I watched. I get frustrated. Kerry says he's for me, the middle class tax-payer (less than 200k a year. How does he know that nobody in the audience is "rich")? He mentioned twice that only Pres. Bush, Charles and himself make (have) that kind of money. How does he know that nobody owns a small business?

Stem cell research. I'm for it in the private sector. I don't think you can ask people who think it's murder to fund it. Bush didn't say jk and I can't give money to stem cell research. We want a cure for MS and it's going to come for the private sector.

Kerry the optimist. To be an optimist you have to believe that things are basically going fine and that things always get better. You have to believe that people are basically good. (I say mostly harmless.)

Bush the liar. He lied about the war. He lied about the economy. jk and Riza are better off than we were three years ago. I'm hooked on e-bay. There's your indication of how the economy is going. I collect tatting shuttles. I've been outbid a bunch of times on shuttles that went for over two hundred dollars. Tatting shuttles are not a necessity. When people have money for none necessities, life's pretty good.

Life is pretty good. Let the good times roll!!

I'm with ya, Riza. Listening to the Dems you'd think the sun doesn't come up anymore. In our house, in fact, we've replaced the Senators' monikers 'Spitball and Sunshine' with 'Spitball and Mostly Cloudy.'

Here's the bombshell moment, as I saw it, in Friday's debate:

A proletarian asked Senator Spitball, "What would you tell an anti-abortion voter who doesn't want his tax dollars spent on somebody's abortion?"

John Kerry had an elaborate and nuanced response that included several "buts" and this bombshell:

"It means making sure you don't deny a poor person the right, to be able to have, whatever the constitution affords them, if they can't afford it otherwise."

I don't think I've read that part of the constitution. "...the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and if you can't afford any of these they will be provided for you by those who can." Gaaaa!

Your point is dead on (though let me be the first to whine that you have conflated the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence).

This is the trouble with Senator Kerry’s famed over-abundance of nuance. One has to have some core beliefs. I will admit that President Clinton had no real beliefs, but his was a less serious time.

For equal time, I will bash the President for an answer. We're going to allow re-importation of drugs from Canada when we can prove they're safe? (As my buddy AlexC would say WTF????!!!) We don't do that 'cause it's not safe -- we don't do that 'cause it's wrong!

I was writhing on the floor with pain. Riza says "It's just politics, he has to say that," but I want him to stand on principle.

Guilty. I decided if Spitball can borrow from the Communist Manifesto, I can borrow from the Declaration of Independence.

Also, I must disagree that Clinton was president during "a less serious time." The undeclared war on America by Islamofascists enjoyed its greatest insurgence and lack of opposition under Clinton. Remember that 9/11 was the SECOND attack on that American homeland target, and that it and numerous others went unanswered during his two terms.

I have a different view of Bush's stand on re-importation from Canada: What Canada is doing to American drug companies is wrong, and being an artificial market is only sustainable as long as the sellers go along with the price controls. Re-importation will force the drug companies to either stop going along with Canadian socialism or go out of business. In the end, Bush's position IS a principled stand in favor of FREE trade, so long as he makes sure the regulatory safety issues are addressed which is exactly what he said he's waiting on. Brilliant!

Tomayto, Tomahto, it is all in how you say it. What Canada is doing to American drug companies is wrong? Is it wrong for Walmart to tell a supplier how much they are willing to pay for a product? They buy in bulk, they are the big player, they get to set the price. There is always competition, very few drugs do not have an equivalent from another company. I have said before on this site that it is a travesty of free market capitalism that Medicare was precluded from bargaining for prices on drugs within the new Medicare prescription drug act. No one is forcing Merck and Pfizer to sell at a certain price, just their large customers setting a maximum price they are willing to pay for their product. Turn it around the other way, Medicare has been told what price it will pay for prescriptions period, no bargaining allowed. My health insur ance company set prices for just about every procedure, test, or drug there is and no one screams price control. If Merck cannot afford to sell to Canada at the agreed upon price then they shouldn't sell. If the only way they can is to jack up my price to cover their loss in Canadian sales then it is time for a new business plan.

The safety issue by the way is a lark, there are several large Canadian pharma cies on the web with prescription control re-selling genuine US produced brand name drugs.

Bush talked about speeding generics to market as a solution. I wonder however if the opposite tack might be more effective. Give the developing company a longer patent and more years of sales to recoup their investment and perhaps prices would drop. JK, you have mentioned several times (accurately) that our large drug companies are not exactly stock market darlings, how about the generic labs? Seems that these folks might be the ones putting up big profits.

Yes, there is "competition" among buyers of prescription drugs. Canada caps prices and drug companies make it up here. Is it wrong? You're damned right it is! We should not be subsidizing Canadians' medicinal costs, but THIS IS WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU HAVE MIXED ECONOMIES!

Now what happens if you let Medicare do the same thing that Canada does? ALL of our pharma ceutical companies become "generic" producers, they all make a decent profit and drug costs fall, but where the heck did all the medical research go? Hey, it used to be around here somewhere?

Meanwhile you bash WalMart and hold them up as a shining example at the same time. But you can't compare the two for multiple reasons:

-Since when could WalMart refuse to approve a producer's products for sale to anyone by anybody, anywhere within the entire country?

-Since when did WalMart have the power to impose tarriffs on movement of any products in either direction across international borders?

-Since when have the R&D costs been in the billions of dollars for improving the life-saving capacity of "bikes for boys or girls who are 28 to 42 inches tall?"

I agree John Galt that research may suffer with this plan. I still contend however that moving toward longer patent protection might be the way to go to offset this. On the other hand I think the logical conclusion to the direction we are heading is that we will have the absolute best medicine but only for a small percentage of our population that can afford it. Some will benfit from breakthrough gene technology while others die from treatable diseases. I believe this is an outcome that no one wants either.

The Walmart example may be tenuous as you state, but my point concerned the power of sales volume in open capitalism. I have personally watched small companies go bankrupt after becoming Walmart suppliers. The company invested in proprietary Walmart tracking software and ramped up production to huge levels. Then the trouble starts. About every 6 months the Walmart buyer wants a price reduction until the company can no longer afford to sell their product. No government entitiy steps in to protect them, this is just life in a capatilist market, the big players get to make the rules, they buy at their price or find another source. This seems to be fine for big companies, but not for the government? Even if they are playing the role of a corporate entity, in this case an in surance company? Blue Cross can bargain for cost reductions but Medicare can't? Where is the logic here? Medicare is not the FDA, it has no power of approval. Just because they are both entities of the federal government does not make them the same entity. The same people who want to privatize Medicare are taking away basic powers it would have if it were a private entity.

We agree on longer patent protection, Silence. And at some level I agree that Government buyers should be able to participate in volume negotiations. While it is free market for WalMart, I have said before that the government holds even more coercive power.

You think it's a stretch for the FDA and Medicare to collude but I do not see a stretch that the head of Merck would be discussing some unfavorable regulation, and Senator Corzine might say "if you guys would consider accepting the offer on drug X, I could vote your way..."

But our big disagreement is your distrust of the free market. It will NOT lead to great drugs nobody can afford anymore than it lead to cool cell phones nobody can afford. The leaders will pay big $$, but then it will be subsumed by generics or even over-the-counter.

The market rocks at that! Luxuries for my Dad are necessities for me and will be commodities for my nieces.

I hope I don't over-personalize this issue (I am the Andrew Sullivan of drug research!) but I surely wish that my problem were how I would afford the drugs to cure my MS.

And this would be worse than Merck giving money to Sen Corzine with the "it sure would be nice if X drug would get approved"?

I do agree that the market will sort itself out, I just believe it is like turning an ocean liner, not gonna happen very fast.

No problem in personalizing the issue, my youngest daughter has a form of rheumatoid arthritis and I would love the problem of how to afford the drugs to cure it. Some of the more promising drugs in trials now have not even begun testing for children. These studies are more complicated, more expensive, and carry more liability than testing with adults. I also wonder how my mother-in-law, forced into early retirement and nearing the end of COBRA coverage is going to afford the $2000/mo retail cost of her presciptions.

So, you are more politically informed than I, are there any Reps or Senators proposing an increase in patent protection for drug companies? It seems like most of the talk is about the opposite.

No, that’s why I am the unmasked crusader. No politician has the spine to do anything explicitly good for the drug companies. This golden goose has been vilified. They produce life saving, quality enriching products for us; we send Senators out to whine about the cost.

Good luch to your mother-in-law. I think that everybody around here agrees that the model of employer-funded i n s u r a n c e is broken. Giving people some control of their own health care dollars, however, would do much to allevite this. If people paid for their perscriptions, the price would come down.