(March 4, 2014 at 11:47 pm)Aractus Wrote:

(March 4, 2014 at 4:36 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

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Oh the comic is inaccurate! He actually cooks meth to leave wealth for his family after he is gone, not so that he can get treatment for his cancer.

I think his original intentions were about the treatments to prevent his family from going broke.

But after realizing the potential he moved onto providing wealth for his family.

The funny thing about this thread is I JUST finished this series last night! :-)

And, really, given that, when he was first diagnosed, his wife was pregnant, and his son had a bad case of cerebral palsy, even if the treatment wouldn't bankrupt him, there's still the question of how they would survive. I can't imagine the survivor's benefits for a public school chem teacher would be that much.

Yes - the recipe calls for chemicals that are almost impossible to get. Its a TV show - providing an easy to obtain, easy to cook method for producing drugs is strangely not on the agenda - I wonder why?

Other than that the cartoon in the OP could have been set in many countries with the same outcome - from France (which has the best healthcare in the word) to the UK to Cuba to even Greece (Although right now I am not sure they'd be able to get you the drugs you need due to limited funds).

In the meantime consider this:

The US has the most expensive health care in the world whilst its world ranking for quality is about 53rd. The next most expensive system in the world is the French system which costs about 50% per capita of the US system and, as I stated above, is rated as the best in the world.

If the US outsourced its healthcare to France entirely, for the whole population of the US and allowed the French to make a 50% mark-up from cost it would still save the US about 25% of its total healthcare costs, whilst ensuring that its entire population were covered (with the highest quality healthcare available on the planet).

And the US says it can't afford a healthcare system - tee hee.

There are some things that should fall underwilling suspension of disbelief, but honestly if there's no particular reason why something should happen the way it does, it would be better to just not have a plot around it. We call them idiot plots for a reason. What you decide to file this meth plot under is up to you, though.

(March 4, 2014 at 8:10 pm)Aractus Wrote: It is a good show, but can you tell me this. Why do they waste time stealing methylamine just to make their precursor when they could instead use phenylalanine to make amphetamine as their precursor which results in a far simpler cook (amphetamine + chloromethane + vapourize together = meth), and would mean they don't need to get their hands on any difficult-to-obtain and restricted chemicals? Here's a link. Converting Phe to amphetamine is also very easy, and the whole cook is a lot simpler, and for that matter safer, than a P2P cook. Mr White obviously can't be a very good chemistry teacher if he wants to make meth the hardest imaginable way!

I mean, pshaw! That's the way I do it!...

I mean...



The way I would do it...

If I did it...



I have to go now.

(March 5, 2014 at 11:18 am)max-greece Wrote: Yes - the recipe calls for chemicals that are almost impossible to get.

Actually Methylamine isn't as difficult as depicted in the show to get. He uses it to make Phenylacetone (P2P), but for all the trouble they have to go to to steal the Methylamine they may as well just steal P2P and thus reduce the effort involved in cooking Meth.

Quote:Its a TV show - providing an easy to obtain, easy to cook method for producing drugs is strangely not on the agenda - I wonder why?

So? The fact is that cooking Meth is easy, and nobody does P2P cooks anymore since it's a longer process, thus criminals with medium to large scale kitchens would much rather steal barrels of Pseudoephedrine which is probably no more difficult than stealing barrels of P2P or Methylamine. And those that use Sudafed pills typically use the shake-n-bake method.

And as depicted in my comic (here's it is again, but this time with the spelling error corrected):



Personally it's just not believable that they would choose to use Methylamine. I mean sure it makes sense that Walt would steal it out of opportunity (which is exactly what he does first off), but if they had a choice it makes absolutely no sense.

Quote:The US has the most expensive health care in the world whilst its world ranking for quality is about 53rd. The next most expensive system in the world is the French system which costs about 50% per capita of the US system and, as I stated above, is rated as the best in the world.

Yes and I've explained many times why this is. First and foremost you waste pharmaceutical drugs way more than any other country - and they're government subsidised. You need to get them out of Gas Stations and Supermarkets and limited to specialized pharmacies. You can do what we do in Australia, and let your supermarkets, local shops, newsagencies, servos, etc sell just paracetamol and aspirin, all other over-the-counter and prescription drugs should be available only from pharmacists. This would drastically reduce wastage, saving the taxpayer subsidies on the drugs!!

Quote:And the US says it can't afford a healthcare system - tee hee.

Well, to be honest, actually the USA can't afford it without first putting in place serious reform starting with pharmaceuticals as I just mentioned.

(March 6, 2014 at 12:29 am)Aractus Wrote: So? The fact is that cooking Meth is easy, and nobody does P2P cooks anymore since it's a longer process, thus criminals with medium to large scale kitchens would much rather steal barrels of Pseudoephedrine which is probably no more difficult than stealing barrels of P2P or Methylamine. And those that use Sudafed pills typically use the shake-n-bake method.

So...

Will you cook me up some Meth?

(March 6, 2014 at 12:45 am)Rahul Wrote: So...

Will you cook me up some Meth?

Heck no. But if I was going to do it I would use sudofed since it's the easiest way for a small cook. Here's some I have lying around:



But then again, if I wanted to partake in illegal drugs it's a pretty bad choice, I'd be better off going to the local health store getting Phe supplements and making amphetamine (ie, speed).

Quote:First and foremost you waste pharmaceutical drugs way more than any other country - and they're government subsidised. You need to get them out of Gas Stations and Supermarkets and limited to specialized pharmacies. You can do what we do in Australia, and let your supermarkets, local shops, newsagencies, servos, etc sell just paracetamol and aspirin, all other over-the-counter and prescription drugs should be available only from pharmacists. This would drastically reduce wastage, saving the taxpayer subsidies on the drugs!!

You do understand that I am not American don't you?

Whilst I'd agree on the pharmaceutical side there is the whole insurance side to this too. That is huge business with huge profits that appears to spend enormous sums on getting out of insurance claims.

Essentially its a screwed up system where private enterprises put profits ahead of patient care.

As someone who grew up with the NHS I find it mystifying that Americans think Healthcare should be in private hands. To me it is the same as education or defence and has to be a public service.

(March 6, 2014 at 2:21 am)max-greece Wrote: You do understand that I am not American don't you?

Apologies my friend!

Quote:Whilst I'd agree on the pharmaceutical side there is the whole insurance side to this too. That is huge business with huge profits that appears to spend enormous sums on getting out of insurance claims.

Essentially its a screwed up system where private enterprises put profits ahead of patient care.

There's no such concept of "patient care" at a gas station or a supermarket, that concept applies to doctor's surgeries and to pharmacies.

Quote:As someone who grew up with the NHS I find it mystifying that Americans think Healthcare should be in private hands. To me it is the same as education or defence and has to be a public service.

I'll re-state what I said earlier. While this is correct, America already squanders the healthcare money that would be required, and thus they cannot afford to implement universal healthcare AND to continue the wastage. I actually don't know too much about Obamacare, but what I do know is that what should have been done is to begin national healthcare reform by cutting the wastage, and that is done by setting up new government health departments specifically to address the areas that need improvement, doing cost-benefit analysis and then implementing the reforms and changes required to get the system running efficiently for money.

To go back to what I was saying about the subsidies on pharmaceutical medication, the way you could do this is have a 6 year plan: year one, decrease the government subsidies on all over-the-counter drugs by 50% and set up a govt. department to investigate and initiate reform into these medications, years two-four: legislate to phase out all subsidies on all over-the-counter drugs from any store that is not a pharmacy, and restore 100% subsidies of over-the-counter medications sold from pharmacies, investigate the subsidy levels drug-for-drug and their cost-benefit for future reform. Years 5-6: Legislate to remove over-the-counter drugs from being should outside of specialized pharmacies.

There's a huge reason for removing drugs from non-pharmacy stores. Pharmacies are the ones that need to get the profit from those drugs so that they can employ knowledgeable trained pharmacists!! Also, pharmacies in Australia are even known to sell complete pseudo-medical shit like earwax candles, so I really dread to think about what products pharmacies in the USA may have to peddle to make an extra buck!