@Benjy Dempsey:

“The ultimate solution is to take healthcare out of the hands of the private enterprise which cares only for profit.”

Healthcare in Ireland is state owned and look at how well that works. Compare that to the Netherlands where privately run hospitals and private insurance with state oversight results in a far more efficient system.

Unless of course you’re now advocating nationalising drug manufacturers which is a laughable concept.

@Jason Culligan:

The Irish public health system is being deliberately degraded in order to provide profit gouging opportunities for private capital as a former Minister for Health has acknowledged:

“Here is my favourite-ever quote from a politician. It’s from Brendan Howlin, the current Minister for Thrashing the Social Infrastructure. No, it’s not the quote from 2011, just before the election, when he asked for our votes and told us: “We are against water charges.”
No, it’s from an interview Brendan gave about a decade after he was Minister for Health. Being a thoughtful man, he had spent some time reflecting on his experience in coalition. He wondered why he and others had failed to deliver “a first-class public health system”.
He had since realised, he told author Maev-Ann Wren:”If we did that, there would be no reason for sustaining a private system.”
And the right-wing want a thriving private health market. They want, according to Brendan, around 30pc of people to pay for private health products.
However, he said: “In order for that to happen, they really required the public [health] system to be inferior. Why else, if it was first-rate, would people pay for a private system?”
That’s the sound of a penny dropping.”

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/gene-kerrigan/fiddling-while-the-homeless-get-colder-34179628.html

Private capital cares only for profit and has no place in providing for the populations health. This is clearly evidenced by Big Tobacco who spend generations murdering millions for profit while buying scientific opinion to peddle the lie that their poison not harmful.

@Jason Culligan:

“Unless of course you’re now advocating nationalising drug manufacturers which is a laughable concept”

Why not? Most of the costly foundation R&D is already undertaken by the nations as Big Pharma has stepped away from the development of critical new drugs like antibiotics to focus on more profitable areas as explained by the World Health Organization below:

“Another reason is commercial. Antibiotics, in particular, have a poor return on investment because they are taken for a short period of time and cure their target disease. In contrast, drugs that treat chronic illness, such as high blood pressure, are taken daily for the rest of a patient’s life. “Companies have figured out that they make a lot more money selling the latter drugs than they do selling antibiotics,” Spellberg says, highlighting the lack of incentive for companies to develop antibiotics. That’s why many companies have stopped developing antibiotics altogether”

http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/2/11-030211/en/

@Benjy Dempsey:

Your link there actually advocates for keeping R&D with pharmaceutical companies but providing state subsidies and rewards which are not tied to volume of usage:

““Incentives that separate the financial return from the use of a product are the only way to change this behaviour,” said Bergström at a conference held at Uppsala University in September 2010. “Intelligent pull incentives, such as advance commitments and prizes, provide financial rewards to the developer that are not based on the volume of use of the novel antibiotic. With the right set-up, pharma companies will have no incentive to drive use. Maybe they will not do any promotion at all. Use would be agreed with public policy-makers, purchasers and national health systems.””

Nowhere does it say that nations are already undertaking pharmaceutical research, which would be pure nonsense as pharma research can cost upwards of USD 5 billion per marketable drug.

@Jason Culligan:

You had better get straight on to UCC then and let them know they’re engaged in “pure nonsense”
“An international consortium of Cystic Fibrosis clinicians and scientists, led by Dr Barry Plant of the College of Medicine and Health, Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre and the HRB – Clinical Research Facility, University College Cork/Cork University Hospital, Ireland has launched a major EU-funded collaboration project focused on the development and trial of personalized antibiotic treatment for patients with CF during respiratory infections.”

https://www.ucc.ie/en/crfc/news/fullstory-418374-en.html

This is just from countless examples of the nations undertaking critical research which private capital refuses to do. And why would they when the public sector can pick up the tab instead?
As ever under the capitalist model, profit is privatized as the costs are socialized.

@Jason Culligan:

“as pharma research can cost upwards of USD 5 billion per marketable drug”

And as explained to you many times, the financial resources of a currency issuer such as the U.S government are infinitely greater than even the wealthiest private sector agent. There is nothing that the U.S. government cannot afford to buy which is for sale in the dollar. They could purchase their entire domestic pharma industry if they chose to do so.

@Benjy Dempsey: You have no idea what you’re talking about if you think most of the R&D costs are publicly funded. Some basic research is state funded. Most molecule-level research and virtually all clinical development – which is where the overwhelming majority of the costs are incurred – is in private hands. The biotech industry as a whole loses money, and investors are only prepared to get into it because of the possibility of hitting the jackpot.

I can barely be bothered to call you out on your cut-paste lie about the WHO’s position – people should just read the link.

@Benjy Dempsey:

“There is nothing that the U.S. government cannot afford to buy which is for sale in the dollar.”

Your lack of understanding of even basic economic facts is a solid reminder of why the AAA/PBP should never be given a sniff of power.

@Ben McArthur:

“The biotech industry as a whole loses money, and investors are only prepared to get into it because of the possibility of hitting the jackpot”

Ah bless it’s a social service that the Big pharma speculators are running now, eh? The solution is very simple. Take the development of drugs out of the hands of the private sector which cares only for profit and so will inevitably exploit human misery to maximize those profits.
Instead the provision of healthcare should be left to the nation states who face no financial constraints and are not required to operate on a for profit basis. We can let the Big Pharma parasites develop shampoos and deodorants etc where they can’t do much harm.

@Benjy Dempsey:

“The solution is very simple. Take the development of drugs out of the hands of the private sector which cares only for profit and so will inevitably exploit human misery to maximize those profits.”

So, where has this ‘simple solution’ actually worked Wally? Where is your socialist paradise free to print money without the constraints of rampant inflation? Where is this dream land where it can nationalise profit-making enterprises at a whim without any lasting negative drawbacks?

@Jason Culligan:

How any times do I need to correct you Jason?

Here’s 2 economics professors Michael Hudson and Stephanie Kelton explaining exactly the same thing:

“The U.S. government taxes in dollars. It spends in dollars. And it controls its own currency. Why is this important? What are the benefits of issuing your own currency? They are extraordinary…..
The government, when it issues its own currency, and goes into debt in that currency can always pay its debt, can never go broke, can never run out of money. It can afford anything that is for sale in that currency. It doesn’t need to borrow its own currency. And it can set its own interest rate. It does not have to pay what markets want. It does not become a victim to speculation, to bond vigilantes”

http://michael-hudson.com/2012/03/mmt-as-the-austerity-alternative/

@Benjy Dempsey:

What your source fails to mention is that, even though a sovereign currency issuer can theoretically print as much money as it wants whenever it wants, in practice this is not possible as currencies do not exist in an isolated bubble.

Every currency has an associated value. If you produce 20,000 nails and only 10,000 nails are needed, the price of nails drops if all 20,000 are brought to market. Similarly if you print 200 billion dollars and the economy only needs 100 billion then the value of dollars drops if this 200 billion is brought to market.

Now while that wouldn’t be a major issue if every country was simply an isolated entity, in reality international trade exists and devaluing your currency significantly makes foreign trade far more difficult. What company in their right mind would accept Zimbabwean Dollars for example?

@Jason Culligan:

“Where is your socialist paradise free to print money without the constraints of rampant inflation?”

I’m explaining to you how the capitalist nations operate now. Every currency issuing nation on the planet creates their own currency every day as they wish without rampant inflation. They spend the money into existence (usually electronically) at will and then tax it back out of circulation in a continuous flow.
Meanwhile those same nations follow the capitalist ideology which encourages the ransacking of the planet to accumulate the money which they create at will. It’s a truly absurd yet extremely dangerous system.

Capital viciously exploits the majority working class, our public infrastructure, our political systems, our human resources, our environment and anything else it can in the pursuit of money. The capitalist states (and the E.U in our case) are the origin of the money which private enterprise seeks to accumulate.

Yet those same nations (in reality their ruling class) facilitate and enforce this looting of the world in pursuit of the currency which they create at will by pressing computer keyboards. It’s long past time we woke up and replaced that toxic economic system which exploits the majority to collect computer keystrokes with a better model which plans and manages our resources to meet human need.

Jason I entirely agree.

Wrong again Jason:

From the article:
“The last three years since September 2008 have seen the largest money creation and credit creation in history in the United States. And, yet, prices have not gone up at all. That is, consumer prices have not gone up since 1980.”

And of course the U.S is not an isolated entity and trades extensively. As explained to you many many times already significant levels of inflation will only occur when there is chronic excess demand relative to the real capacity of the economy to produce output to meet that demand. This is rarely a concern in a modern economy which produces an excess of virtually all essential goods & services relative to demand. In other words there is no inflation risk in the creation of new money once there is sufficient real wealth of goods and services to absorb that additional money as clearly borne out in the data.

@John R:

You’re entirely wrong then.

@Benjy Dempsey:

“Wrong again Jason:”

I’ve explained this to you a thousand times now. You can print off a trillion dollars tomorrow and have zero impact on the value of the dollar as a whole. It’s only when this trillion dollars is brought to market and made available that it has an impact.

The majority of printing over the last decade has been aimed at shoring up reserves with banks IE it has been printed but it is not in circulation.

“In other words there is no inflation risk in the creation of new money once there is sufficient real wealth of goods and services to absorb that additional money as clearly borne out in the data.”

So you’re admitting that the value of money is affected by supply and demand. Now, say that the top 50 research universities approached the US government with ideas for new drugs and the US government printed off $5 billion per idea. That would result in an extra $250 billion dollars pumped into the economy.

Now, lets say that we’re generous with the facts and estimate that all of these 50 universities manage to get their drug ideas to the Phase I testing, there’s still only a 21.5% success rate at this point.

This means that the government will have pumped $250 billion dollars into the economy to bring 11 drugs to fruition. That is utterly unsustainable.

It’s like talking to a wall or a small child.

@John R: Completely agree.

I feel for you if you have a sick child, but we do not pay our taxes so the cutest kids gets the health budget and the elderly on trolleys are left.

This drug is not going to stop anyone dying, it’s too expensive and should not be currently funded.

@Jason Culligan:

“The last three years since September 2008 have seen the largest money creation and credit creation in history in the United States. And, yet, prices have not gone up at all. That is, consumer prices have not gone up since 1980.”

Which part of that sentence did you not understand Jason?

Credit creation means issuing loans which means putting the money into circulation (or bringing the dollars to market in your terminology)

“This means that the government will have pumped $250 billion dollars into the economy to bring 11 drugs to fruition. That is utterly unsustainable.”

And this nonsense. Let me repeat for the umpteenth time. There is nothing, repeat nothing, that the U.S cannot afford which is for sale in the dollar. That includes the $250 billion in your self serving example. It’s entirely sustainable if the U.S government chooses it to be.

Now understand this. The U.S government has lent and spent $29 trillion into existence since 2008 to bail out the delinquent and corrupt finance sector.

http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_698.pdf

That vast figure is around half of global GDP and yet there has been no significant inflation in the dollar that you’re bleating about. See the elites have no issue with vast levels of money creation once the purpose is to bail them out. It’s only money creation to protect the welfare of ordinary people such as in pharma development that they have an issue with. And all the while useful idiots such as yourself peddle their propaganda for them.

If you suffered CF you would be squealing for the government to make Orkambi available to you. And I’m explaining to you that denying people access to these drugs is ultimately a political/ideological decision, not an economic one.

@Paul Lane: And for the same price of one years treatment we could build a new home for ever homless person in the country. With all this money that is available that is!

Paul the world must be a very simple place for you. So no cost benefit analysis then. Just pay whatever price is necessary irrespective of any other considerations. It’s easy. Just increase taxes. And what about the next drug and the drug after that?

I’ll let you in on something. You can only avoid hard choices so long by throwing money at them. In the end choices have to be made. Just like in our private lives. It is an inexorable fact of life that resources are finite and wants infinite. Resource allocation decisions must be made. This often requires some very hard choices.

Rather than encourage the election of the type of person who is prepared to take those choices and justify them you are typical of the populist approach which decries any hard choice as unnecessary. You live In fantasy world. The furore over this drug is but a microcosm of the many hard choices that have been made in recent years.

The issue really is not whether hard choices must be made but whether the right hard choices have been made. But instead of asking this question, which requires a degree of expertise to critique the choice made in this case, you avoid this altogether by denying that a choice was even necessary. This is simply and fundamentally dishonest never mind misguided.

Make us up Wally when our government will manufacture the equipment at cost price and the scientists will work for peanuts. #AAAFantesyland

Benjy the notion that having your own currency negates hard choices is simple fantasy as the perusal of any economy which has engaged in such a philosophy would suggest. Printing money does not in the medium to long run make a nation richer. It simply devalues the currency with the usual inevitable and disastrous consequences. I cannot understand why you wish to turn ireland into a Zimbabwe. At the root of your argument is an economic fallacy as well as inherent dishonesty which denies the necessity for resource allocation choices at all. If you truly believe that simply printing your own money supply solves all such conundrums then history proves you wrong. You are a populist peddling notions that we can have it all without any price required. Grow up.

Britain or Venezuela part 2 in your reality can indeed make unlimited money for things available in its domestic economy… unfortunately not for drugs like Orkambi.

A Swiss drug, made by a swiss manufacturer who will only sell its products and reports its profits in Swiss francs and whom, if Britain were to inflate its currency several million percent on a limitless social spending binge would demand they be paid for in a hard currency US$ rather than GB£ not worth the paper it’s printed on…

@Drew TheChinaman :):
They could stop paying out massive Pensions to themselves etc and that will equate to a lot more that what they get from cutting dole!

Just how much do you think the government spends on ministerial pensions vs. the social protection budget?

*waits in amusement for answer*

@Paul Lane:

Increasing corporation tax would kill one of the primary reasons for businesses to locate in Ireland. Good luck paying for anything if they up and leave. We cannot collect the Apple tax as that will be tied up for decades with other EU countries seeking their (EU supported) piece of the pie. The wealthy are already taxed so I don’t see your point there. Orkambi costs €160,000 per year so stopping that €20,000 payment won’t have any impact.

Now, if you can provide genuine answers as to where €160,000 per patient per year could be found for Orkambi then I’m sure the HSE would be all ears.

@John R:

@Printing money does not in the medium to long run make a nation richer”

I never claimed that it did if by “richer” you mean more availability of real resources. But it is false to suggest the currency issuer faces a financial constraint when it does not. The only limitation is the availability of real resources (e.g. medicine) for purchase and in this case if Orkambi is for sale in sterling for example then the British stat can always afford to buy it. The money is just a tool to measure and distribute the real resource that are available.

“It simply devalues the currency with the usual inevitable and disastrous consequences. I cannot understand why you wish to turn ireland into a Zimbabwe.”

Wrong. As explained here many times, the Zimbabwe hyperinflation was the result of a lack of real resources and precisely proves the point above. Zimbabwe had a catastrophic collapse in productive capacity due to the civil war and a large foreign currency debt obligation. There was little availability of real goods & services to purchase with the newly created RBZ currency and so hyperinflation followed. (Ditto for Weimar Germany due to the war destroying their industrial capacity and the massive war reparations imposed in gold.

Damaging levels of inflation will only occur when there is chronic excess demand relative to the real capacity of the economy to produce output to meet that demand. This is rarely a concern in a modern economy in peacetime e.g. Britain which produces or ca nimport an excess of virtually all essential goods & services relative to demand. In other words there is no inflation risk in the creation of new money once there is sufficient real wealth of goods and services to absorb that additional money as clearly borne out in the data.

Since the 1980s the global money supply has increased almost exponentially as the deregulated commercial banks massively increased their loan books and expanded the money supply (The money is uncreated as the loans are repaid but at a much slower pace). And yet there has been no hyperinflation that the monetarists continually hyperventilate about.

http://positivemoney.org/how-money-works/how-much-money-have-banks-created/

Now go and inform yourself.

@Drew TheChinaman :):

“A Swiss drug, made by a swiss manufacturer who will only sell its products and reports its profits in Swiss francs”

Nonsense. Vertex is a U.S. company and Orkambi is for sale in sterling. And imports are generally paid for in the currency of the importing nation or did you not understand that?.

Nor is there any linear relationship between monetary expansion and Fx depreciation. If there was then Fx movements would be predictable and they’re not. Or maybe can you send us on the data showing the relationship between monetary expansion and currency depreciation?

@Benjy Dempsey:

“Or maybe can you send us on the data showing the relationship between monetary expansion and currency depreciation?”

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/111/inflation/money-supply-inflation/

Basically the link is generally accepted among expert Economists, however there are external factors which can reduce the impact. If you sourced your knowledge from actual Economists instead of professional bloggers with zero experience in Economics, you’d know that.

@Jason Culligan:

Here’s a tip. It’s probably best not to send on links which undermine your own argument as that article clearly does:

“The US inflation rate was largely unaffected by this increase in the monetary base”.

And I asked about monetary expansion leading to currency depreciation (not inflation) which was the claim made by Drew above.

So I’ll ask again. Can anyone send us on the data showing the relationship between monetary expansion and currency depreciation?

@Benjy Dempsey:

“Here’s a tip. It’s probably best not to send on links which undermine your own argument as that article clearly does:”

Here’s a tip, read the full thing before you cherry pick a sentence which backs you up.

“The Federal Reserve created money to buy bonds from commercial banks. Banks saw a rise in their reserves.

However, commercial banks didn’t really lend this money out. Therefore the growth of the broader money supply didn’t change much”

They explain exactly why that happened. The banks which received the money didn’t lend it. They simply held onto the money and didn’t release it into circulation to shore up their reserves. If said money were to be used in the coming years, however, it will enter circulation and result in an increase in inflation.

Just ask Zimbabwe or Weimar Germany how much of an effect that can have.

@Jason Culligan:

More nonsense Jason. The article just like yourself is unable to point to any dataNow can you send on t showing the link between monetary expansion and Fx depreciation.

Now here’s a link explaining how much the British commercial banks have lent out since the 1970’s thereby massively increasing the money supply in circulation:

“banks have increased the amount of money in the economy by an average of 11.5% a year over the last 40 years.”

http://positivemoney.org/how-money-works/how-banks-create-money/

Now can you send on the link showing the corresponding inflation? Take your time now.

@Benjy Dempsey:

http://inflation.stephenmorley.org/

The average amount of money put into the economy in the UK over the last 40 years by commercial banks was 11.5% per year. The average inflation rate over the last 40 years was 5.88%.

Now, what your link conveniently forgets to mention is that banks can create money when lending however this money must also be destroyed once the loan is repaid. Only the profit made through charging interest remains:

http://positivemoney.org/how-money-works/advanced/how-money-is-destroyed/

Now this is just commercial banks. When it comes to the Central Bank we see a different story. In the 1970′s there was more printing going on (and the inflation rates in that period were similarly high, with 1975 showing an inflation rate above 20%). Up until the 2008 crash, however, printing in the UK slowed down significantly. It was only with the crash that the Central Bank started to print more money however, as with the US, this was primarily used to shore up reserves in British banks and hasn’t entered general circulation.

@Jason Culligan:

So no data then showing the corresponding inflation as the money supply has grown exponentially? (the 11.5 % annual expansion is compounded you see. Not the simple average figure of 5.88% you provided)

See the chart below to get a graphical understanding as the maths seems to be beyond you:

http://positivemoney.org/how-money-works/how-much-money-have-banks-created/

But on the positive side you seem to be finally beginning to grasp some of the economic concepts that I’ve been patiently explaining to you :)

Now to continue with your education.
Question: How long does it take a commercial bank to create a mortgage (new money) of £200k
Answer: About 5 seconds
Question: How long does it take a borrower to pay back a £200k mortgage (and take the money out of circulation)?
Answer: About 20 years.

So we’re agreed now that the commercial banks have vastly increased the money supply since the 1980s and yet there has been little or no inflation above normal levels (the target is generally 2%)

@Benjy Dempsey: What the **** would the reactionary losers in the AAA know about economic theory ???? Let alone enough to sarkily “educate” others.

Try living in the real world first.

@CeannairBlue:

I’m describing the real world economics as it exists now. You’re just too ignorant to understand it. Or more likely you shill for one of the establishment parties and are paid not to understand the realities of the monetary system. Because once that reality is understood it calls the entire basis for capitalism into question.
States spend money into existence and commercial banks lend money into existence. It’s a choice to allow people to die of CF when the drugs to save them are available and the money to buy the drug is created on computer keyboards.

Now, are are you a reactionary fool who is justifying this horror show?

@Benjy Dempsey: Dear God, have a day off ffs.