So anyone watching the address tonight?

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

I believe the reference is to the over-regulation of the health insurance industry that Obamacare would bring about.  Insurers should be free to pursue whatever strategies lead to lower costs, which are good for both the insurers and their customers.  It's hard to come up with creative new incentives when the government is telling you how to run your business.

[MicroBalrog]

You know, I've long had an idea which I am not sure is good.

Suppose you had a law that said that if a medicine or procedure has been authorized in the European Union, it would immediately receive FDA approval (or at least receive it faster).

My rationale is like this: FDA approval requires expensive tests that cost millions upon millions of dollars. The European approval system is as tight or almost as tight as America's, so once a company did all the tests once and had already complied with the law there, there's no need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to do it again.

This would benefit everybody – the healthcare providers, the pharmaceuticals, and clients. This would be fairly mainstream (note I did not say that medicine needs to be untested), and the politicians might accept it.

[buzz_knox]

You know, I've long had an idea which I am not sure is good.

Suppose you had a law that said that if a medicine or procedure has been authorized in the European Union, it would immediately receive FDA approval (or at least receive it faster).

My rationale is like this: FDA approval requires expensive tests that cost millions upon millions of dollars. The European approval system is as tight or almost as tight as America's, so once a company did all the tests once and had already complied with the law there, there's no need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to do it again.

This would benefit everybody – the healthcare providers, the pharmaceuticals, and clients. This would be fairly mainstream (note I did not say that medicine needs to be untested), and the politicians might accept it.

It will never happen, as it would negate the justification for a massive portion of the FDA's budget.  Staffers and politicians won't stand for that kind of thing.

Just remember that whenever the gov't talks about how many thousands of lives will be saved by the approval of drug X, they've allowed that many to die during the years between the EU's approval and the FDA redoing the same work for no purpose except justifying their jobs.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

heres a good one
http://reason.tv/video/show/get-some