You have done an excellent job of describing the standard justification used by pharma to overcharge for their products.
Apparently the price is largely arbitrary. $750 or $20,000 or $81,000 per treatment. Who knows, and who cares? Since we have apparently decided that access to lifesaving treatment is not the issue, actual cost of production is not the issue, but rather the capitalist goal of making the greatest amount of profit. Why stop at $81,000? Why not $181,000?
What a screwed up system.
Lets ignore how high the cost is, we all know that its overinflated the care and medicine does not cost what the charge which means that they have a very large profit margin, wheres that money gone?
If it has gone back into the hospital with the number of patients that are treated everyday at this cost shouldnāt the hospital have so much money that they do not need to worry about keeping it running.
Follow the money thatās where the real story is.
I absolutely agree that in a capitalist system, any pharmaceutical companyās sole goal is to maximize value to stockholders. Thatās a simple fact of life in the US. It causes corporations to do all kinds of evil things that arenāt in the interest of humans other than those who have the most control over the companies.
Itās a justification big pharma uses all the time, but it is true that there is an absolute nonzero cost to producing these drugs. Just because someone evil uses the argument doesnāt make it any less valid.
If it were up to me, these and most drugs would be sold at cost or very close to it, and nobodyād make a profit, because itās good for everyone to have them available. Iād also tax all religious organizations the same as for-profit companies. Iād make all political campaigns publicly funded, and make it a felony to use money as a means of speech and influence through the evils of campaign financing. I donāt care if millionaires or humble townspeople start out liking a candidate. Everyone will get equal time, and equal premium time, and they will run on the merits of the promises they make to the public, and when they break said promises their dishonesty will be broadcast till the end of their term at the very least.
Anyway Iām rambling. Or possibly on a tirade.
What I mean is, there are real costs for things, and I think a tax based healthcare system would be best, and I think that a step in the right direction to keep it from being politically manipulated is switching to publicly funded elections. Money is a force for evil when it comes to elections and Iām utterly disgusted with our current process.
As long as youāre not sick, itās true!
Iāve actually heard that itās more expensive than that, at least: milking snakes is a pretty small industryā¦
There canāt be a lack of political interference. In our age, all health care involves some kind of ārationingā decisions, whether they are made by insurance companies, governments, boards of medical practitioners, individual doctors, or even individual patients.
If you raise the funds for health care via taxation, it seems fairly hard to envisage how you exclude political decision making from having some impact on how the funds are spent. Consider the difference between the culture in the US and the UK with respect to end-of-life spending. This isnāt a difference that can be resolved by a board of medical practitioners. It may very well be that nobody in the US every really intended to spend such a large fraction of our health care costs on the last few years of life, but the decision to change that (downward in the US, potentially upward in the UK if that was a change that became popular for some reason) is inherently a political one.
The same is true for questions like hospital density, doctor/patient ratios, specialized facility distribution and many more. In the end a health care system will inevitably reflect the choices that society makes about what to spend on health care, and where and when and on whom, and given that we have a process called āpoliticsā that is intended to make society-wide decisions, I find it hard to see how to exclude it from the health care system.
This is not really on topic with the rest of the thread, but a good story to share. My husband likes these adventure type shows, so we watched the first episode of a show all about animal bites to humans.
The pilot episode is about a hapless fellow who got bitten by some super rare snake - on 9/11 when all air traffic was shut down and the only bottle of antivenom was across the country. Talk about bad timing. Maybe they should have tried eBay!
Spoiler: he lived.
So, the article just stated that they could buy it āonlineā. Are they referring to the āCanadian Pharmaciesā where the goods come from India/Russia and may not actually contain the actual product/may be spoiled/may contain adulterants?
Has anyone actually found what they were describing?
Also, how well does the āgenericā antivenom work versus the custom-created antivenoms Iāve always expected would be necessary (and at least, were as far as that acquaintance was concerned.)? Iām curious about all of this, these articles are always infuriatingly light on specifics.
Totally agree. I have never understood how any self-respecting person who understands business could make the argument that there is any consistency or business sense in the health care market. How is one supposed to make rational decisions when the costs are hidden, the buyer is under duress, and provided with a very limited choice of options, or no options. Itās not like buying a widget.
Only when we abandon the idea that someone is entitled to wildly profit from your bad luck, will we begin to alter the health care landscape. It is beyond me why anyone would advocate for health care dollars to go toward larger profits rather than a wider scope of help to the sick. Healthcare professionals could still make a handsome living, hospitals could thrive, and more people would be more productive. Why isnāt that our goal instead of obscene profit at someoneās expense?
I would guess that the healthcare industryās answer to that would be that each patientās situation and course of treatment is unique, making uniform pricing impossible.
At least thatās what they would say.
Will you guys please just nationalise it? Preferably at gunpoint, just for the lulz.
Screwed up system? Hell, the whole country is screwed up. Iām trying to figure out why there hasnāt been a mass exodus of its citizenry from this morally bankrupt country.
In defense of the costāwhich is really difficult to do. They keep that stuff on hand and throw it out if no one comes in with snake bite.
I squealed my brakes when I saw that about buying antivenin on ebay. I love ebay, but there are some things you just donāt do.
Thereās also the fact that the anti-venom treatment in the US is terrible. It is expensive, and it requires multiple treatments. In Mexico, they use an anti-venom developed by a Mexican company that is much cheaper and works with a single dose.
Thatās approximately what I was told when I called to try to get even a vague estimate of the price of surgery I needed (medically recommended but not urgent - I wanted to see if I should schedule it right away or save up for a few months in order to pay the deductible.) They could and/or would not even tell me the cost of the parts that could definitely be projected, e.g. the procedure itself, the OR ācharge,ā the typical units of anesthesia and medications, etc.
If my fuel injector craps out, I can go to three mechanics and get three estimates based on their list cost for the part, their book list of work hours times their hourly rate, etc. If they get in there and realize my fuel line also needs replacing, theyāll tell me the additional cost. But medicine? Ehhh, could be $500, could be $50,000, who can say?
(And for all the jokes about āwhoās going to call around to ERs and check prices?ā I can tell you: I did. Kidney stone #2 in 2 weeks. This time I knew what was likely happening, I had a sense of how much time I had before the pain became unbearable, and I made some phone calls. Only to find that I could check on wait times (which they were not keen to talk about either) but couldnāt even find out what their base rate for a standard ER walk-in was, never mind cost of tests, medications, etc. Once I got to the ER, they were going to hang a new bag of fluids late in my visit, and I said āwait, how much will that cost me? If itās a lot, Iād rather have my friend fill my water bottle at the fountainā and no one knew.)
Thatāll cost $30,000 extra.
Per ball.
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