Health Care 10.06.07 And The Pandora Prescription

[ignite ignite]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqNjdrdVll0

If this isn't published, watch a conspiracy unfold before your eyes.

[Ignominy]

I think that is eelam on the vid I can't tell they blurred his face

[Jerome Scuggs]

hey, let's socialize health care and watch everyone be happy oh wait

[Cops]

hey, let's socialize health care and watch everyone be happy oh wait

actually it would go something like that.

[Jerome Scuggs]

actually it would go something like that.

i don't get it - i mean, considering medicine IS socialized and people AREN'T happy, does it have to change its name officially to "socialized medicine" for it to work, or what?

[Reaver]

That doesn't make sense at all. I mean, bravo on the sales gimmick of the book, but if there was some truth to be had about the medical industry that they'll publish in a book, why can't he say it in the video. Don't get me wrong, I know the medical industry in the U.S. is out to make big bucks anyway they can, but I see right through this one.

A good way to solve our problems with the medical industry would be to promote competition among drug companies and hospitals, etc. As of right now people pay for health insurance, so they don't care to ask how much that procedure or bottle of medicine costs, since they know the insurance company is just going to pay for it. Because of this they don't shop around for a better price. Private practicing doctors have to deal with the insurance company to get their money which also increases the costs for the doctors which in turn requires them to charge a little more.

I think the solution to this is a high deductible. Around $1500 or so, and the money should carry over into next year if you don't use it. That way people are responsible for their health care to a certain extent. You don't have people running to the doctor for a cold because they know the insurance is going to pay for it. People will start shopping around for prices which will create competition, and in turn lower prices and also lower profits from the highly profited drug companies. We'll see a massive decline in "me too" drugs (Many of the drugs we have today aren't really new, it's just the fact that the drug company took the same prescription and altered it slightly, since the previous one's patent expired, and now they've given it a new name and increased the price). Additionally, it's better than having public health care like in Canada because there is no long waiting time and we have a medical field driven by competition. If you need any examples of this competitive price cutting in medicine, look no further than lasek (sp?) vision correction. It started out around $5,000 an eye and now I've seen advertisements on TV for $500 an eye. Additionally the technology involved in the procedure has gotten much better.

Obviously there are problems with this solution. But I'd like to hear a solution that will come without it's problems. Some people might not go to the doctor while having severe headaches and later die because of a brain tumor, etc. I acknowledge this as one of the biggest problems, but compare that to the biggest problems with our medical industry today.

[Cops]

i don't get it - i mean, considering medicine IS socialized and people AREN'T happy, does it have to change its name officially to "socialized medicine" for it to work, or what?

I'm pretty happy about socialized health care, as far as medicine as pertaining to prescriptions/drugs I'm moderate about the issue mainly because I have a health plan that covers 100% of all my prescriptions, and even if I didn't have my health plan my college covers something like 70-80 percent of all my medicine as well as other things I don't really need like free massages, which reminds me I should go get one this week.

[MetalHeadz]

Obviously there are problems with this solution. But I'd like to hear a solution that will come without it's problems. Some people might not go to the doctor while having severe headaches and later die because of a brain tumor, etc. I acknowledge this as one of the biggest problems, but compare that to the biggest problems with our medical industry today.

I didn't watch the video but I was interested in what you were saying. Your idea centres around the premise that ill people will be wanting to look for their own medicine: they won't, they will want to concentrate on getting better. It also goes on the assumption that patented drugs can be produced more cheaply via a more competitive market structure, but this is also problematic. Whilst the individual cost of producing each drug capsule/dose would be relatively small, the researching and trialing behind new drugs is so extensive that it pushes companies net costs up hugely. This means companies are eager to patent drugs they have created themselves thus making the market very uncompetitive after the initial production. This gives little scope for cost cutting etc as you may only have 2 or 3 companies who are legally allowed to produce any one drug.

I think the resolution lies in the relaxing of patenting laws in the medical sector. I also think that you need to make the insurance companies more competitive so they are actively looking to provide cheaper services using cheaper drug companies.

[Epinephrine]

i don't get it - i mean, considering medicine IS socialized and people AREN'T happy, does it have to change its name officially to "socialized medicine" for it to work, or what?

I don't get why Americans always love calling it 'socialized medicine'. It's called universal healthcare, with the obvious implication that socialized = communism = bad.

Maybe instead of calling the US government of the past 7 years the US government, we can call it 'god-inspired-religious-wackjobs'. Wait that's too long.. I'll just use the word 'fundamentalist'.

And yes I'm being tongue in cheek.

[Jerome Scuggs]

I don't get why Americans always love calling it 'socialized medicine'. It's called universal healthcare, with the obvious implication that socialized = communism = bad.

You're right, and genocide should be the less-harsh-sounding "ethnic cleansing", but there's something wrong - it's still genocide

Hell, you could call it "infinite health care". All three monikers are equally defiant of reality. Any concept of universal, comprehensive, no-man-left-behind coverage is physically impossible, and incredibly impractical. As much as everyone, me included, would like to believe, resources are not in fact infinite. The classic, non-interventionist method of medical service was vastly efficient. As regulations and third-party government payers and subsidies increased, so did bureaucracy and price. Doctors soon stopped making house calls, because to do so would be inefficient under this new system.

Louisiana is a highly socialist state. Perhaps you've read about Huey P. Long, the very socialist "Every Man A King" guy. He was shot when he was going to try to run for Prez, but before that he got Louisiana on the Socialist steamroller. We were one of the first states to really hammer down on social healthcare, and look at us, we're one of the shittiest states ever in terms of medical care, not to mention poverty (huey long promised everyone money, and created the Share Our Wealth redistribution program), and even education (huey long was the first to get statewide, free textbooks in america).

I mean, what's so bad about "unequal treatment"? At least it's treatment. Doctors used to see patients on a walk-in basis, and give a $10 check-up in 15-30 minutes. Now, thanks to our regulations and subsidies, one has to call in advance, set it up, wait an hour, fill out enough paperwork to make your fingers numb, and still pay around 20 bucks. But, I guess, look on the brightside - everyone gets the same shittily equal treatment. Take that, you man-hating capitalists.

Do you see what I mean? It's one thing to act compassionate, but it's another to, I suppose, be compassionate. If universal health care were physically possible - nanobot android supercomputing tamogotchis that could convert raw mass and matter into actual molecular structures, a la Supreme Commander, then... yeah, I guess I'll throw my hat in for the Social Welfarists. But for now, the best form of distribution of service is the doctors themselves. When doctors aren't being fucked because of malpractice insurance, and having to sigh as they pile through tomes of regulations, trying to find out WHY the new anti-cancer drug can't be on the market NOW because the FDA has to make sure it's good, by testing it for 600 years, "for the good of the public", when that sort of thing goes away, I think, to be honest, they'll cheer up and hell, maybe give free, comprehensive checkups on the house... ah, altruism. A luxury reserved for people rich enough to afford it.

edit: oh and for the record i'm actually related to huey p. long

[Kolar]

I think the solution to this is a high deductible. Around $1500 or so, and the money should carry over into next year if you don't use it. That way people are responsible for their health care to a certain extent. You don't have people running to the doctor for a cold because they know the insurance is going to pay for it.

Additionally, it's better than having public health care like in Canada because there is no long waiting time and we have a medical field driven by competition. If you need any examples of this competitive price cutting in medicine, look no further than lasek (sp?) vision correction. It started out around $5,000 an eye and now I've seen advertisements on TV for $500 an eye. Additionally the technology involved in the procedure has gotten much better.

So lets say I skip a visit, I've been sick for a week or so. It turns into a chest infection which puts me out of work, in the hole a couple of grand and with no support but that of my family, if any. Worst case scenario I can't provide for myself or the drugs and die OR put it on credit and become a bitch to some bank for the rest of my life. Compare that to taking less then 20 minutes of my time and that of a walkin clinic there's really no choice. I also think many Americans have some weird ideas on what our health care will cover. Dental, prescription drugs, vision correction and extremely rare drugs/treatments are not paid for. For example I still pay (or rather would pay, if not for my mother's plan) 120$ per asthma puffer. If you end up at a hospital with a non life threatening or painful injury, you will likely wait some time. But personally it's much better then having a health care system setup on idealism, incompetence and fear.

[Jerome Scuggs]

But I'd like to hear a solution that will come without it's problems.

You cite a perfect example of how competitive, non-regulated services (LASIK) brings low prices... what's preventing that sort of hands-off approach to the other medical sectors?

Free Market Medicine - an article about free versus "social" health care in America

Socialized Healthcare is not cheaper than Free Market Healthcare - Title says it all.

The Free Market to the Rescue - An article about Canada's failing socialized system, and how the free market is actually helping save Canadian lives, so much so that Canadian beauracracts are turning a "blind eye" to these technically illegal private centers. Not to mention one of the leading Socialist doctors has apparently actually seen REALITY, and is campaigning for the Social system to be dismantled.

The Myth of the Free-Market HMO - an article explaining how rising costs are the effect of government regulation and not free market practices.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Here's what I'm saying: if you can get it perfect, if you can predict the economic status and income for every single citizen of a State, factor in every single factor (new diseases, new treatments, new techniques), and otherwise read the future, and develop a set of regulations that then allow for every single possible infinite variable... then yeah. Let's see it.

But the sad fact is, things aren't static like regulation. A regulation can become obsolete - and that's assuming it doesn't actually cause harm - a few hours after it's passed. To change that regulation takes... weeks, at best.

If you just look at raw data, empirical data, history leans in favor of the free markets. And where it does fail, it's the result of regulation and socialization. Ideally, yes, I completely agree - socializing the means of production would be a great, equal, fantastic thing to do, if it could be done. But it's been tried, and it fails, and where it doesn't outright fail, the free markets are one-upping it. Why? All my libertarian bullshit aside, it's because it's how reality goddamn works. Resources are finite, the only certainty is uncertainty, and people are greedy. To say otherwise would to speak in the face of quite a bit of basic physics and science.

Many people see socialized medicine as the ordering of a naturally chaotic free market system. But what's more chaotic... paying thirty bucks for a checkup... or filling out insurance paperwork? Hell, I'll stake my subspace username and password on this one: if you charged poor people $50 more per visit... but, in return, there was no insurance paperwork, I think every single person would pay (or, if they didn't have the money, seriously consider donating a little sperm). (Though, if there wasn't third-party payment options, I guess poor people would be paying less than $50 for a single checkup. Oh well.)

[Reaver]

Way too many responses I don't have time to respond to all at this time. I'll respond back again later but for now, I'll address Mhz.

My premise doesn't base anything on the fact that people will want to look for their own medicine, the doctors will advise what medicine to take just like they do now. That doesn't mean we need to sit down uninformed and accept any answer given. My premise is based on the fact that a little over 70% of the drugs released in the past 2 or 3 years in the U.S. are drugs called "me too" drugs in which the chemical formula of the drug is changed by 1% or less, given a new name and passed off as some new advance in medicine. For example, there's a purple pill out now called Prilosec (I believe that's how it's spelled). The drug is a rip off, the drug company that had the chemical formula of it's predecessor's patent decided it was a good idea to take that previous drug, alter it slightly, give it a new name and charge more money for it (because the patent on the previous drug expired, allowing more companies to create it which would have drove the cost down). Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly enough because of the insane amount of money drug companies spend on advertising, people decide it's a good idea to buy the more expensive drug even though doctors often advise patients that it's just a marked up copy cat. There are examples of drugs being released with a new name and a slightly altered chemical composition that are actually worse than it's predecessor, yet people still go out and buy it. Do you even realize how much money drug companies spend on advertising alone in a year let alone a QUARTER? Spending too much money on research and trial testing for drugs is completely opposite of this reality. This is the silliest thing I've ever read Mhz, do some research first next time.

You completely misunderstood what I was saying but hopefully now you see what I'm getting at. It's about making an industry competitive within itself. When you don't have competition to cut costs in ANY industry, why would you? People need to be responsible for what they buy, whether it's a car or their medicine. When they disregard something because they know insurance is going to pay for it, they don't give a damn how much it costs or if they truly need it which in turn allows drug companies to charge just about anything. How often do you think someone with full health coverage in the U.S. asks how much a medicine or treatment is going to cost even though they know insurance will pay for all or nearly all of it? This is exactly why there's no competition, which is why it's so expensive.

[Kolar]

My issue with this free market crap is that it sounds like a bloody social experiment. At the core of the issue is regulation and government intervention. If anything is going to move the health care industry towards a more competitive environment it's going to take some level of it.

I don't think anything is going to change as long as people view their Government as a separate entity. That they're only a detached, unimportant, uninvolved party to it. Not so much that they believe it shouldn't help them (i.e red scares) but that it doesn't (or shouldn't) represent them, their interest and their collective interests. The economic well being of your doctor should be the last thing on your mind.

I think many libertarians have to understand Paul's bias in that respects. A free market model may seem more beneficial to him and his peers compared to the common citizen. He's no different then any other politician. He is also a social conservative which comes into conflict with many fiscal conservatives.