An unpleasant surprise for My Book Live owners

Posted Jun 30, 2021 15:01 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950)
In reply to: An unpleasant surprise for My Book Live owners by felixfix
Parent article: An unpleasant surprise for My Book Live owners

> The government itself has destroyed its own reputation far more often than private enterprise, yet will never go out of business.

This seems like that libertarian idea. Just leave everything over to businesses; government makes too many mistakes, customers will sort things out by choosing. With e.g. brexit it's pretty interesting to see how many things British people thought were a "given" that was actually backed by regulations / laws. Similarly, lack of these "givens" is often said to be "protectionist" / "out to get them".

> No private company could have flipflopped as many times as the government and remained in business.

False equivalence, government is there to e.g. ensure things do not happen that might not be profitable to think about. Further, government is for the people. A government should _not_ be run as a business, some things shouldn't be done to e.g. "maximize" profit.

I know various shipping companies which made loads of interesting mistakes. Meaning, multiple times and repetitively. They're still in business. The news doesn't reach most people; plus people don't care.

> If that is where you put your trust, then you came to your conclusions from feels, not facts

Your entire reply is based upon assumptions ("feels"). I haven't seen any facts. You seem to be dismissing e.g. the worth of government/regulations, then use the status quo as a reason to deem government/regulations unneeded.

It's similar to a great running IT department. If they work nicely, people complain why they're needed. If they're not doing so well, people complain why they're needed. Basically: often people will question the need for government or why they pay taxes.

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An unpleasant surprise for My Book Live owners

Posted Jun 30, 2021 17:43 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> False equivalence, government is there to e.g. ensure things do not happen that might not be profitable to think about. Further, government is for the people. A government should _not_ be run as a business, some things shouldn't be done to e.g. "maximize" profit.

One only has to look at the American health system, where the *few* who can afford it are well cared for. But lots of nasty diseases circulate amongst those who can't afford it.

I'm not saying our system where it's pretty much all nationalised is any better - imho people who go on about how good the NHS are wearing *very* rose-tinted glasses. But simple things like flu, or more seriously TB, aren't a major problem because basic health care is easily accessible and free.

And one of the reasons we are doing so well with CoVid now is down to the combination of the NHS, and politicians prepared to take risks. All being well, ALL restrictions will be lifted in about a fortnight, and the pandemic will be "over" as far as England is concerned. Because we had a few politicians who kick-started vaccine research and production by writing large contracts up front. Then when we actually got the vaccine, it was dead easy for the NHS to roll it out.

Aiui, one of the biggest problems with the health system in the US is that basic health care is not "economic" in that the people who would benefit most can't afford it, and the people who would pay for it *don't see* the benefit. Coupled with the companies who benefit FROM illness lobbying against it. Over here, the government sets targets for "improving the nation's health" and it can compare how much the nation would benefit, against how much it would cost. Hence the current effort against obesity. When it works, it's brilliant. Unfortunately again, it tends to get hijacked by big pharma (sterols and stuff against cholesterol for example ...)

Cheers,
Wol

An unpleasant surprise for My Book Live owners

Posted Jul 1, 2021 19:48 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

> Unfortunately again, it tends to get hijacked by big pharma

This, of course, is why NICE (or, more formally, the relevant review panel within NICE) exists: to rule out the use of medication whose cost is excessive with respect to its benefit (which is surprisingly often nil for extremely expensive medication, which is often benchmarked against placebo but not against the current best medication just so that its manufacturer can get another nice expensive patent money coiner to replace the previous one, even if it's no better).

This works except when NICE's decisions run up against people who disagree loudly enough. Then you get expensive messes like (IIRC) the Cancer Drugs Fund, which was introduced by Cameron explicitly to pay for cancer medications NICE had said no to. This was completely stupid: the money that was spent on those medications could just as well have been spent to save many *more* people who just happened to have slightly different diseases. Worse, it spent well over a billion quid but collected *no* data at all on whether the money spent had any effect. (This was, naturally, intentional).

Eventually, under a tsunami of criticism from senior oncologists, NHS England itself, the Public Accounts Committee, the National Audit Office and every other body you can think of whose remit was to actually *help* people or not throw money down the toilet, and after Cameron had gone so there was no longer face-saving involved, the fund was closed. It probably cost about 50,000 lives all told, through grossly misallocated resources.