What brief message would you send yourself 5 years ago?

[freebeard]

So yes, go back to early 1898, say what I mentioned, tell Pierre to look both ways before crossing the street

Galloping goalposts!

[JSH]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

R12 moves a lot of heat, runs at lower pressures, compatible with any oil, non flammable, non reactive with water, non toxic, so non reactive non toxic it can be used as a propellant for medications.
Removing R12 from medical devices is why inhalers went from a few dollars each to over $100.

The last inhaler I bought for my wife was $1.66 - in Mexico. They have been $50 each with insurance for a while in the USA. They are that much because in the USA pharmaceutical companies are allowed to charge anything they like for a drug with no regard to cost to manufacture - even very old drugs. The same reason a drug that was invented 100 years ago like insulin costs 10x more in the USA than in other developed countries.

If you need something to live you pay the price it takes to stay alive. Pharmaceutical companies take full advantage.

[Xist]

Epi pens [and insulin] are also ridiculously overpriced.

I found an article that I summarized on Imgur, but I had so many questions that I researched and then added to my post that I split it.

However, Imgur works in mysterious ways, and it replaced my first post with two copies of the second, so I made both complete and long.

I tried to split it!

Insulin is cheaper in Mexico, but not cheap enough for many Mexican diabetics to afford it.

Mexico is "the number one country with deaths from diabetes (of all types)." https://beyondtype1.org/access-in-mexico/

Cigna and its pharmacy benefit management division Express Scripts announced a program designed to cap out-of-pocket costs for diabetic patients at $25 a month.





https://www.verywellhealth.com/progr...-costs-5667166
https://diatribechange.org/news/insu...-affordability

These programs only benefit people with single-state employer-sponsored healthcare plans, so if you have self-insured group health plans, medicare, or work for a company that provides health insurance to people in multiple states, you may not benefit from insulin copay laws.

California will produce their own insulin: https://calmatters.org/commentary/20...trys-failures/

[redpoint5]

Mexico overtook the US in percent of overweight/obese people, so no surprise the relatively poor country also leads deaths related to diabetes.

I have no particular expertise on the subject, but it's not just US pharma companies keeping prices high, but every aspect of how we practice medicine. So many barriers to entry that keep competition out. We lose sight of the fact that the more hurdles we make people jump over, the higher the price. Allowing access to medicine to be controlled by a single private organization (American Medical Association) that has more interest in establishing their authority than improving patient outcomes results in outrageous pricing and suboptimal outcomes.

The AMA is like the Democrat party; keep people sick so they depend on the system.

[oil pan 4]

My friend gets 2 epi pens per year. They are either $700 or $700 each but her insurance pays for them.
I told her I want them when they expire.
Keep them next to by bed side along with my ax.

[Piotrsko]

They only expire for the benefit of the manufacturer. Might loose whatever gas they use to inject, but I had springloaded ones which are a bit painful. I suspect being dead is more problematic.

[Xist]

The 8-Bit Guy (and collaborators) designed their dream 8-bit Commodore, and I had been wondering about stuff like that.

I would want to go back and introduce a USB-C iPad, but this is a better eighties computer than we actually had:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcWqMGju7fk

[freebeard]

Better, forty years later?

IMHO, the better successor is the Raspberry Pi 400. It has a new competitor the Orange 800

oid

Pi800 First Look, An Brand New All-In-One PC! Think Pi400 But Faster! 6 Core Arm CPU

Raspberry Pis are 'thin on the ground', but the 400 is available. This is a worthy competitor -- it has an audio out jack.

For the 8-bit handicap, there is RetroPie RetroPie - Retro-gaming on the Raspberry Pi