Posted on 05/05/2018 9:58:31 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
A six-year-old girl has written to Theresa May asking if she and her sister can have a new drug that could potentially prolong their lives.
Both Imogen Fare, 6, and her two-year-old sister Annabelle suffer from cystic fibrosis (CF).
Imogen, who lives with her family in Conwy, Wales, has written to Theresa May asking for access to the drug Orkambi.
She wrote: ‘Dear Mrs May, I have C.F. so does my little sister Annabelle. We would really like Orkambi to keep us well and help us live a long and happy life.’
‘We both like swimming and playing outside love from Imogen and Annabelle.’
(Excerpt) Read more at metro.co.uk ...
I'm sorry, Mr. jhastey, but you seem under-qualified to be a FReeper.
Please apply at DU - you seem a perfect fit.
Well, the problem is that Theresa May is only giving out or withholding expensive treatments in a ministerial sense.
It’s the ratepayers and taxpayers of the UK who will give this kid Orkambi, or not, at $259 000/year.
The way Parliament decided to deal with questions like this in 1948 was to set an annual budget for hospital, physician, nursing, and medication services, and to stick to it. There is, of course, a free market in such services, but it’s cash on the barrelhead and the taxpayers do not pick up part of the tab.
We have chosen a different path, starting in 1965. Here, the share of individuals for whom the taxpayers cover some or all of these services is meant to increase, slowly, year by year. This is true whether or not you have “insurance”, because suppliers (hospitals and drug companies) charges for what they do include paying the cost of people who do not/will not pay.
So, in the UK you have Alfie Evans. In the US, you have $20 trillion in public debt, constant money printing and borrowing, and increasing intimidation of doctors to deliver “quality” (conforming to what the government wants) medicine.
The great virtue of our system is that there’s no one for this kid to write a letter to.
> the patent protection does not last very long. In addition to all of that, Americans end up subsidizing drug development costs, since some countries fix drug prices <
Good points. And I’ve read that some countries (I’m looking at you, India) essentially blackmail the pharmaceutical companies. Sell your new drug for cheap in our country, or we’ll just ignore your patent and make a generic equivalent ourselves.
Maybe the answer is to greatly extend the patent protection. Give the companies more time to turn a profit.
I have seen that suggestion, I don’t remember where.
It probably is a moot point anyway. As we sink further into the pit of “socialized medicine,” drug development will grind to a halt. No one is going to sink billions of dollars into development if the government forces them to sell at “affordable” prices.
“Maybe the government could help fund promising new drug research”
They already fund a lot. It is money down a rathole. This is not the answer.
With medicine, we are now at the crossroads of technology, government, and morality.
You more than likely cannot have all three involved at the same time.
Are you willing to fund transplants and advanced treatments for the third worlds sick children?
If not you are immoral.
If so, you are allowing government to steal from taxpayers immorally.
Doctors and hospitals pretend to do charity cases, but that money comes from paying customers. It isn’t charity.
Britain is facing this issue before we are because they are socialists, and thus immoral and uncaring.
We also face a similar fate.
Everybody cannot get every advanced treatment that they want every time without delay.
If you cannot afford to pay for a treatment yourself, don’t expect someone who cannot afford their own health insurance to pay for it through increasing premiums, or taxation.
Socialism fails at a much lower level, but we will, at some point allow treatments to be withheld costing lives. It is inevitable.
Sorry sweetheart, this is modern Britain, an extension of Nazi Germany. My recommendation is your family get out of Britain as soon as you can. Otherwise you too will come face to face with Dr Joseph Mengele’s students.
“A more apt question is why the US Government allows a pharmaceutical company to charge $140,000 per patient a year for a medication.”
Sorry, my copy of the US Constitution doesn’t say a word about the Federal Government having the specific enumerated power to control the price of goods.
L
> They already fund a lot. It is money down a rathole. This is not the answer. <
Based on a post by exDemMom (#39), I think I’ve got the answer. Change the law to greatly extend patent protection on new drugs. Since there’d be more time to make a profit, there’d be less of a need to mark prices up.
Of course this will never happen. Any extension would be opposed by the liberals. They would never give any break to those filthy, heartless pharmaceutical companies.
ML/NJ
It’s best not to call attention to yourself while in a British hospital. One word - Alfie.
No one here on earth is “God”—but the State who plays god and all this “socialism” completely destroys freedom of all people, including doctors, ministers, etc., but especially of the patient. Socialism DESTROYS agency always and should be unconstitutional especially in America with our Bill of Rights (from God) only.
No one has the right to “play” god with life—yet, we allow the State to do it constantly—to decide life and death in diabolical ways—to have “sperm banks” so they can sell children and “create” life for abominable people who deny children the possibility of their Natural Rights of a biological mother and father, conceived in love-—and it is all pure Marxism, anti-Naturral family, anti-human (anti-Christian) and it paints “man” as “god” which he never can be. These evil people allow chimeras and cloning—abominations in experiments with human life and the deliberate killing of human beings, even brutally killing babies in the womb-—which should be outlawed and condemned (but they celebrate it as a “right” (natural—of course—ha ha) and control billions of dollars to create ways to kill billions on earth as they sell babies to evil, dysfunctional people who should never ever have access to children whom they will destroy mentally and spiritually.
The Socialist “health care” is death care only, and a few elites (non-doctors) control who lives and dies (their puppets), and soon, who will “produce” life (endgame is Brave New World/transhumanism of Huxley’s).
But the elites with their satanic families live the longest and healthiest, of course, in luxury—stealing from the masses through their unconstitutional Systems and money-laundering Foundations.
Socialism is SATANISM, an evil, unconstitutional religion at best...and should be abolished. It is based on slavery (Marxism) and total dehumanization of man. We need to eliminate ALL socialism (slavery) which has taken over everything—even in America which is forcing the religion of Satanism on the masses, creating bureaucracies that steal billions as they control we-the-people-—just masses and cattle to be herded, controlled and killed when expedient. Socialism/Marxism is a diabolical, unconstitutional “SYSTEM” (worldview of slavery) of mass control and HAS to be ended.
All “laws, rules and regulations” which are anti-thetical to the Constitution are “null and void” (Justice Marshall). We have a Natural Duty to disobey every single unconstitutional law, as stated at Nuremberg Trials. A Just Law can NEVER promote evil, vile uses of human beings and deny their Natural Rights which only come from God—never the State. This includes the Natural Rights of babies in the womb. Justice is always the Queen of Virtue (Christian Virtue only) and Natural Law Theory is the basis of our Rights which preclude governments since they originate with God/Jesus Christ.
Oh-—but cattle are only group-”thinkers”. Their minds programmed and made into Pavlov’s dogs—totally controlled by the State’s evil communist-controlled “education” System and the CIA (government) controlled perverts in Hollywood, the ones raping all the boys and raping the Minds (and Souls) of everyone-—so they remain stupid, addicted, immoral and distracted from the Truth of what is happening to our cities and the System which is rotting the bodies and souls of our own children. (And the masses are too hypnotized by MSM (all controlled by the CIA satanists/Hegelian Dialectic) to force us into total slavery-—and we continue to watch Hannity and Rush who talk a good talk but affect NOTHING-—the Overton Window just keeps shifting to annihilation.
Sorry for the rant—but just felt like venting again. It is so obvious what the evil satanists (Deep State) has done since they bribed Pres. Wilson to create a mass of unthinking cattle to be herded and completely controlled and bribed and we just rehash the same old, same old Hannity issues——YET, NOTHING CHANGES!!!!!!!! WHY IS THAT?????? Could HANNITY and Rush L. be part of the Hegelian Dialectic (or else they would have been killed or destroyed decades ago—along with their children). The Deep State kills and destroys whomever gets in their “Way”-—like Andrew Brietbart and JFK.....that is their M.O.-—anyone who has a platform will be controlled or else they will have to be killed like Scalia. The Deep State will get their NWO of total slavery as the evil Bush stated in the 90s. These people are extremely dangerous and evil psychopaths and they put in this evil, vile Socialist, so-called “health Care” which is only a Death Panel controlled by elites who target those they want to kill.
Theresa May: “Forget it kid, we’re saving the money to have Prince Phillip’s other hip replaced.”
What a scam. UK hospital doctors are paid by the government, so of course will follow government rules lock-step. UK doctors taking the Hippocratic Oath is almost as absurd as Comey, McCabe, and the rest of the crooked FBI officials swearing to uphold the law, and support and defend the U.S. Constitution.
Harry and Meghan claim to be such humanitarians. Prove it by getting married in a small civil ceremony and giving the millions to help this little girl and others like her. Not holding my breath.
A **six-year-old** girl has written? must be a very smart kid.
If these children really want a chance, their asking the wrong person. They and the media should put on a dog and pony show asking Massachusetts-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals in every available venue for the drug, and Vertex should give it free of charge, the media exposure and good will would far out weigh the costs for them.
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