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Jim Edwards at BNET pulls together a lot of interesting pieces to the puzzle in terms of rising drug prices, concluding that two major factors may be that A) some patients can't negotiate their drug prices given life or death circumstances and B) Medicare isn't allowed to bargain down prices.

 

BNET Pharma: Drug prices rose 9.3 percent a year, according to a study by the AARP. The House Commerce subcommittee is holding hearings into why drug prices seem only to go up, and never down.

...

Sure, some patients can negotiate drug prices. A patient with the flu ought to be pretty sensitive to the difference in price between TheraFlu and Robitussin. But one of the biggest buyers of drugs — Medicare — is currently forbidden from negotiating prices.

Now you can see why drug companies are so careful to develop rationales for drug price increases. They’re living in a Shangri-La of ever-rising prices, facing customers who are too sick or forbidden by law from negotiating, and the justification for it is that their drugs all have above-average effectiveness.

So then let's take a jaunt over to the October 30th Wall Street Journal:

WSJ: When Congress added prescription drug coverage to Medicare a few years back, the drug industry won a huge victory: The new law barred the federal government from negotiating on the prices Medicare pays for prescription drugs.

The big House health-care bill that landed yesterday would reverse that, and give the HHS secretary the authority to haggle for a better deal.

Healthcare reform is obviously an extremely complicated subject with a lot of moving pieces. Yet the Republicans are being disingenuous when they present themselves as the defenders of free and efficient healthcare markets.

By preventing healthcare reform, they are actually helping to prolong a huge regulatory inefficiency in Medicare which they themselves orchestrated not too long ago. So it's not that simple. Doing nothing means we're stuck with the current regulatory system -- it doesn't mean we don't have any regulations. Healthcare is massively regulated as it stands. Thus inaction is to continue with massive, broken regulation. Which should be fixed.

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See Also:

• Lieberman Stuns Democrats, Now Says He's Voting Against Healthcare Reform
• How Health Insurers Are Using Facebook Games To Block Healthcare Reform
• The Healthcare Polling Data That Has Democrats So Freaked Out

Ahh, flu season. Aches and pains and a sore throat put me in no mood to cook right now, but I am sipping copious amounts of tea. Ginger is my old standby, which I usually mix with honey for a warm, soothing drink. This time I added another ingredient: turmeric.

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Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Basecamp
How to win a client by including Basecamp in your pitch
“I created a new project, I generated a username and password and sent it to his e-mail which he immediately got via smart phone. I showed him how I had the Chieftent application on my iPhone and I went about creating milestones and to-do lists for his project. If we begin today, I’ll have the design document for you by this date, entered it into Basecamp, if we begin today, I’ll have a mockup via development server for you by this date, entered that into Basecamp too. He was clearly impressed.”

Give your customers Basecamp reporting without requiring them to login
“Want to give customers, partners, suppliers or other external users access to live reporting on specific Basecamp projects, but without giving them a login to Basecamp?”

Interior designer and client use Basecamp to collaborate on design of new baby room
Interior designer and client use Basecamp to collaborate on design of new baby room.

Encamp, a great iPhone app for Basecamp, renamed Insight
Use it and wherever you go you can stay connected with your projects and tasks.

More…

Filed under: Sedan, Performance, Plants/Manufacturing, Porsche

The Porsche Panamera has only been on sale in other parts of the world for three months now, but the automaker has already cranked out the 10,000th production example. The Panamera is built on the same production line as the Cayenne SUV at Porsche’s Liepzig plant in northeastern Germany.

So far, Porsche has taken some 9,000 orders for the new five-door grand touring hatchback and it has yet to go on sale in the United States. Porsche is currently planning to build about 20,000 Panamera units annually at the Liepzig factory. The 10,000th car? A silver Turbo destined for Singapore.

[Source: Porsche]

Continue reading Porsche cranks out 10,000th Panamera after just three months on sale

Porsche cranks out 10,000th Panamera after just three months on sale originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This morning, Exxon (XOM) announced that it’s spending $41 billion to acquire XTO Energy (XTO), a major player in natural gas and unconventional shale.

The move was somewhat telegraphed by a major presentation Exxon made explaining why it was bullish on natural gas.

Here’s how Exxon explains why XTO Energy is the prefect company to make its play.

Check it out–>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Exxon: Here’s Why We Just Spent $41 Billlion On Natural Gas (XOM, XTO, UNG)
• Mega-Merger: Exxon Makes Huge Natural Gas Bet With Acquisition Of XTO Energy For $41 Billion (XOM, XTO)
• XTO Energy (XTO): $4.2B Hunt Deal Good Fit, Accretive

Gluskin-Sheff economist David Rosenberg has been warning of a ‘new frugality’ lately, pointing to the huge, coming downdraft in debt.

He posts a chart meant to illustrate the fact that we’re merely in the “early innings” of debt deleveraging.

———-

HOW FAR INTO THE DELEVERAGING PROCESS ARE WE?  
Early innings.  From the peak, the level of nonfederal debt has deflated by $260
billion.  Some of this has been either paid down, written off, modified, defaulted
on or some combination of the four.  No matter.  

As Chart 1 illustrates, and employing Bob Farrell’s first Market Rule on the time-
honored trend towards mean reversion, this develeraging process that began two
years ago is really in its infancy stage.  The current level of U.S. outstanding
nonfederal debt is $27 trillion, which is astounding both in absolute terms and
even more so relative to nonfederal GDP — a 206% ratio.  It is down fractionally
from the 208% peak, but here is the rub.  If mean-reversion means that we get
back to some norm of the 1990s, then we are talking about the need to extinguish
$8 trillion of nonfederal debt.  The only question is how this happens, not if.  If
we’re talking about mean reverting to the very stable trend of the 1960s and
1970s, then the credit contraction is very likely to exceed $11 trillion.  

Either way, this process of debt elimination is ongoing and will likely last for years. 
Along the way we will see the federal government test the limits of its balance
sheet to smooth the transition and it will be long-term Treasury yields that will
determine when enough is enough in terms of Washington’s fiscal largesse.  Just
as the Canadian bond market delivered the same message to the Chrétien/Martin
government in the mid-1990s that ushered in a multi-year forced era of budgetary
restraint and anemic domestic demand.  Until the U.S. gets its balance sheet
under control, and monetization of the debt is likely one key strategy, the trend in
the gold price will remain in one direction and that is up. 

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Greek Finance Minister Comes Out Swinging, Hints At Similarities With US Debt Situation
• Niall Ferguson: The World Is In Denial, The Great Repression Lives On
• Rosenberg: The Manufacturing Collapse Has Resumed

We’ve seen the Wii schedule, so now here’s the DS and DSiWare release schedule from Nintendo. The Pokémon remakes HeartGold and SoulSilver now have a definite launch date of March 14. Speaking of Pokemon, the

In August and September 2009 I had talked about how South Korea was shaking up their country by installing additional hydrogen fueling stations. In August it was announced that two separate master planned communities in South Korea would be getting H2 fueling stations.

Then in September I had talked about how South Korea’s first landfill to hydrogen project had begun, which would supply both hydrogen buses and cars through the fueling stations. Now, in December, Air Liquide America Corporation has announced that it will be building two new hydrogen fueling stations in South Korea.

Currently, South Korea has six hydrogen stations operating in Daejeon (2), Seoul, Dong-cho Dong Incheon, Mabuk, and Namyang. The two master plan community hydrogen fueling stations will be located on the islands of KangHwa and OnJin-gun.

The two new H2 filling stations being built by Air Liquide will be built at Jeju island and near the KATRI Gyeonggi-do race track. This will bring the total hydrogen fueling station count up to 10. Only Japan, Germany, Denmark and the U. S. will have more hydrogen fueling stations.

On Jeju island, the Air Liquide hydrogen fueling station (5,000 psi) will be installed at the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) as a demonstration and research project. Likewise, the 2nd H2 fueling station will be installed the Korea Automobile Testing & Research Institute (KATRI) and will dispense hydrogen at both 5,000 psi and 10,000 psi.

What is certain is that South Korea has made a commitment to developing hydrogen vehicles as a solution to their need to cut down on pollution as well as their dependence from foreign energy. The South Korea Hydrogen Highway system is now taking shape in a cluster model starting around Seoul and expanding to other regions of the country.

We always hear the record labels and politicians screaming bloody murder over the concept that musicians aren’t being paid “what they’re owed” due to piracy — but when there’s a situation where musicians might actually not be getting paid what they’re owed? Silence. A few weeks back, MySpace “bought” Imeem in a fire sale. But, the details of the deal suggest they didn’t actually buy the company, but “certain assets,” which means they get to ignore the liabilities. Guess what those liabilities include? You got it: paying artists what they’re owed. Now, as the Wired article notes, there’s nothing technically wrong with MySpace acquiring just the assets, but it is notable that it’s the musicians left without getting paid what they’re actually owed (not some theoretical concept like what they might be “owed” due to unauthorized file sharing). And, yet, we don’t seem to hear any politicians or record labels screaming about this. Funny, since they keep insisting that they’re really just interested in helping artists…

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Yahoo recently announced a thorough partnership with Facebook that would take the integration between the two services to the next level. Facebook features will show up in most Yahoo products and users will be able to update their status on both sites in one go. Now, Yahoo is clarifying some details about what exactly the deal entails and what it means to the OpenID implementation.

“First off, I want to take the opportunity to clarify some misperceptions that we’ve noticed: the Facebook deal is not a “login” agreement. It will not be possible to sign in to Yahoo! with a Facebook ID. Rather, we’re using Facebook Connect to enable Yahoo! users to authorize data sharing between the sites,” Daniel Raffel, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo Open Strategy, wrote on Yahoo’s Developers blog.

What it basically means is that users will be able to access their data and friends from Facebook in Yahoo sites opening the door to a lot of possibilities but also share anything from Yahoo or one of its many proprieties, Flickr for example, with their friends on Facebook. The way Yahoo spins it, rather accurately, this is actually a great win for Yahoo ID saying that the partnership enables users to access a great deal of content and sites using just their Yahoo credentials.
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Punicalagin
Active Ingredient: 30%,40%SDG
CAS: 65995-63-3
Heavy metals:
Total Heavy Metals<=10ppm Arsenic<=1ppm Lead<=1ppm Microbiological Tests: Total Plate Count<=1000cfu/g Total Yeast & Mold<=100cfu/g E.Coli --- Negative Salmonella--Negative Staphylococcus--Negative Others: Sample/ COA / MSDS are available Packing Detail:Net weight: 25Kg per Drum. Shelf life: Two years under specified environment. Package: 25kg per paper drum or packed with little parcel

Flaxseed Extract
Active Ingredient: 20%,40%SDG
CAS: 148244-82-0
Heavy metals:
Total Heavy Metals<=20ppm Arsenic<=2ppm Lead<=2ppm Microbiological Tests Total Plate Count<=1000cfu/g Total Yeast & Mold<=100cfu/g E.Coli - Negative Salmonella--Negative Staphylococcus--Negative Others: Sample/ COA / MSDS are available Packing Detail:Net weight: 25Kg per Drum. Shelf life:Two years under specified environment. Package: 25kg per paper drum or packed with little parcel

Black peper Extract
Active Ingredient: 95%,98%
CAS:94-62-2
Heavy metals:
Total Heavy Metals<=20ppm Arsenic<=2ppm Lead<=2ppm Microbiological Tests Total Plate Count<=1000cfu/g Total Yeast & Mold<=100cfu/g E.Coli - Negative Salmonella--Negative Staphylococcus--Negative

Epimedium Extract
Active Ingredient: 10%, 20%, 50%, 98%
CAS: 56692-02-5
Heavy metals:
Total Heavy Metals<=20ppm Arsenic<=2ppm Lead<=2ppm Microbiological Tests Total Plate Count<=1000cfu/g Total Yeast & Mold<=100cfu/g E.Coli - Negative Salmonella--Negative Staphylococcus--Negative Others: Sample/ COA / MSDS are available

Octacosanol offer to sell
Active Ingredient: 60%,99%
CAS: 557-61-9
Heavy metals:
Total Heavy Metals<=10ppm Arsenic<=1ppm Lead<=1ppm Microbiological Tests: Total Plate Count<=1000cfu/g Total Yeast & Mold<=100cfu/g E.Coli --- Negative Salmonella--Negative Staphylococcus--Negative Others: Sample/ COA / MSDS are available

Hesperidin Manufacturer and supplier from china.
Active Ingredient: 95%,98% Hesperidin
Heavy metals:
Total Heavy Metals<=10ppm Arsenic<=1ppm Lead<=1ppm Microbiological Tests: Total Plate Count<=1000cfu/g Total Yeast & Mold<=100cfu/g E.Coli --- Negative Salmonella--Negative Staphylococcus--Negative Others: Sample/ COA / MSDS are available Packing Detail:Net weight: 25Kg per Drum. Shelf life: Two years under specified environment. Package: 25kg per paper drum or packed with little parcel

Magnolia Extract Sell
Active Ingredient:
2%-98% Honokiol test by HPLC
2%-98% Magnolol test by HPLC
Heavy metals:
Total Heavy Metals<=10ppm Arsenic<=1ppm Lead<=1ppm Microbiological Tests: Total Plate Count<=1000cfu/g Total Yeast & Mold<=100cfu/g E.Coli --- Negative Salmonella--Negative Staphylococcus--Negative Others: Sample/ COA / MSDS are available Packing Detail:Net weight: 25Kg per Drum. Shelf life: Two years under specified environment. Package: 25kg per paper drum or packed with little parcel

Ellagic acid Professional manufactory
Appearance: Fine Grey Powder
Active Ingredient: 40%-95% Ellagic acid test by HPLC
CAS:476-66-4
Heavy metals:
Total Heavy Metals<=10ppm Arsenic<=1ppm Lead<=1ppm Microbiological Tests: Total Plate Count<=1000cfu/g Total Yeast & Mold<=100cfu/g E.Coli --- Negative Salmonella--Negative Staphylococcus--Negative Others: Sample/ COA / MSDS are available Packing Detail:Net weight: 25Kg per Drum. Shelf life: Two years under specified environment. Package: 25kg per paper drum or packed with little parcel