Yeah I should have went to school to get a Healthcare Job, would be making much more…
Oh wait :-O
Maybe that’s because the people that pushers largely don’t talk about cost. They use the word “free” a lot.
Not only do we disagree on this point, some of the largest suppliers in this country are not for profit actually, and that’s not counting the government employees. SP does not mean no profit either. You’re mistaken if you think the drug companies are in it for mankind and will continue to produce without profit. You don’t even see that in the SP countries.
Japan is also “First World” and has a higher life expectancy.
Single Payor does not equate to no profit… it changes the system of payment exchange.
Probably because it’s typically tied to a form of socialism. Yeah, the “average” middle classer loses an extra 10% of their income to taxes (which blows), but for a really frightful number of horribly poor, put-upon Americans, the net result of socializing systems like medicine is probably a profit for them, not even just “free.” If you can’t afford any healthcare at all, the sudden ability to access it on the government’s dime (via the tax contributions of richer folk, of course), you’ve more or less gained value. How much value is, of course, dependent on solving the cost issue!
There’s also a vast gulf between “enough income to successfully run a company” and “average income of the top-5 biopharm megacorps in the world.” If we can’t agree that greed is an enormous motivator for these corps, then, no, I don’t think we can have a useful discussion about it, and that’s alright.
These companies are destroying and ending lives in pursuit of the dollar. They can continue to exist–albeit with fewer Porches and helicopter pads on the ceiling–while continuing to produce at their current levels. Of course, we can’t expect them to just start doing that out of the goodness of their hearts–the law will need to back the demand up rather forcefully.
In the end, I think ensuring the health and safety of its citizens is the job of government. Government is financed by tax dollars. And it needs to be leveraging those dollars–to maximum effect, with full bargaining rights and as the sole purchaser of note–on our behalf.
It’s a system that’s worked time and time again for large chunks of the first world. That so many highly functional, respectable governments have arrived at that as part of the solution to the Healthcare Problem lends credence to its viability. I recognize it can’t translate to the American system without an enormous, extremely painful, and legally mandated change to said system. But something’s gotta give, and again, I don’t expect Mylan Pharma to begin charging an affordable, reasonable price for the patented epinephrine injector they stumbled onto just because they want to be nice to poor kids who’ll die if the touch a peanut. I expect that we, as a nation, are going to need to force the issue via the most powerful force we have access to: our own elected government.
Sorry if I didn’t properly or even sensibly address everything. I really should be finishing a Calc 3 assignment due in 3 hr, 15 m, and not trying to convince you (or anyone) of my (probably crazy) personal ethos that corporations should be torn down, their leadership tarred and feathered, and the world plunged into a glorious socialist utopia once and for all. I recognize it’s an extremist position. It’s also one I’ll fight to enact with every ounce of political power I have (read: zero) for the rest of my life :-D
I would like to see significant reforms to U.S. healthcare. I’m sympathetic to claims that it’s a basic human right, and should therefore be made available to all. However, I think it’s important to be realistic about how difficult reforms are.
[quote=“ArmandoPenblade, post:221, topic:77479”]
There are two separate, but vital problems at hand. Healthcare cannot and should not be a for-profit enterprise. It’s the business of saving lives, man. Insurance companies must go eventually to assert this as fundamentally as possible. They are leeches on the system. Just as much, healthcare companies all along the “supply” chain are taking advantage of the current setup in every way imaginable, for instance, the doctor’s office as JFrazer described above and the manufacturers of medically rated screws as you did. This, of course, must be tackled as well.[/quote]
Over the last century, America has created a vast military-industrial complex which issues lucrative contracts to private corporations to design and manufacture militarily rated screws. While there are obviously ancillary benefits to the evolution of military technology, the military-industrial complex does not promise to someday unlock the secret of eternal youth or cure the common cold. And yet, as our foes become weaker our military projects become ever-more expensive.
If we can’t tame an industry which “exports death”, it’s going to be even harder to fix a health-industrial complex that “exports life”.
I think you’re grossly under estimating the for-profit companies involved in these “free” healthcare systems. They get their implants and drugs and educations largely from the same places we do. By the way, our free-education system is not full of free text books, desks and buildings all created out of the goodness of someone’s heart. The text book companies are for profit filled with content copyright holders expect to get paid for. The desks are manufactured by companies that tend to want to pay their employees and keep the doors open. Those buildings, they might be bid on by contractors but they still expect to get paid and make a profit.
Profit is not the evil Bernie and his group tried to make it be. Single-payer is not a solution to all our problems and it sure as hell wouldn’t mean they couldn’t charge 750 dollars for an EpiPen. The payor might just choose not to cover it. Do you have any idea how many services and drugs Medicaid and Medicare won’t cover?
Extracting profit out of healthcare, particularly when it creates the inability for people to afford healthcare, is the very definition of evil in my book, and virtually all my thoughts on the matter stem from that. Any system which fails to negate that possibility fails the American populace.
And now, I really am gonna go do Calc. Have a nice night, Nesrie :)
It says Patient Pays. Do we know the full amount paid? I am guessing, and it is a guess, they’re not taking a loss on every EpiPen sold in Canada, but the fully amount is more than 11.48.
That should be considered fraud.
They’re available for $100 in Canada as their base price, per The Star. So, unless the Canadian government’s paying significantly higher than sticker price (which isn’t impossible; I just can’t easily find any reporting on the matter), it’s still about 1/6 the price there than it is here.
I look forward to reading the first news story about the father of a kid with life threatening allergies that holds up a pharmacy at gunpoint to get an Epipen for his kid. The people running big pharma seem to be scumbags in general. What an interesting society we live in.
What would be really cool is if a bunch of people raid a warehouse full of life saving drugs, John Brown style, and handed them out for free. That would be cool.
If it’s MA242 you have my sympathies… ^_^
Yeah, there is someone on this forum who might have died (and maybe more than 1) due to stuff like this.
The free market isn’t evil, but this isn’t the free market.
The one and only. Professor for this class. . . seems a little. . . erm. . . scattered. I really miss the MA 141/241 guy a lot now. But I’m supplementing with online lectures and the old textbook. Cuz the new one, written by current prof and some other math dept. d00dz, is pretty awful, IMO. Also only available as a $70 PDF. Which isn’t complete yet. But they swear it will be.
. . . just gotta keep reminding myself I’m getting these classes for “free” from work.
So if Mylan is making profit on selling EpiPens for a 100 dollars, roughly, to Canada, are you okay with that or do you believe all profit is evil, down with capitalism?
There’s a reasonable profit level, which needs to be set by the government in cases like this because healthcare is just not something that can be served effectively by a free market at all.
Ideal-world, Armando-Penblade-as-Universal-Dictator Scenario:
Mylan and their ilk charge what is necessary to pay for their facilities, scientists, and as little overhead as is possible. Remove advertising/PR from the equation, alongside overinflated executive salaries and various taxation loopholes designed to disguise gross profits as “expenses” that only go back to the company itself, albeit under a different incorporation in another country, etc.
If that happens to be $100 per 2 EpiPens (or $101, or $52, or whatever it may be), so be it. I recognize that, to some extent, US customers are currently bankrolling cheap rollouts of drugs to nations suffering from extreme poverty (e.g., outright donated drugs to Africa, extreme low-cost offerings in India), and that charging those prices (or lack thereof) universally isn’t realistic, regardless of who’s paying (end-customers, insurance corps, or the government).
Whatever the specific figure is, cap it there and ensure that every individual with need for a drug has ready and affordable access to it. If the actual figure is still unrealistically high, rely upon a non-for-profit system to bolster their buying power (e.g., nationalized healthcare a’la Canada or the UK) in the medical market, because, again, the health and safety of the citizenry is the first and foremost concern of government under this Penbladian Utopia which would almost certainly never ban all religions and also Ayn Rand novels.
Aside from nationalizing the medical research industry–something I recognize a huge number of inherent problems with–I’ll acknowledge the need to allow at least that much money to be made for the companies in question to remain solvent (and even then, some won’t. Free market cuts both ways; sorry kids. But if you go, your patents are going to someone who will continue to produce your life-saving drugs as near to at-cost as they can manage).
Closer to the real world (though, I’m sure, not nearly close enough for your liking, but that’s alright. I’m a Self-Esteem Rich Forumer whose Wackadoodle Ideas don’t need validation!):
I recognize grey areas exist in reality (and damn them for doing so), and that there exists some hazy middle ground between “just enough money made to pay for a band of underpaid postdocs to huddle around a 40-year-old Bunsen burner and scrape together ‘medicines’ for the benefit of all” and “enough money made for the CEO to give herself a 1000% raise and laugh all the way to the bank while the poors die of beestings in their underfunded city parks.” Heck, with year-to-year differences, changing costs, etc., it’s not even feasible for a company to accurately peg the price it’ll need to charge for a product to make it a zero-sum game, tax shenanigans notwithstanding.
But at the moment, we’re way, way too far in the direction of the latter half of that. And hey, when the profit motive and investor pressure push you to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, all sense of corporate responsibility or human morality be damned, that’s not even entirely inexcusable. Conglomerates are beholden to their shareholders, not the good of humanity, and not every company starts from “Do No Evil” and goes from there (and let’s face it; Google aren’t exactly free from sin).
Thus, a secondary force needs to be present (and strong) in the equation. At present, the only entity that could feasibly “stand up to” (insert less idealistic language of your choosing, if it helps) these guys is our national government, but it is self-handicapped by the Republican shitfucks in Congress who think that anyone who can’t bootstrap themselves through $200,000 in cancer treatments deserves to die screaming in pain in the streets.
I will begrudgingly recognize that profit has the benefit of motivating people (/sociopaths, surprisingly common in boardrooms) to do things they’d have little incentive to otherwise. Barring a nascent technology-enabled Star Trek utopia where replicators service our every need, capitalism has proven to be a system that produces results.
It’s just not one that I think has any business inserting its full, bullish self into the medical equation. If you want to extract $200 for a pair of sneakers sewn together by Sudanese slave-children in a blackened factory somewhere from the poor sods who just really need to have Lebron’s name emblazoned on their feet, or $3m for a whirling dervish of metal and bloodred plastic for compensating execs to keep parked in their immaculate 10,000 square-foot garages, so be it. But when it comes to actual, real, human lives, and the things people need to keep those lives going, I just can’t fathom the utility in letting that sort of gluttonous, wanton greed into the equation.
Also, what Alstein said in about 95% fewer words than me.
Sure but your statement and this statement.
They’re not the same thing at all.
I believe generally that profit is not an evil thing and\ healthy industries should have and be able to obtain it. In some regulated industries, like pharmaceuticals, there needs to be a period of high profit in order to make the investment worthwhile and to also fund new research. In these the EpiPen and the original drug that started the newer round of conversation, it seems some regulation might need to take place but government set prices seems… a dangerous proposition.
And let’s be clear here, no one likes tying profit and healthcare because everyone wants to feel like we’re all priceless and money can’t be set. the reality is, quiet different. There’s a reason why some liked to call some health plans Cadillac health plans but a heart transplant isn’t a luxury if you actually need one right?
And yet somehow, the UK, even with NICE, continues to be sold medication–at the prices their government sets very firmly for them.
edit: and,
Extracting profit out of healthcare, particularly when it creates the inability for people to afford healthcare, is the very definition of evil in my book
is something I’ll happily stand by, even when out from under the oppressive weight of confusing Calculus assignments due alarmingly soon. If you’d like, we can add “excessive” in front of profit when it’s not creating an inability to survive (e.g., quintupling the price Viagra), and then spend the next 40 posts haggling over the definition of “excessive,” but I suspect you very specifically wouldn’t enjoy that :)
Always relevant (and apologies if previously posted)
The 6 Tech/Auto companies are Samsung, Intel, Microsoft, Google, Toyota & General Motors.
I don’t know how else to say this to you Armando because I’ve said it already. The companies that sell medicine to the UK don’t only sell to the UK. Those drug companies don’t exist just to sell drugs to the market at the price the UK allows them to sell. You keep acting like these SPs, government setting systems are the ONLY systems available to them. That’s not true. It’s simply not true.
So if you think you can find a cure for a rare cancer by pumping tens of millions of dollars into the research and receiving a 10 dollar payment for the drug IF you’re successful, then by all means go out and raise tens of millions of dollars and do that. I suspect once you have those tens of millions though you’ll wind up channeling it somewhere else.
Then stand by it. I’m not asking you to do otherwise. I am simply not anti-capitalism, even in a healthcare arena even if I think the regulations in that area should be tightened and their ability to push generics out for decades over no change to the drug but a slight tweak to use is outrageous.
I’ll be the first in line to say these companies have no business marketing the way they do, especially the way they do to the patients. You know who is really to blame for that though, the patient that walks in the door to see their primary care physician and then demands a drug by name.