In theory, healthcare costs shouldn't go up because of Gardasil if it eliminates the far more expensive need for cancer treatments. Premiums would go up regardless. Prevention savings don't seem to be realized when it comes to premiums. There's always a new excuse found for needing more money.
Complicating the picture is that not every case of HPV caught results in a cancer case, let alone a death. Remember how syphilis used to be such a frightening venereal disease because there was no way to combat the bacteria — then penicillin put a screeching halt to that problem? Why did HPV related cancer seize the limelight as a venereal disease of concern only after Gardasil and similar products saw the light of day?
I’d say better to permit insurers to give a discount to women who have had an HPV immunization at their own cost.
Is Romney better, even in claimed principle, on the immigration and national sovereignty issue than is Perry? That’s the chief way that Bachmann outshines Perry.
I think Bachmann will support Romney, although it’s really a pity. I saw her speak once and she was great, but apparently she hired a consultant who told her all the wrong things. That said, she should have had enough vision on her own to tell the consultant to go jump in a lake.
One thing I didn’t like about her was that I felt she (like Palin) was waiting for “permission,” although I wasn’t very clear on where this permission was going to come from. When I saw her speak in DC, she had great ideas and seemed to be speaking from what she knew. But more and more, she’s turned into a “candidate,” but since she never had her own program very clear, exactly what she was running on got a little blurry and obviously lost the public interest.
That said, Romney has bunches of bucks and he can buy this election. Perry has some monied backers, but I think people like Palin, Cain and Bachmann have none, and there was probably little chance that they would emerge as candidates.