I suffer from a harsh case of gout that requires constant treatment. Suddenly this year, I discovered that the generic drug I was using that cost about 3 cents a pill had been banned and replaced by a proprietary drug -- a brand name -- that cost $5 a pill. Welcome to America's broken health-care system.
The United States pays about twice as much more per person for health care as other industrialized nations that provide their citizens more-comprehensive coverage and deliver better outcomes. This is the result of a system that wastes hundreds of billions of dollars on administrative costs, unneeded treatments and exorbitant pricing systems.
Prescription drugs are a classic example. U.S. taxpayers provide $25 billion a year for health-related research and development, much of it related to new drugs.
Prescription-drug companies frequently take the breakthroughs developed on the taxpayers' tab, add a little custom design, then patent the drug. This enables them to charge exorbitant sums for pills that actually cost little to make. Their biggest expense is marketing. But billions are spent each year in wooing doctors and hospitals to adopt their brands.
Government could use its buying power to negotiate lower prices on prescription drugs. The VA does so with immense savings. Other nations do. Yet, the U.S. pays far higher prices for the drugs than other industrial nations, even though U.S. taxpayers often have paid to invent the drugs.
How could this be? When Bush joined with the Republican Congress to pass the prescription drug bill, the drug company lobby went to work. Then-Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) chaired the key committee and wrote into the bill an extraordinary provision prohibiting Medicare from negotiating bulk discounts on drugs.
After the bill passed, Tauzin retired from Congress to take a job as the head of PhRMA, the drug company lobby, with a salary of $2 million a year.
Tauzin's is an egregious case, but, as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has demonstrated, far from unique. After retiring from Congress, Gingrich opened himself up for business in Washington, pocketing among other things, $1.6 million from Freddie Mac. Although Gingrich claimed he was hired as a "historian," Freddie Mac sources said his influence was purchased to gain conservative support for Freddie's "public-private" model. Gingrich publicly touted the mission and model, even as Freddie Mac was plunging into an already collapsing subprime mortgage market. But Gingrich pocketed as much from the health-care industry as he did from Freddie Mac.
The power of the health-care lobby makes our health-care system the most costly in the world. Now, these costs are becoming unaffordable. If they continue at this rate, health care will bankrupt everything -- federal and state governments, private businesses, and families. Already, health-care emergencies are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy.
Obama's health-care reform contains several measures that could save money. But to overcome the health-care lobbies, compromises were made and deals were cut. Thus, the indefensible prohibition on Medicare negotiating bulk-drug discounts was sustained. This reality is part of what gives the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations their force. We have major challenges we must face as a country -- global warming and moving to renewable energy; affordable health care; curbing financial speculation; reviving manufacturing; and changing our corporate trade policies. In every case, the needed changes meet entrenched lobbies and our corrupted big-money politics.
This piece first appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times.
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The problem isn't the lack of access to cheap drugs--the problem is that the "health care system" pushes drugs that simply mask symptoms while the patient continues to get worse, "needs" more drugs, "needs" more drugs to mask the symptoms of the harm caused by the drugs they're already taking...ad infinitum, until the person eventually dies of "natural causes" or something that they never would have suffered if they had refused to go down that road of masking symptoms with drugs in the first place!
What we need is a health care system that heals, that cures.
But that's not profitable to the pharmaceutical drug cartel, and not part of the agenda of the elites that want to drastically reduce the population of Planet Earth.
No. We need a healthcare system that PREVENTS....
In days of yore, the medicine man/witch-doctor/soothsayer would receive a stipend, usually in the form of a bowl of rice or a chicken or even a yard cleaning as long as his/her patient remained hale and hearty. If they got sick, he received nothing.
Imagine a similar system today.
We'd be the healthiest nation on the planet.....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-solod/what-you-may-not-know-abo_1_b_1129319.html
2)Progressives demand government intervention
3) ??????????
4) PROFIT!
NOt "Every-One" Is Entitled To Health-Care (State or National). Soo,
IT's Cheaper (During YOUNG-AGE) That They NOt Pay For a "MONTHLY" INSURANCE-PLAN! Until, Later. (Hint: WE/i art Living Way way alotLonger Than OUR Folk, Aye?
Maybe They Should Start in Their 40's, Or Even In Their 50's (to StartPAYING FOR an Insurance PLAN).
POINT: It's 2012. So, We (The-People) Need Gov't 'ASSURANCE" Nay, NOt "Private" Insurance?!
Note: Space-Ship Earth Needs LESS-Folk [Now] Not-More!,
Less-Nations, Not More,
Less Currency's, Consume Less PETRO Not More etc..! (And Yes: Less' Medical-Insurance PREMIUM'S!).
Fix Healthcare Now.
Obama care is what resulted from a sell out by legislators to let insurance, drug, and healthcare companies enjoy huge profits by fleecing American citizens and looting our states and the federal treasuries as we struggle to pay for healthcare.
Fixing this disaster is easy.
Just do real healthcare reform using government's low cost advantages that would add a public option to compete for patients with existing systems.
Public option care could provide free public healthcare available to EVERYONE choosing to use government hospitals just by asking for it, no restrictions, no means test, no copays.
President Obama and all legislators Democrats and Republicans must fix this national crisis now before the 2012 elections, better yet before Christmas.
Remember how fast the banks and Wall Street got bailed out!
The new public option would provide every medical need from birth to death, inpatient, outpatient regular checkups, including preventative programs for weight loss and substance abuse, to flu shots, dental, eye care, medications all healthcare needs and FREE PERIOD.
Everyone shopping in the United States, whether they are here legally, illegally, rich, poor, 40 million tourists all would be paying pennies on every dollar spent to provide a public choice for free universal government healthcare for EVERYONE in the country who asks for it, NO RESTRICTIONS PERIOD.