I think Americans should really start to ask why it costs millions of dollars to get FDA approval for drugs and why we can get iPods and iPads for a few weeks' wages while medical devices, bought in bulk, go for tens of thousands of dollars a pop. The best way to decrease health care costs and improve health care quality in the US is to remove the monopolies and the bureacracies.
The high cost of health care in the US is justified and allowed because a human life does not have a quantifiable price tag attached to it. It would be unethical in America to let a person die because it was just too expensive to keep a person alive.
That is why so much Medicare money is used to keep terminally ill elderly patients alive to extend their lives just a few years or months or days. I believe that something outrageous like 80% of the Medicare health care burden is to provide for only 5%-10% of the population of the frail elderly in intensive care to extend their lives a few months or if that. My 89 year old aunt was in the intensive care for 3 months and racked up a $650,000 bill which the government paid for. She never made it out of the hospital. It is no wonder the Medicare system is going broke.
If there is a drug, treatment or procedure that would save your life, the value of those things would be as valuable as your life. Life does not have a monetary value so all those things can be as expensive as the medical industry decides. The cost of the drug and all the medical costs ends up being what you would be willing to pay to save your life.
There is no cost ceiling other than what you or your health insurance or your government will be willing to pay to save your life. There is no free market system at work here to curb costs.
I think you are terribly naive to think health care costs will go down and care will improve by simply removing monopolies and the bureaucratic system. To be replaced by what? 6 hospitals competing for one patient who can't afford treatment? It simply isn't a sustainable or viable model to keep a nation healthy.
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