There is not one country in which the socialist part of its health care system is not running in the red despite paying less for the medication and the health care workers that the market would ordinarily bear.
I dont understand this. Health care is a cost, never a profitable business. The best outcome is being (nearly) as well as you started out. The motor industry makes cars which you get to drive around. You go to a restaurant because you enjoy the evening. You like visiting hospital?
Other developed countries' health care costs are subsidized by the American consumer. Americans, for one example, pay more for their American made drugs than do Canadians.
B Ollocks. Those Indian ripoff companies make drugs for virtually nothing, which is presumably the real production cost. As to development costs, what do you bet that if all the money spent on this by drug companies was put in a pot and spent according to a scientific program of what would benefit people most, we would have many many more useful drugs.
Drug companies DO NOT develop drugs to help patients get well. They develop drugs to MAKE MONEY. So we get three kinds of viagra. The first was purely an accident. The next two which are much the same were developed to get a cut of the market. Total waste of development money as far as really helping people.
Then there is that other brilliant strategy of deveoping a drug which is a tiny bit better but because it is new has a patent. Then discontinue the old drug which was essentially just as good but no longer makes vast amounts of money. Buy out any chemical company that decides to make the cheap one and stop production. Pay them a ton of cash to stop production. Rubbish any traditional drugs or stuff that grows on trees (dare I mention that handy grow in your own garden drug cannabis?).
If you really want to develop new drugs slash all the profits of drug companies and organise a central fund to pay for research. The Welcome foundation in the UK is a private charity which is one of the biggest funders of research. Bill Gates? These people pay for medical research which help real people but which drug companies won't touch because they don't see it as profitable.
The un-insured in this country are being gouged by hospitals. You could for example walk in to the hospital as an un-insured individual and be billed for $1,800 for services insurance companies would only be billed $800 for. A law could be passed that did not allow price differentials greater than some percentage (say 10%).
That sounds terrble. How did you guys allow that to happen?
There are three types of medical care: 1) primary; 2)chronic and 3) catastrophic. Insurance should only be covering catastrophic care. Americans citizens should be shopping for their care in order to keep prices down and yet be able to pay for cutting edge developments in medication, procedures, and devices.
The UK has gone through a lot of privatisation of state industries in the last 20 or 30 years. By and large the lesson is, IT DOES NOT HELP. It is always argued that the private sector drives down prices because of competition. Generally there is no real competition because the companies concerned are so big. two or three players at the most, and they all want to make money so have a vested interest in PUSHING UP prices. Then, they have to make money. Whatever the service cost before, they want 10% on top for their profit. Always. And the profit comes first.
In the UK we have privatised train services. They cut a deal that prices would go up 1% above inflation. Happy bunnies while their costs were running lower than inflation, they were getting a real profit boost each year. Then suddenly we get negative inflation so they ought to get cuts. Did they ever holler and claim it was not fair and they could not accept a cut but would walk away from their contract. (apparently the companies running the services are shells so if they go bust it makes no difference to the parent groups which has been getting the profits). That is a typical example of the private sector. Profit always comes first.
Health Saving Accounts (HSA's) are the only way the above mentioned can be addressed economically and fairly.
New one on me, we dont have such a thing. In reality this is a half way house which partially shares out health costs but is still just an effective route for the rich. The real question in medicine is whether you believe citizens should get it as a right, or whether you should only get it if you can pay. Everything else is just arguing about the details. It is a simple choice though lots of people are trying to hide it. A system like the UK represents a decision that everyone by right of being alive is entitled to health care as good as anyone else gets. It does not deliver a rolls royce service. The rich can pay for that on top if they want. It does deliver a good service comparable to or better than that in any other country including the US. I was shocked to see a documentary about world chairites operating free health care clinics in the US. US health care is great if you have lots of money, but otherwise it is way inefficient or nonexistent.
