Topic: . - page 26. (Read 46178 times)

The very article you link to proves there is a free market in prescription meds.  It cites a million Americans a year buying their drugs out of country.  It cites one lady who had hers impounded.

Are you claiming because it is technically illegal there is no free market?  A free market is not concerned about legalities.    Constraints to a free market exist when it is CONSTRAINED, as when most of a million users' products are held at the border - not when one person's products are.

Respectfully, you are wasting your time pursuing this argument.  I have talked with US Border Patrol agents about this and have taken prescription drugs across the US Mexican border.  I have imported them from Canada, England, and India for over ten years.  Anybody who chooses to do so can do so.


Here in the USA the very reason many of these prices are high is the unholy alliance of lobbyists and politicians in Washington DC.  Give the politicians the ability to "negotiate a price" for drugs - or for anything - and here, you'll have a real disaster in the making.  The result will be high prices, not low prices.

Your statement above I bolded is correct except it is not price gorging by the patent holder, the price differentials occur in the distribution chain.  For examples, by hospitals.  This is the result of medicare and other social insurance services payments' being TOO LOW.  They make up the difference by charging the free market customer.  Therefore if you expand the social insurance, this problem is made worse, not better.

It's very easy to provide free or cheap healthcare and it's something a government doesn't even need to be involved with, stop being assholes, one thing I've noticed with this whole healthcare problem is there are a bunch of selfish scumbags out there who would rather bankrupt entire countries and cling onto their monopoly selling pills and insurance to a select few for ridiculous amounts than give in to the fact that people aren't going to go along with it forever. This is a problem that is to do with humanity, not ideologies or anything else, we have a very similar problem within the UK where there are a few out there lobbying constantly against the government to force everyone to buy car insurance at ridiculous prices and they all do the usual arguments of how it would mean everyone would go around uninsured and no one would be able to afford repairs etc. it's all lies.

Wow, that is a real pot calling the kettle black.


You don't understand what the word monopoly means.
There are private healthcare providers in the UK. The NHS can therefore not have a monopoly.


I see, so I should ignore my own actual experiences with the NHS, and instead just accept your blindly parroted philosophical objections?


Yes, because we can see that has worked so well in the US, can't we?
The US free market approach results in a far higher proportion of GDP spent on healthcare than the socialised systems in Europe.

It's not a monopoly. Private healthcare also exists in the UK, in fact most of the NHS is getting contracted out to private firms one by one.

It doesn't acknowledge the underlying problem of why medicine needs a price fix to ensure it's fair; it sounds as though there are protections for the developers of medicine to keep the methods on creating such medicine secret to prevent others from profiting, which sounds inherent in the systems of copyright and patenting.

Instead of controlling the problem through the very methods that created the problem, we should instead move to unravel the problem at its core so we can find a real solution.

If I understand correctly, Americans who try to buy their medicines with their own money get charged more than those who pay for the drugs through an insurance policy who in turn are charged more than those whose drugs are paid for by medicare. And the differences are sometimes over 1000% - price gouging rather than marketing differences.

If the prices you pay for your drugs are negotiated for all taxpayers and roughly the same for all, whats wrong with that?

Really?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/health/as-drug-costs-rise-bending-the-law-is-one-remedy.html?ref=us

So why is this woman having her Vagifen that she paid for impounded?

http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm194904.htm Is the FDA making a ridiculous claim here?

These facts show there is no "free market" in drugs in the US which needs to be defended.  In fact, you are the first person I have ever heard asserting there was one.  Not only are you delusional - you have no idea of what a "free market" looks like.

The whole system is rigged. I think the problem is health care in US cost way too much. I know American want the best, so it's costly. But I know many ppl do not really need the best all the time. Most basic medical service should be affordable without health insurance. Say the water gets in my ear, I just want to visit a hospital, have a doctor to take a quick 10 minutes look for $20 which is a lot if money for 10 minute desk job.

But under the Euro, your country cannot inflate it's currency to pay for votes it wants to buy by giving people free stuff.   So is your country going further into debt to provide these services, or does it have a balanced budget?

Because there is nothing wrong with a country choosing to spend excess wealth on medical, space, museums, or free tennis shoes for everybody.

What is wrong is creating and spending excess debt on such things.

Sorry for bit off-topic, but reading this, while reading some other stuff I'm researching, I wonder if eventually Europe will have to add a fourth emergency service that deals with grey goo or nanomachine outbreaks, and a fifth one that deals with 3D micro-printed designer viruses. Maybe even a sixths one that deals with relativity and physics related issues, such as from some dumb kid accidentally creating a black hole or some dangerous time dialation event...

Outcomes are important here.  Test too many people with MRI and you get cancer caused by MRI.  I am NOT saying MRI is bad, but if you are trying to find something with a 1 in 100,000 shot and you make 2 in 100,000 more people have cancer you are NOT AHEAD even ignoring the massive cost. 

In the European model, yes to both.
You pay through general taxation, so the more you can afford, the more you pay.
And the entire country forms one huge insurance pool, so everybody pays for everybody else's bad luck.
(Actually it is more than just the one country, as in general membership of a socialised medical system in one European country also qualifies you for treatment in any other one.)
Healthcare is simply viewed differently here, it is the third emergency service alongside the police and fire service. We wouldn't consider making people pay for using those services, either, they are all considered part of the basic set of services provided by the state.
I realise that that is not the American view of things.
And, at least where I am, it works. I can go and see my GP whenever I need, get referred for specialist consultations as needed, get whatever tests I need, and pay a single fixed price for any prescription medicine, regardless of what it actually costs.
I realise that the largest part of the leftpondian objection is on philosophical, rather than practical grounds, you have a much smaller view of government than on this side, but on a practical level, I wouldn't want to swap what I have for what you have, especially when there is also a parallel private healthcare sector for non-urgent issues, or for if you just want nicer surroundings, a private room, and so on. And for that private heathcare cover, which my work provides, I'm taxed as though it cost me about 100 dollars a month. That is for myself and my wife, including all existing conditions. So either way, public or private, it seems better over here.

They don't want you to do this.  This is a way for you to be independent and not to be sucking up to the rulers of subjects like you.  You are doing some thinking.  You need to stop that and get with the program.  Here is what is going to happen to the HSA/MSA:

http://floppingaces.net/2012/07/08/obamacare-killing-health-savings-accounts-reader-post/

HHS has decided, despite repeated petitions to amend their rule, to simply not count any of the monies paid by HSA insured towards their deductible. HHS will only count monies paid by insurers. So, if you have a $5,000 deductible, and pay $3,000 in health expenses to meet your deductible, for the purposes of HHS’s rigged rule, none of that money counts – because you paid it, not the insurer. Given that only roughly 6% of the HSA insured population will hit their $5,000 deductible, it is just about mathematically impossible for the HSA qualified insurance to meet the MLR regulation. HHS knows this, they have been told for just about two years by HSA policyholders and advocates.

Since HHS is in full “let’s just not count it” mode, HSA qualified health plans in the individual and small group market can not comply with the combined rigged rule effect of both the MLR and AV regulations. This means the 5.4 million Americans in these two markets who now have an HSA will not be able to find HSA qualified health plans. Poof – forty percent of Americans with an HSA just won’t be able to have one.

Okay, but I can also make the argument that every American is rich by any historical or global standard.  I'm upper middle class, by American standards; but I can still afford to pay my medical costs directly.  That's what I do, too.  I do not take a dime out of my health savings account in a normal year, and have only taken $1K out of it in the entire time that I've had it.  Because I'm saving for a time when I really need it.  I have a major medical plan that is attached to the medical savings account, with an annual deductable of $6500.  I've not yet hit this mark in a year, but then I also don't pay for expensive testing that's not likely to tell me something about my condition that I can't guess.  Eventually, my condition is going to be very expensive.  That's not your problem.  It's mine. 

If you can afford your own care, shouldn't you be expected to pay for it?  Either directly or via taxation?  But if you can't afford it, who then is responsible for your bad luck?  Other taxpayers? 

My insurance policy will no longer be available. Next year I will be paying $300 a month to the pharmacy, $200 a month for doctor bills and $270 for insurance. That's $770 a month. No coverage for visits or prescriptions unless I hit some huge deductible.

Compare to this year, I pay $220 for insurance and $15 co-pays for visits and prescriptions. So far I've had every visit and prescription covered by my insurance, and I've gone in twice a month.

I can't believe how naive and clueless people in this country have become. We are in serious trouble here. The loss of pharmacy coverage and these high deductibles is not going to work. I'm only 30 years old, I'm not paying $770 a month for medical bills. At least not the $250 for insurance that only covers me in the event that I get some seriously problem.

Maybe if I get cancer I will sign up for obamacare. With no pre-condition rules I can just hop on the train when it suits me. At least until this country wakes up and gives me my coverage back.

Yes, I did see the footnotes, to the end of the Klein article in which he quotes Holverseson, for whom he admits he has no transcript.


If there is no free market, then how is it that I buy things cheaply and have them promptly shipped to my door? 

A 30 second check of my current Canadian pharmacy shows that they do stock the inhalers, and will sell and ship them to me.  Nobody is forcing Americans to pay more for inhalers as you claim.

Please stop these ridiculous claims.

What all the research and your own experience shows is that there is no free market in drugs because the US has patent laws and regulations to prevent it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-simple-breath.html

Again, why are you defending this?  Americans are forced to pay more for inhalers than anyone else in the world.  Why do you think that is a good thing?

BTW, the Holvereson article includes source research.  You just have not looked.

Well, so I disproved your assertion about Lipitor and price gorging, but noted that one could find examples of price gorging.  Then you respond:

The thing that puzzles me is that you want to defend this price gouging.  

which makes no sense, does it?

What I've defended is the ability to purchase medicines in the free market both in and between countries, in order to get the best price.  And that rather destroys the foundation of your pro-socialist argument that the state must be in control of prices, doesn't it?

I suggest you look again at the concept of 'price-gorging' and ask how it could exist except with the active assistance of the state in restricting competition, then ask why, if the state created the problem, would further regulation and market restrictions be a necessary solution.

As for this...


You realize you are quoting a newspaper reporter who is quoting from an interview he made?  These are not 'facts'.  You've been told by several persons in this thread some of the details on how medical procedures differ between the US and other countries which accounts, whether rightly or wrongly, for the price differences.  How are you not ignoring that?  I know why Klein ignores it, let's leave that aside for the moment.

That's not an acceptable solution, because insufficient potential for graft and corruption exists.
I know several people who have recently done just that, walked right out instead of doing the MRI.

What about mandate, with a ban on employee provided insurance? Make everyone pay for the entire coverage directly I.e. instead of employer paying for $500 of your insurance without you even knowing, have them give you a $500 raise, and let you go out and pick something. If we go in this direction, we may even end up moving into a more free-market health coverage system, and really drive down costs, which are mostly hidden from view now.