Whatever happened to your Health Care debate?

[KC Scott]

KC brings up the artificially low price other countries pay for drugs. He implies that there is some sort of conspiracy here to jam americans into paying artifically high payments.

I doubt this is the case. If it was, Pfeizer and all the rest of the bandits would have off the charts earning.

They don't, to the best of my knowledge.

I think other countries get artifically low prices because, basically, they simply tell the drug companies, it's all they can pay. The drug companies figure they either take the deal which still nets them a bit of a profit on the actual manufacture of said drugs or risk that country simply counterfeiting them. In the US, they have protection against this with a little thing called patent law, therefore, they get all the RD cost's from us.

My solution to this is to tell countries that can afford to pay more such as Canada/Europe/a few other places, they will. if they are caught counterfeiting, we slap considerable tariffs on every thing we import from them.

All of the countries you mentioned have negotiated pricing with the Big Pharma companies.
It's a take it or leave it deal that the drug companies accept.

Here in US the idea has been floated as well, but the drug lobbiest have managed to block it by saying that it will destroy their R&D pipeline.
Basically they say we're financing their R&D beacuse they don't make enough margin off ROW.

It has zero to do with counterfeiting

[JMak]

Negotiated? More like price caps imposed by those governments. Kinda what dems have been clamoring for in the US for now. They thought they could get away with advocating negotiating with Pharma when Bush expanded Medicare Rx. No-ah-ah...there's no negotiating with the US government. As a single actor it completely distorts the market.

[Dr_Phibes]

You just drove off the rails, Scott. First of all, no one deserves to get the best available of anything. You get what you can afford.

That's a moral, ideological argument though - nothing to do with supply and demand. Every system reflects its culture's values, you've chosen to make health care a commodity.

Moral arguments are best shied away from when dealing with capitalists, best stick to basic numbers: numerical costs vs. benefits, this tends to be what capitalists like to talk about.
Alternatively, in Canada, the way the system is structured leads to the following three undeniables:

1. The healthy subsidise the sick. All pay taxes in order to fund the health system. Those who get sick use the health system, those who stay healthy do not. Therefore, the healthy end up paying for something they don't get, and the sick end up paying less than the total cost for the care they receive.

2. The wealthy subsidise the poor. The taxation system is progressive. The rich pay a higher tax-rate foot a larger percentage of the bill.

3. The young subsidise the old. The elderly members of the population tend to be the ones who experience more medical complications. Younger people are generally healthier, so the tax dollars paid by the young tend to be used to a large extent to fund the care of the elderly.

There's no legislation that sets that in stone, but the model was chosen and this is the result that has popped out. If you want moral justification I'd say this: the young take care of the old because the old once took care of the young.

It sounds rather pie in the sky, and is rarely effective when arguing about economic efficiency, but there you have it.

[smackaholic]

the dickhead power brokers running those schemes are still getting paid. many of those below them are not. plenty of middle class financial analysts are out of work. plenty of newly minted finance grads are out of work.

find me a doctor that is out of work. find me a doctor that is not AT LEAST in the upper middle class.

my bro in law is an RN. he tells me there are plenty of GPs out there working their asses off for 70K a year. That's about what I make with my college drop out/ military tech school edumacation. And, IMO, it ain't close to upper middle class. upper middle class, I would say is a buck fiddy - two hunit a year. ir it is in ct anyway.

[Diego in Seattle]

Did your sister ever get her panties back from AP?

[Dr_Phibes]

Phibes,

We don't disagree as much as you might think. My primary objection is in the manner in which the propose health care reform is to be implemented in the United States. We have a Constitution that is supposed to reserve power to the People and the States, with the federal government having very limited power. If the citizens of a particular state or their representatives vote to enact "moral" legislation in which the young and healthy pay for health care for the old and sick, then that would be fine. If you read my earlier post, you'd realize that I favor something along that line, provided it is run by the individual states, and not by the federal government. That is how it is supposed to work. And I wouldn't bitch about it. If I didn't like it, I could move to another state that had a better program. When the federal government does it, what are my options?

So I agree with you, your system is in trouble and the proposed solutions won't help.
I'd say that your ideas are also unworkable, I read them- you'd fracture what exists as a national system and create 52 more mini-bureaucracies and destroy any purchasing power you might have through economy of scale.
I know what you're getting at - but every criticism of the American healthcare system is that there are too many fingers in the pie - the enormous amount of money that's chucked in is being siphoned off. Creating dozens upon dozens of little offshoots doesn't sound practical to me, it might offer choice but it won't control cost - that will just exacerbate the problem.