called "foundations" that are far-right or far-left, have no respect from anyone other than their small hard-core group of special-interests.
That actually makes no sense. If a company tries to "exploit" workers, then it tends to do less well in the market. But there is no "exploitation" in any event, since these people are working there by choice, which wouldn't be the case if there were better alternatives. You're disrespecting those workers by claiming otherwise.
Thus far there has been no showing of any respected authority that has seriously questioned the facts presented in this paper. Let us know if and when you can find any. Otherwise this is just argument by innuendo.
Translation: I have nothing that refutes these facts, so I'll just try to dismiss them out of hand.
It's actually just a contention unless and until you come up with something factual to back it up. In fact that paper is based on hard data on growth in
*real* earnings, adjusted for inflation, an accepted measure of living standards.Sorry, but that's not what the hard data shows. *Real* wages (which don't reflect the rich) have been increasing.
Irrelevant. What really matters is the bigger (overall) picture, not the ills of a couple of dinosaur automakers, and the successes of Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, etc., more than outweigh the troubles at US automakers.
It actually shows how we tend to overreact to short term issues, missing the bigger picture.
Hardly. It simply means that advertising is needed to get a message out.
Nope. I simply don't agree with your definition of "fairness", which is anything but fair.
Not even close to a good analogy.
Meaningless dismissal #4482. That author, Dr Lynne Eagle, is a senior lecturer in marketing in the College of Business at Massey University. The co-author, Professor Kerry Chamberlain, is head of the Psychology section at Albany at Massey University. Both are eminently well-qualified for such a study (certainly more so than either you or me).
It has far more to do with self-preservation by the medical profession than with any real respect for patients, much like the ban on importing prescription pharmeceuticals.
You haven't shown any meaningful difference.
Dr Eagle says doctors with positive attitudes to DTC advertising tended to be younger and female which probably reflects a change in doctor patient relationships. "It has been noted that patients as consumers are seeking to move away from the traditional relationship where ?doctor knows best? and patients have no input into treatment decisions, to become informed on treatment options and involved in decision making."
...
Doctors found advertised medications often stimulated patients to bring up a concern that might otherwise not be discussed, leading to the diagnosis of underlying factors.
"A patient asking about Viagra might give the GP a chance to discuss the causes of erectile dysfunction, which often has a medical basis, and detect previously undiagnosed problems," Dr Eagle said.
"Patients also found the advertising was a prompt to take medication regularly and would go on the Internet after their condition had been diagnosed to become better informed."
" Debating drug advertising"
Two surveys from within the University indicate professional and public support for direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs.
The findings offset a recent survey and subsequent recommendation to the Government by the University of Otago?s School of Medicine to ban DTCA, legal in New Zealand since 1981.
Professor Philip Gendall and Associate Professor Janet Hoek from the Department of Marketing at the Palmerston North campus have conducted several studies into DTCA and question the validity of the Otago survey.
"In our opinion, the Otago survey of doctors was seriously biased by comments made in the cover letter that preceded the survey. This has many of the hall-marks of what is called ?push-polling?; a practice designed to shape respondents? answers by using information weighted in favour of a particular outcome."
Professors Hoek and Gendall?s work suggests New Zealand consumers are opposed to bans on DTCA, discerning about the information presented in advertising, and find DTCA useful.
"We are currently undertaking a series of in depth interviews with GPs, and we believe the views of GPs are more complex than the Otago survey reveals. It is important to note that the Otago survey comprised only 13 attitude questions, none of which was explored or probed in any way. We believe this methodology is fundamentally unsuitable for the exploration of complex issues such as professionals? views on DTCA."
Professors Hoek and Gendall have also undertaken a major mail survey of the New Zealand public?s views on DTCA. A sample of over 600 respondents resulted in a 70 percent response opposing a ban on DTCA, while only 11 percent supported it.
...
"There is no evidence from either study indicating DTC advertising should be curtailed," Dr Eagle says.
John,
You are off-topic in ALL of the newsgroups that you have impolitely cross-posted this discussion to.
Just a "friendly" reminder, as you are so quick to remind us in such cases.
Do as I say, not as I do? ;)
Did you similarly "remind" everyone else? ;)
Oh John, Grow up.
-Steve
I suggest you take your own advice. ;)
Have a nice day.
Are you girls done? Y'know, all you guys who just can't let someone else have the last word on a stupid ass, immature, off-topic thread should realize that what you're doing is turning off people like me who
*might* be interested in what you have to say on other topics that just might be useful or relevant.Pretty damn soon if this is all you girls can do, I'm just gonna bag it.
The alternative is to use a newsreader that can ignore (kill) specific people (like Steve) that almost never post anything of value and/or specific threads (like this one) with too little signal-to-noise to suit you. A good tipoff to the later is a Subject (like this one) that's a personal attack. My own favorite newsreader is Forte Agent , albeit an old version. Another good choice is Mozilla Thunderbird, since it's also one of the best email agents.
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