Giving money to advance medical research while working to deny others heath care

[n2doc]

Isn't philanthropy. It is as selfish as it gets. People like the Koch's don't want any of those filthy hippies making them wait for their treatments.

Their vision is of a select few living forever while the average person dies at 60 from cancer, exhaustion and starvation.

[PA Democrat]

1. And while lobbying to prevent formaldehyde from being classified as a carcinogen.

http://www.prwatch.org/node/9396

[dkf]

2. If we spent a trillion dollars to treat people when we could have found a cure

Is that really a better tradeoff? If you find a cure you could save future generations and save a whole lot of money.

[Horse with no Name]

3. But if that cure isn't accessible to the common folks

No. And sadly, even now, that is the case.

[Divernan]

6. People with no health insurance can't access the cures that are already available

Or treatments. I've been hearing horror stories from one nurse about the number of diabetics showing up at ERs in coma because they lost their health insurance (laid off, COBRA expired, or couldn't afford COBRA) and could no longer buy their oral meds, or insulin or testing strips. Only wealthy Americans and people in the EU (universal health care) will benefit from new medical developments.

I say, let's catch up on providing known treatments and/or cures to all before putting more money into research programs (bet a lot of that money is going to Big Pharma).

And of course,as any thinking person knows, if we stopped acting as the world's self-appointed policeman and war monger, and cut our military budget to 1/10th, we could afford both universal health care AND medical research.

[xchrom]

4. You should mail that to maddow.

Its spot on.

[ananda]

5. Sounds a bit like eugenics to me.

Ugghh.

[Divernan]

7. Yup, Malthus lives! Get rid of the surplus population! It's the GOP way.

[Overseas]

8. Who are the Koch Brothers

would be the answer to that question. And you can weep for the poor little billionaires who help the needy in the puff piece in the NYT.

We need philanthropy in these cruel Republican times, but I sure would prefer a strong universal health care system instead.