@CowperKettle My father-in-law calls snow "angel poop". Y'all must have a lot of angels up there...

@userr2684291 They also have significant regulations if someone wants to be a new producer of a generic drug, I understand.

@SamBC You might be right, but from what I've read a couple of these biosimilars (there's no such thing as generic insulin) have already been approved.

You just tell me how it's possible that a price of a product increases 10 fold over a span of 10 years?

You think the regulations are so high, and have been increasing so as to warrant that sort of surge? Even the manufacturing companies at issue (that are/were being sued) pathetically accuse 3rd party insurance negotiators.

Not sure which descriptor to use there instead of pathetically.

Have you not heard of the EpiPen scandal thing? I don't see how that's different from this at all. They do it because they can. And the government's in their pocket, approving whatever they (the lobbying pharmaceutical industry) want.

I don't know enough to know what's going on, I just know what's possible (regulations can cause that sort of problem), and what people claim. I don't judge whether they're right, because I don't know enough about the specifics. We don't have that problem so much here in the UK.

(:

Well I've never heard of that. That was essentially a joke. Lol.

I'm personally proud of our healthcare system

One of the few areas we don't suck at

I think it's telling, as in striking, that corruption is still very much legal in the US, and lobbying is just a fancy word for "bribery" there.

Was it ever not?

Corruption seems to leak into basically any system sooner or la . . . sooner

People don't care as long as their stomachs are full.

There are ways to limit it, but see the above. (:

Of food. Not other things.

I'm listening to some mediocre-to-alright covers of country songs at the moment, lol. Somehow I feel YouTube's suggestion system will lead me to Counting Stars.

Apparently it's possible to recover (or rather relapse) to it even from K-pop.

@userr2684291 hmm, because you're gonna fall asleep?

Right.

Well, we heavily limit (though not always as effectively as one might hope) the involvement of business in politics here.

The nearest businesses or foreign governments usually get to paying money into anything to do with politicians is them funding junkets for All-Party Parliamentary Groups. And APPGs have no real influence at all - they're like student societies at university, but for MPs (and peers, possibly, not sure about that).

So there are APPGs on serious policy areas, like climate change or the middle east or whatever, and then there's an APPG that's a male voice choir, and I think there's one for real ale appreciation.

Okay, the vast majority of my downvotes really seem to coincide with the time of activity of one user... not that I'm bothered by the downvotes themselves. If I did care about rep (which at this point I don't, particularly - I've got enough to have access to what I want access to, and then some), it wouldn't matter because a handful of downvotes doesn't stop me hitting the cap each day. It's the idea that someone would do that that bothers me.

@SamBC Flag one of your posts and explain the issue and what you believe to be evidence of targeted voting and the mods will investigate

The script does a damn good job but it doesn't catch all instances of course

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ Thanks. Wasn't sure what I should flag to get attention - would rather not have been talking about it publicly like this.

Mod-flags, as we call them, are something between a private messaging medium and a normal flag type

It sometimes doesn't matter what you flag if you're going to explain why you flagged

Then again, I can't possibly imagine the number of "plz anser dis kthxbye" mod-flags on SO

I do sometimes worry I'll run into someone elsewhere on the internet with a grudge against me for moderating 2K's forums (their own ones, and the Steam forums for some 2K Games).

People do dislike the rules being enforced, sometimes.

Sometimes? Ha

I've had the occasional reply to a warning that was like "yeah, you're right, my bad. Thanks for keeping things in line here." It's rare, though.

ell.stackexchange.com/questions/164520/… Dunno if my comments there were okay (no one had answered so I at least tried to give them some explanation). But now there's a similar question: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/200872/…. (I wonder how many people recognize that user's avatar.)

Apparently Cowper's mentioned the book here before. My Australian friend told me she enjoyed "decoding" it.