Imagine how cheap healthcare would be if it was out of government and licensing boards hands like retail shopping, lasik surgery and restaurants. Service would be better, costs would be lower and predictable. The rules and regulations surrounding healthcare have turned it into a pigsty for the people involved. They only get that power because of government and regulatory/licensing power to control medicine. Whether its private insurance, medicare or government payout its all a moot point. Those groups all take premiums to pay out later. The end issue is the disgusting rise in the costs of healthcare primarily attributable to entrenched groups that have lobbied for control over their professions.
Yes, just imagine that, here is a story for you, I am sure regulations and not greed made these people charge $143000 for treating a snake bite. https://www.npr.org/sections/health...mmer-bummer-a-young-campers-142-938-snakebite
Uhhh...i'm not sure you even read the article you posted. A majority of the insane cost of that bill was the Antivenom at $70,000. From Article: " CroFab has dominated the U.S. market for snake antivenin since its approval in 2000. When Oakley was bitten, it was the only drug available to treat venomous bites from pit vipers. (Oakley probably was bitten by a copperhead snake, a type of pit viper, the camp directors told her parents.) But with only one antivenin available in the U.S. at the time, the drugmaker, London-based BTG Plc, essentially had a monopoly. The average list price for CroFab is $3,198 per vial, according to the health care information tech company Connecture. Manufacturing costs, product improvements and research all factor into the drug's price, said Chris Sampson, spokesman for BTG. A Mexican version of snake antivenin can cost roughly $200. But it couldn't be sold in the U.S. (More about that in a moment.) Dr. Leslie Boyer, founding director of the VIPER Institute, a venom research center at the University of Arizona, acknowledges that some of the price in the U.S. can be attributed to strict Food and Drug Administration requirements for testing and monitoring. But more than that, she added: "It's a profitable drug and everyone wants a piece of it." These pharma companies and physician groups have killed foreign competition and manipulated and abused the foolish government agencies to their own financial gains. Do you really think antivenom would cost $70,000 in a normal world?? It would be like bitcoin with everyone catching snakes and making antivenom farms as millionaires! But its a government regulation that creates monopolies that allows this nonsense.
Ironic that white trash voters who benefit from Obamacare and willing to get rid of it to serve their lord Trump.
So drug companies charging exuberant prices on drugs is not greed? IMO drug manufacturers, medical insurances and the hospitals as well as medical professionals all benefit from the high healthcare costs, if you want to cut healthcare cost in this country, you will be taking money away from someone, and the fight will be ugly, that is why nothing gets done.
Trying to stop greed in some moral way will never work in any way in life. Its against human nature as people always will want to get more for doing less. What hinders excessive profits in any industry is competition. Government regulations and bureaucracy hurts the competition in this field allowing monopolies which in turn skyrocket prices. The whole Turing Pharma (Martin Shkreli) etc was all based on silly governmental laws that were taken advantage of.
I'd say it's not government, it's insurance. If you had simple transactions like you do at a clothing store, competition would discipline prices and improve service. But it would also be incredibly difficult to make the capital investments in R&D. Developing a new wonder drug or whatever would cost so much that there wouldn't be a market big enough to pay for it. But, we have insurance, which greatly widens the pool of customers with willingness to pay and provides a source of returns to justify investments. But insurance is able to do this by dampening the price signals. It's possible to have your utopian simple healthcare market, but you have to give up (1) healthcare for the poor, and (2) ambitious innovation.
This reminds me of that old Prop 12 that Rick Perry pushed as a way to bring down health care costs. Just another BS Republican scam. Now you want to have doctors without licences and standards. What a wonderfully dumb idea.
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? Or do you just spew idiocy all day at anything that is not in agreement with your little brain. In order to be a practicing doctor its not JUST going to med school, and then passing an examination but its a multi year residency program in which there are fewer spots per capita over the last 20 years due to trade unions like the American Medical Association lobbying to reduce spots. So the number of physicians per capita has DECLINED over the last 20 years due to a trade union using governmental power to limit positions. To today 40+ million Americans live over 50 miles from a doctor. There are thousands of doctors annually that pass the exams saying they have the qualifications to practice medicine but can't due to the residency bottleneck. The residency bottleneck was pushed by Trade Unions like the AMA, AAMC etc. and you want to give these people and government more power. You're a buffoon that is way out of your league.
This isn't republican or democrat it is just the issues with the growth of trade unions controlling every facet of who can enter a profession. This manipulation by healthcare providers has allowed doctors to be in a shortage boosting their incomes, and allowing them to control every facet of healthcare and profit from VOLUME of services as opposed to health outcomes. Companies and employees can't fight back as there are too few doctors to hire ones to work for the benefit of their employees and not just to make money as per the amount of surgery or procedures done.
Once again you complain about government overreach, but then actually complain about private organizations that actually create the rules.
A private organization wouldn't get the power it has unless it was granted that power by the regulatory state. As a civilization gets older people in a profession get entrenched through guilds and licensing and regulatory power which then limits supply to support their incomes. Only through powers given by government can these types of market manipulations happen.
This is exactly the response I expected when you speak to someone on a subject that they know so little about and just want to use one word attacks. Deep thoughts!
What the what? I understand your position since you're an early 20th century proponent of capitalism that welcomes fraud, lax standards, proposes no benefits, long hours, poor wages, and unsafe working conditions. These 40+ million people you speak about probably travel nearly as far to get to many places for services. It's the nature of living in a rural area. DEEP thought there. As for the AMA, they're behaving like any other group, lobbying for their members. I do believe we should build more hospitals and have more residencies. It's just another part of the reason why our health care system rips us off. HOWEVER, prop 12 was a scam. It did nothing to reduce health care costs per the jokers who put it on the ballot.
American drug cartels. 60 minutes did a big piece on this a couple of weeks ago. Naturally no one will go to prison and the companies will just pay a fine that dwarfs their profiteering. It's the American way.
The real issue is preventative and incremental care and not putting everyone on medicine to magically fix them. Until the doctors union is broken they will want to see 50 patients a day to increase their income and the easiest fix is medicine. Perversion and immoral system all around that only a free market can fix.
Please cite a free market health care system that works in a moral way and provides better outcomes than socialized medicine.
Dr. Drew Pinsky warns Los Angeles could be at risk of a deadly epidemic this summer https://www.foxnews.com/us/dr-drew-pinsky-major-epidemic-los-angeles-kill-thousands The Party of Death!
