Ill

I am home ill from something, hopefully just a cold. I almost never miss work, even when I don't feel at my best. Being home ill gives me room to remember back in the 90's when colds coincided with new ms induced symptoms. I am hopeful I won't have any new challenge tomorrow. The maker of my medicine would probably like to claim credit, but my improved resilience over the decade is probably even more on account of my improved lifestyle/environment.

PHARMA, and the big drug companies overstate themselves. When you hear that health insurance and health care reform will hurt the search for cures, remember:

1. Publicly owned drug companies have a responsibility to their shareholders to maximize returns that trumps healing people.
2. Drug companies' need to maximize profits gives them cause to not develop new and potentially more effective medicines if a new medicine reduces profits (think don't compete with yourself -- to re-enforce the point, google "bayer pain reliever", the maker of the first pain reliever seems to still only be making the pain relieving aspirin. Bayer is a German company and in Berlin, the Bayer label is everywhere -- At $2,800 per month, the cost of my Bayer Interferon-B medicine, I wonder for how much Bayer advertising in Berlin I am responsible?

3. Drug companies spend more money advertising than they do developing new medicines.
4. The biggest funder of new medicine is the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Through the NIH, government helps make our lives better. The NIH issues grants to hospitals and research universities that help find treatments and cures (and this is really really important because developing new medicines is expensive and most are duds. In order to continue advancing the science that finds cures, the NIH socialized the risk of new medicine development. Publicly owned drug companies and their shareholders have been burned trying to develop medicines.).
5. In our globalized world, science advances planet-wide. The future of science isn't dependent on any one country, including the United States. The future of science isn't dependent on any one pharmaceutical company either.
6. You should ride your bike with me during the 2011 "Best Dam Ride Ride" [Against MS and for an MS Cure]. It was a great experience during 2008 and during a break during that ride, I learned that the National Multiple Sclerosis Society has granted more than $550 million to help fund a cure.

I hope this settles the question about the effects of new medicine development after health insurance and health care reform.

Health care reform and health insurance reform means saving lives, preventing bankruptcies, unleashing the creativity of those who will finally be able to launch new ideas and businesses liberated from the current sickness industry and saving current businesses from the health insurance nightmare of annual double to triple inflation price increases.

Please call your US Senator to encourage their support for reform! Thank you.

Got Liberation?

I was trying to make the Packers' condition a metaphor for something about health care reform. I couldn't. The Packers forgot the blocking part about football. And about the opposite of blocking: rushing the quarterback.

The House Passes Health Bill.

This is really great news for people living with MS. The Congress is finally creating a pathway for generic biological drugs, after the Senate votes affirmatively too. And I will be able to buy health insurance again. And medicare will receive the money to pay doctors properly. And some doctors' pay will be tied to keeping people healthy rather than getting paid because we're sick or broken. And there will be new programs to pay for the training of more doctors and nurses. And there won't be a maximum lifetime health insurance coverage anymore. And now having health insurance won't mean having to be tied to any individual person or a job -- for some this will be liberating.

I just got liberated from miserable internet access. I just got liberated from having to drive my car to see great music because I think I will walk to see Yo La Tengo during January.