Another Burning Question

What I want to know is, who the fuck goes to Florida in fucking early September? That's like going to Alaska in March.

The Most Painful Thing Megan Has Ever Done

She admitted she was wrong!

OK, well, not really. She is almost unequivocal... but... then she equivocates.

So it looks like I got taken, at least in the sense that there's probably no way to come up with an estimate that I would find acceptable

Megan was lied to and swallowed it like a dog eating a pill wrapped in baloney but it doesn't matter because it's impossible to know the actual, right answer. Therefor, Megan could, in theory, be correct.

I'm now adding this to my long list of "dark numbers", with the best available proxy being the global sales of New Chemical Entities. Two thirds of those, not more than three quarters, occur in the United States, versus about a quarter in Europe. You can argue about what the fixed costs are in various places, but as my correspondent implies, given how much cross border activity there is, the problem seems to be indeterminate, so I'll stick with a number we know. This doesn't really change my assessment of the problem, since 2/3 is still pretty overwhelming, but statistics matter.

Statistics matter; That is why Megan bases her argument on statistics that she just fucking makes up on the spot. Statistics are so important that -- if real ones aren't around -- one must substitute fake ones and count on the idiocy of one's readers.

On a side note, the reason I said 80% was a hypothetical in the Washington Post chat is that . . . well, I didn't. I forgot that conversation, and thought the commenter was referring to this post.

Um, huh? I think I know what she's trying to say here but I'll be fucked if that has anything to do with her writing. She seems to be saying that she didn't say that pharma makes 80% of its revenue in the US. She claims, instead, that she said pharma makes 80% of its profits. Frankly that doesn't change a damn thing, but it's interesting to note how nonsensical her defense is, regardless. She claims to have stated that something was a hypothetical because she didn't remember saying it, but if she couldn't remember saying it how did she know that she was talking about profit and not revenue? When someone asks me about something I don't remember saying I don't just wing it and say "Well, really I was referring to the letter "u" and not the pronoun "you." Instead, I say "I don't remember saying that."

These are the perils of typing thousands of words a week, and also, of getting old.

Dang, she's getting old. I know, right? All the 37 (or whatever) year olds I know are all leaving their fucking dentures in their fucking car ashtrays by accident, and shit, so, like, how can we blame her?

Hey Megan, maybe it's time to fucking retire.

A Little Bit of Sanity

this piece is why I love George Saunders, tho the rest of his extraordinary work also helps a lot. Hopefully most of you have read it, but if you haven't, please, please, please do. And if you have, do yourself a favor and read it again.

Manifesto; A press release from PRKA

Last Thursday, my organization, People Reluctant To Kill for an Abstraction, orchestrated an overwhelming show of force around the globe.
At precisely 9 in the morning, working with focus and stealth, our entire membership succeeded in simultaneously beheading no one. At 10, Phase II began, during which our entire membership did not force a single man to suck another man's penis. Also, none of us blew himself/herself up in a crowded public place. No civilians were literally turned inside out via our powerful explosives. In addition, at 11, in Phase III, zero (0) planes were flown into buildings.
During Phase IV, just after lunch, we were able to avoid bulldozing a single home. Furthermore, we set, on roads in every city, in every nation in the world, a total of zero (0) roadside bombs which, not being there, did not subsequently explode, killing/maiming a total of nobody. No bombs were dropped, during the lazy afternoon hours, on crowded civilian neighborhoods, from which, it was observed, no post-bomb momentary silences were then heard. These silences were, in all cases, followed by no unimaginable, grief-stricken bellows of rage, and/or frantic imprecations to a deity. No sleeping baby was awakened from an afternoon nap by the sudden collapse and/or bursting into flame of his/her domicile during Phase IV. ...

Click the link, read the rest. It's barely an exaggeration to say this collection of words might be the only reason I stayed something resembling sane through the dark core of the Bush era. George Saunders's writing makes me feel a little better about being human, even when he's being painfully honest about our shared flaws.

Annals Of Hate Mail

Mark Ames of The Exiled fields a few missives from Friends of Megan, & links to a horridly personal & insulting (I entirely approve, of course.) piece he wrote about Megan's ancestry.

Floridians Have Been Warned

Funny. Andrew Sullivan vacates, & three or four elves fill in for him; Megan goes on spring break for Labor Day (?) and not a substitute elf, over-grown or not, to be seen!

Not complaining in the least, of course. Everyone here can always use a break from obsessive stalking. And McArdle's recent output indicates she needs a leave of absence from herself, & those awful crazy lefties that she just can't talk to any more.

Rest for the Wicked

In honor of Megan's abscence, I bring you cat porn:



(Via.)

Noble Pfizer's Profits Suffer

Pfizer shamed with $2.3bn fine for marketing fraud

You know what this means...

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

TOMORROW!

Equivalent Megan

Tech Talk:

I'm flying to Florida and I had to tell you about it so badly that I wasted 10 bucks on wifi that I can't use because my laptop sucks. OMG, you can get internet on the plane now!

A Quote Worth Highlighting

even tho I included it just below, I think it needs a chance to stand alone.

I mean, I think that, to a much greater extent than most liberals think, insurance companies have largely dealt with this problem by throwing up their hands and erring on the side of approval, which is why health care costs are going up so fast. But one could certainly argue that private insurers are going to have to crack down harder on this stuff soon.

See how much you can learn by talking to paid industry flacks?
The problem is insurance companies are too generous.
I.... what.......
my brain hurts.

Shorters

comparatively speaking. There's way too much on the plate for each post to get an extended treatment.

Numbers Game:

Yes, I am aware that reality television is not "real", but heavily stage managed. I have no idea if the show is representative of their life, much less life in their very religious subculture--indeed, I have some idea what the editors are slicing out, so I'm quite sure it isn't an accurate representation. Nonetheless, when I'm really exhausted, few things are quite as soothing as the champions of the baby olympics.

I like pretty lies.

The Gift of Life:

Megan reads us;

I think one of the genuine problems that liberals will face if they get the comprehensive system they want with some sort of cost-effectiveness review board, is that cost-benefit analyses break down at the margins of life. I'm not concern trolling here; it's just an intellectually fascinating, and politically thorny, problem, which is why Ezra Klein wrote the original post that Julian linked. [my emphasis]

Her point is that when us libruls have taken over health care and set up our death panels we're going to find we have to do cost benefit analysis, and Medicare and the VA provide no examples of how to do this, so we'll have no choice but to ration by killing grandma. She's actually trying to use dying people as props to argue we can't change the system, because.

The Problem With Talking About Health Care:

This comment to my last post is so central to the debate about health care issue that I had to share it:

I'm not sure I wholly understand the argument here.
The idea is that were the government to make some cost-benefit analysis and decide this drug didn't give enough of a benefit to be worth paying for, that would be a bad outcome, yes? How would this differ from a private insurance company making the same choice?
In both cases individuals able to raise the money through outside means would be able to purchase the drug anyway.

No offense to the commenter who I'm sure is a fine and clever human being. But: huh?

She's not paid to understand this kind of incredibly abstract nuance n shit.

I write a post on why superficially bad sounding tradeoffs--$3,500 a month for an extra 12 days of life--might actually be good uses of money. I tried, and I thought succeeded, in keeping the debate entirely on the terms that progressives looking to build a CER agency with some power would be interested in. And I nowhere mention whether this would be better or worse if a private entity were doing it.

Am I wrong to think her goal in writing these last couple of weeks is to provide Susan and us here with good material? The question, dumb lib, is what Megan thinks we should think about her hypothetical situation that is a closed system where nobody can buy extra care out of their own pocket, because. She feels good about her question, why don't you?

I mean, I think that, to a much greater extent than most liberals think, insurance companies have largely dealt with this problem by throwing up their hands and erring on the side of approval, which is why health care costs are going up so fast. But one could certainly argue that private insurers are going to have to crack down harder on this stuff soon.

Those poor insurers have to protect their quadrupled profits. Won't someone think of the dividends?

But I did not comment on the relative awesomeness of private versus public, because regardless of their comparative fabulosity, a public agency is probably a more useful thought experiment to discuss the question Julian asked, which is the limits of the treatments that we think people have a reasonable right to.
It seems almost impossible to get anyone to engage in this kind of discussion. As I replied to him, you have to try to enter an imaginary thought world where not all discussions are instrumental in some larger argument about the level of government intervention in the economy. Where it is possible that I am not simply attempting to subtly maneuver my opponent into accidentally embracing my position so that I can jump out from behind a tree and scream gotcha!

I know, this isn't really a shorter, but holy bugfuck. The failure is on us for not accepting her terms and coming to her conclusions because we're stuck in an imaginary world called reality where private insurers are already engaging in the behaviors Megan describes, while charging so much for coverage most can't afford to buy further treatment out of their own pocket. If we'd just ignore all that we'd naturally come to see she's completely right.

But I wasn't concern trolling, or trying to set up a gotcha.

Hey Megan, let's do a bloggingheads together, it'd be fun and you could show me how you're not concern trolling. My one demand is I get to wear a Dick Cheney mask.
If she's going to reference us so often, she might as well link to us, dammit.
Anyway, again, apparently Medicare and the VA provide no insight into or potential sources of experience with cost benefit analysis. People are too happy with those programs.
Oh, but she's still offended about the concern troll crack;

Sometimes a blog post on cost-benefit analysis is just a blog post on cost-benefit analysis.

It'll be ok, Megan. Ezra will respond to this pity party nicely because theGarance feels bad for you and makes him and you'll get a guest fucking editorial in the WaPo out of it where you can tell many more people that you're not concern trolling while you concern troll.

You Might Be a Lunatic If . . . :

Megan once had a totally real email conversation with a lefty who thought bad things about good daddy Bush and who, after she pretended she agreed with some nitpicking objections, told her how they thought the 08 election would be canceled. She's not going to give you further details like when this convo happened, like if, say, the lib happened to be a former resident of New Orleans emailing her from a toxic FEMA trailer, because only Megan gets to reference massively traumatic events as excuses for saying stupid things like we should physically assault people she disagrees with.
But anyway, this conversation means the left is just like the right. Sure, an overwhelming majority of self described Republicans say they're not sure whether or don't believe that Obama was born in Hawaii, but Megan gets annoyed when you mention stuff like that so it doesn't count. One crazy belief equals and effectively negates the ability to draw any conclusions from the other, no takebacks.

The Government's Role in R&D:

She's not going to talk about rationing, except for a few paragraphs;

I'm sheerly worried about the fact that rationed markets function badly on all levels, including providing for the needy.
I responded to people who were saying that "We have rationing now" to point out that this is a silly reading that has nothing to do with the two major concerns people have with rationing.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it acknowledge its own reflection.
After not talking about rationing Megan gets back to R&D, and wow she makes a great argument. You see, the gubbermint is better at providing a social safety net for the poor than the scattershot efforts of private charity, therefore private industry is better at R&D than the gubbermint. The gubbermint would just worry about developing effective treatments, and not get all caught up in worrying about profitability. That's communist, wrong, evil, bad, and makes Megan cry, so it cannot be. Shit, the government probably wouldn't even consider the marketability of a new drug, and what color the pill should be.
After all, these noble non scientist executives who have already cut R&D outlay in favor of profit taking and dividend issuing are only so noble, and if we were to threaten them with reduced profits they'd make us pay for it by not letting their scientists continue researching promising new drugs, which would be our fault. Even if the Rand paper is right in no way does it argue for a change in the system that these pigfuckers would deny the consumers they claim to be motivated primarily by concern for .7 years of life out of spite. No Gulfstreams, no cure for cancer. This is not extortion, this is a happy market.

Point being, she's not concern trolling.