any remaining people who are living in Iraq leave? Do they want to get beheaded? Are they staying there because they can't leave? Thats a scary thought. Or are they staying there because they are greedy and want to make money? What a situation

thesimeon

Went back to the coinstar today, not because i needed the money but because it is fun. I saw an old dollar coin from the seventy's, one with president eisenhower's big bald head on it. I kept it because i thought to myself "i have had this for a long time, i shouldn't spend it." then i thought "if i don't spend what will i do with it? keep it? no thats stupid, i am not a coin collector." So i dropped it in the coinstar. Wouldnt you believe it, the damn robot ate it! It didn't give me a dollar for it and it didn't spit it out in the reject bin. The nerve! I suppose it was instant karma for not donating the money to charity.

thesimeon

Yes it is true that insurance companies do pick up a lot of the cost sometimes. I am not complaining about copays. Copays are sooooo cheap compared to the actual cash price of the medication it is almost unbelievable. The problem is, the insurance companies, in order to stay in business, need to raise their rates charged to the consumer. But don't forget about the occasional senior citizen with no coverage who desperately needs a course of antibiotics but can't afford 200 dollars for ten pills. (yes you read that right) That specific antibiotic is manufacutured by ortho-mcneil, a drug company that must spend millions of dollars on television advertising for birth control alone. Which brings me to another point. In my opinion doctors are educated enough so that they give patients what they see fit; there is no need for the average consumer to be sold on a certain brand of medication so they can go into their doctor and demand zoloft or demand paxil and threaten to leave if they don't get it (it happens). I see television commercials for medication as a huge waste of money and more importantly, ethical irresponsibility on the part of the drug manufacturers. I am not advocating destruction of these companies, we DO need them for research, we don't need their excessive spending.

thesimeon

I just saw a commercial on tv by glaxo smith cline, one of the worlds leading drug companies, on how they spend almost a billion dollars on a single drug's research, as if they were trying to justify the exorbidant drug costs that they charge to the consumer. Yes, research and development is expensive, and I am all for it if it is going to help people with terrible diseases. The problem is, they certainly don't do anything to help lower costs. Instead they pay the slime of the pharmacy world, drug representatives, to go to doctors and pharmacies and try to convince them to use their product over another and in many cases, use their product over a much cheaper generic product. They have television ads, magazine ads, not to mention all the useless office supply crap they have made up with the drug name on them. Screw that commercial for trying to make us feel bad for them.


thesimeon