Rubbernecking........
 

You are like a religious conservative complaining about the sex and violence on TV. If spelling etc. is so important to you, don't read my posts.

The exlcusionary rule is a check against police abuse of power. Without the fear that evidence might be kept out, cops would willy nilly do whatever they liked in regard to searches and seizure.

By removing the rule, you'd encourage police abuse. They'd feel that they have nothing to lose - as long as they got what they needed, the ends would justify the means. How do you not see that as problematic?

If probative evidence is never excluded it is not much of a deterrence is it? It sounds like there needs to be a system to deter the police that the judges are willing to enforce.

See above.

Rising Health Care Costs
 

Those damn pesky trial lawyers!

• A Cancer Drug's Big Price Rise Is Cause for Concern
  
  
  
  
  By ALEX BERENSON
  Published: March 12, 2006
  
  On Feb. 3, Joyce Elkins filled a prescription for a two-week supply of nitrogen mustard, a decades-old cancer drug used to treat a rare form of lymphoma. The cost was $77.50.
  
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  Chris Pietsch for The New York Times
  Jeffrey Malavasic, 58, says that now that his cancer ointment is more expensive, he will use less of it.
  On Feb. 17, Ms. Elkins, a 64-year-old retiree who lives in Georgetown, Tex., returned to her pharmacy for a refill. This time, following a huge increase in the wholesale price of the drug, the cost was $548.01.
  
  Ms. Elkins's insurance does not cover nitrogen mustard, which she must take for at least the next six months at a cost that will now total nearly $7,000. She and her husband, who works for the Texas Department of Transportation, are paying for the medicine by spending less on utilities and food, she said.
  
  The medicine, also known as Mustargen, was developed more than 60 years ago and is among the oldest chemotherapy drugs. For decades, it has been blended into an ointment by pharmacists and used as a topical treatment for a cancer called cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, a form of cancer that mainly affects the skin.
  
  Last August, Merck, which makes Mustargen, sold the rights to manufacture and market it and Cosmegen, another cancer drug, to Ovation Pharmaceuticals, a six-year-old company in Deerfield, Ill., that buys slow-selling medicines from big pharmaceutical companies.
  
  The two drugs are used by fewer than 5,000 patients a year and had combined sales of about $1 million in 2004.
  
  Now Ovation has raised the wholesale price of Mustargen roughly tenfold and that of Cosmegen even more, according to several pharmacists and patients.
  
  Sean Nolan, vice president of commercial development for Ovation, said that the price increases were needed to invest in manufacturing facilities for the drugs. He said the company was petitioning insurers to obtain coverage for patients.
  
  The increase has stunned doctors, who say it starkly illustrates two trends in the pharmaceutical industry: the soaring price of cancer medicines and the tendency for those prices to have little relation to the cost of developing or making the drugs.
  
  Genentech, for example, has indicated it will effectively double the price of its colon cancer drug Avastin, to about $100,000, when Avastin's use is expanded to breast and lung cancer patients. As with Avastin, nothing about nitrogen mustard is changing but the price.
  
  The increases have caused doctors to question Ovation's motive — and left lymphoma patients wondering how they will afford Mustargen, which is sometimes not covered by insurance, because the drug's label does not indicate that it can be used as an ointment. When given intravenously to treat Hodgkin's disease, its other primary use, the drug is generally covered by insurance.
  
  "Nitrogen mustard has been around forever," said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. "There's nothing that I am aware of in the treatment environment that would explain an increase in the cost of the drug."
  
  Dr. David H. Johnson, a Vanderbilt University oncologist who is a former president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said he had contacted Ovation to ask its reasons for raising Mustargen's price.
  
  "I'd like to have some evidence from them that it actually costs them X amount, so that the pricing makes sense," Dr. Johnson said.
  
  "It's unfortunate that a price adjustment had to occur," Mr. Nolan said. "Investment had not been made in these products for years."
  
  Ovation, a privately held company, also needs the money to conduct research on several new drugs for rare diseases, Mr. Nolan said.
  
  He acknowledged that Merck still made Mustargen and Cosmegen, an antibiotic that is used to treat a rare childhood kidney cancer, for Ovation. He said he was not sure when Ovation would begin producing the drugs, and a Merck spokesman said that Merck would continue to provide the drugs to Ovation as long as necessary.
  
  But people who analyze drug pricing say they see the Mustargen situation as emblematic of an industry trend of basing drug prices on something other than the underlying costs. After years of defending high prices as necessary to cover the cost of research or production, industry executives increasingly point to the intrinsic value of their medicines as justification for prices.
  
  Last year, in his book "A Call to Action," Henry A. McKinnell, the chairman of Pfizer, the world's largest drug company, wrote that drug prices were not driven by research spending or production costs.
  
  "A number of factors go into the mix" of pricing, he wrote. "Those factors consider cost of business, competition, patent status, anticipated volume, and, most important, our estimation of the income generated by sales of the product."
  
  In some drug categories, such as cholesterol-lowering treatments, many drugs compete, keeping prices relatively low. But when a medicine does not have a good substitute, its maker can charge almost any price. In 2003, Abbott Laboratories raised the price of Norvir, an AIDS drug introduced in 1996, from $54 to $265 a month. AIDS groups protested, but Abbott refused to rescind the increase.
  
  And once a company sets a price, government agencies, private insurers and patients have little choice but to pay it. The Food & Drug Administration does not regulate prices, and Medicare is banned from considering price in deciding whether to cover treatments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/bu...=1&oref=slogin

Son, you've got this right. The one good thing about Mississippi Burning was that those Justice Department yankees sure did know how to violate constitutional rights. Why, I was ready to cheer them on when they had that good ole boy thinking his private parts were going to be dogmeat.

Son, I've just got one question for you here. What's wrong with the cops doing whatever they like in regard to searches and seizures?

And also, I'd suggest you watch phrases like "willy nilly" or we'll all think you're one of those "girly" boys.

Originally posted by Spanky


This is an excellent point.

However, you were asking about other countries.

Ever see a James Bond movie? He trounces on individual rights, walking into suspects' homes, shooting them, and frequently fucking their wives. Ever watch a Hong Kong police movie? Chow Yun Fat has killed thousands as a cop. Jackie Chan will climb into your window even if you live on the 30th floor, but never a warrant in sight.

To my mind, these are fine, fact-based examples of what happens in countries that lack the Exclusionary Rule.

And don't even get me started about Inspector Clouseau's disregard for individual rights.

You say that like the CIA doesn't do the same thing.

Rising Health Care Costs
 

How's this stuff taste on roast beef?

Exclusionary Reel
 

Just for the hell of it, and because I'm tired of working already this week, I did a little googling and such.

This is an interesting article:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-319es.html


Of course, it fails to take any Bronson movies into account. And it's from the screaminigly liberal Cato Institute, so what can you expect?

Based on the movies I've seen, they certainly do. And they are not really affected by the Exclusionary Rule, as the CIA does not develop cases for court. Don't you see a connection?

Incidentally, has anyone actually seen a Bronson or Eastwood cop movie recently? I don't remember the Exclusionary Rule being a big factor. I remember, much more, the problem of judges handing out ridiculously light sentences for serious crimes. (By "ridiculously", I mean far lighter than any real judge would be likely to do in real life.)

Of course, society responded to that problem quite effectively, and now we have people rotting in prison, at a cost of billions every year, for crimes like possession of tiny amounts of marijuana, or stealing a $10 clock radio from the home of a dead person*, or shoplifting a video, etc.

This, to me, illustrates the problems with evaluating society's problems based on action movies and cop shows.



*Actual third-strike case I briefly handled on appeal.

yet you're saying retention of the exclusionary rule is absolutely critical.

I didn't take Spanky to be saying that cop shows prove his point.

Are you saying that cop shows overemphasize the problems with the exclusionary rule? That's probably true, because what makes such shows interesting is that a guilty person goes free or an innocent person is jailed, not when an obviously guilty person is convicted.

Anyway, so what if they overestimate it. If the rule isn't a problem in that it doesn't often set people free, then why are you worried about changing it? In fact, it makes spanky's argument even stronger, beacuse it suggests that innocent people bear the brunt of bad police work, but are unable to benefit in any way, because they can't sue for damages.

One poor dumb bastard's third strike in Texas was shoplifting a Snickers bar. I'm not sure where in the appeals process it is, but surely it's winding its way through.

Why is there all the fuss on this, because it's a snickers bar rather than a serious crime? The law is put in place for just this type of person--they keep committing crimes, despite incarceration. At some point, it seems reasonable to say "fuck it, we've had enough of your bullshit" and put them away.

Because no one can resist that tempting combination of nougat, nuts, caramel and milk chocolate?