First, this drug thing. Any pill you buy probably cost around 25 cents (US) to make. Many of these pills are sold for upwards of two dollars (US), for good reason. The real price of medicine is not manufacturing a pill, but rather developing it. Everose, that $3 pill cost about $500 million to develop, if not more. And, the cost is not just of that single pill: Pfizer made more than 5,000 compounds in 2002 alone, and only half a dozen of those compounds reached clinical trials. It is unlikely that any of those compounds will pass clinical trials and be approved by the FDA.
So, when you buy a pill, the great majority of the money you spend covers the debt that the drug company racked up over the 15 years (or more, but 15 is about average for Pfizer-type drugs) that separate identifying the harmful bacteria and the release of the drug.
You may notice that almost all drug research and development companies are in the US. This is because Canada, Britain, and the like will tell a drug company that they will pay 50 cents for a pill that costs 25 cents to manufacture. This more than covers the additional cost of transportation, but it does almost nothing to pay for research and development of that pill, much less of the medicines that the company is currently developing. The companies figure that it's better to make a bit of money, rather than none at all, and try to prevent counterfeit drugs that are made in China from finding a market (those counterfeits are no different than the name brand, but the counterfeiting company avoids all the research expenses).
Thus, the US citizen pays virtually all of the costs for medical research, and other countries are able to get those drugs at a severely lower cost.
If those research debts are not paid off, the drug company may go bankrupt and shut down, even though it is making profits from drug sales. In other words, there will be no more drugs, except counterfeits (which there aren't enough of if the real companies close), and no new medicines will be developed. That's why both the US and Canada strongly oppose the scheme of reimporting American-made drugs from Canada.
Rat Faced, it's not the drug companies that are getting rich and screwing their customers, it's the politicians who are screwing drug companies and American consumers. If your medical system wasn’t government-run, you would actually pay the real price for medicines, and Americans would pay far less.
Add a few billion to US international aid, on behalf of its citizens whom pay for the medicines that the world uses.
Now, the aid stuff. American donations to tsunami victims, both government and private (that includes corporate) topped 1 billion a while ago. That's actual aid, not pledges; pledges are quite worthless. Additionally, European donations often have certain restrictions that the money can only be used to buy products made in the nation that donated the money. Thus, many of those donations are little more than subsidized exports. Cut Europe's aid money in half, as the European governments will have half of that "aid money" in a year. European governments will probably get more than half of the money back, but I'm feeling generous today.
In response to the claim that the UN is actually doing something: wrong. The UN is holding conferences, meetings, councils, debates, discussions, and everything else that involves only talking. The only places that aren't crowded with UN bureaucrats are the areas actually effected by the tsunami. When the UN set up its "headquarters" in Indonesia, that headquarters was in a 5-star hotel, which the UN workers have rooms. What do you think was the first thing that the UN did? I'll give you a hint; it wasn't distribute food, water, medicine, or comfort. The priority was to arrange for 24-hour room service. This was before the UN had a fax machine, an inernet connection, or a telephone system worked out.
I'll grab a quote from the UN website (from about January 1st):
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Mr. Egeland: Our main problems now are in northern Sumatra and Aceh. <...> In Aceh, today 50 trucks of relief supplies are arriving. <...> Tomorrow, we will have eight full airplanes arriving. I discussed today with Washington whether we can draw on some assets on their side, after consultations with the Indonesian Government, to set up what we call an “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh.
Tomorrow, we will have to set up a camp for relief workers – 90 of them – which is fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything, because they have nowhere to stay and we don't want them to be an additional burden on the people there.
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One problem: the entire statement is a lie. The UN didn't have a single person in Aceh, and the camp there was set up and run by USAID, the US international aid service (as the name implies). Even a week after this quote, only the US and Australia were using airplanes to deliver relief supplies, and I don't think the UN has used an airplane to transport relief supplies yet (the UN bureaucrats arrive on 1st class seats, though). Additionally, US and Australian relief workers were sleeping on the ground and eating food that didn't need to be cooked. You don't need a luxury resort made out of tents to deliver relief supplies.
The UN's first priority was to set up a camp for relief workers. US and Australia decided that they should deliver aid to those on the verge of starving to death before anything else.
By the way, you do not want to sleep out in the open in Indonesia. That place can get really nasty, even without a tsunami.
But, the UN has delivered some supplies. Let me illustrate an example: about two weeks after the tsunami (more than long enough for people to die of hunger or thirst), the UN finally got a few flights of relief supplies, and I think they were delivered by US planes. The UN promised not to squander any of the aid, even though 65% of donations to the UN are diverted to cover "administration costs", compared to less than 2% for the Red Cross. A picture in the Post, or some similar newspaper, showed UN workers standing next to a pile of boxed food about 6 feet tall. The day before, the pile was 12 feet tall. The UN workers left the boxes out in the rain, because god forbid UN employees work overtime or in such horrid conditions as rain, and more than half of the boxes rotted. Thus, those supplies had to be thrown away.
That's about as efficient as the UN can get.
By the way,
http://diplomadic.blogspot.com/ provides some great information about the UN.
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