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| American Health Care | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 8 2006, 08:57 PM (782 Views) | |
| Tech Junkie | Aug 8 2006, 08:57 PM Post #1 |
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Styx Ferryman
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Ok, pick yourselves up off the floor, it's not that funny. Barring socialized medicine, what can be done to fix this system, lower costs, etc.? My suggestions: Tort reform (i.e. set upward limits on punative damages that doctors can be sued for). Extend pharmacutical (sp?) patents to accomodate their mandatory safety testing (Say, extend drug patents 10 years). This gives the drug companies more time to make back the money they invested in researching the drug in question before it goes generic, therefore lowering prices. Tax credits of some sort to medical facilities. Anyone else got anything? (Note: MY brother's looking at a future in medicine, already getting the proper scientific background in high school as best he can, studying pre-med course requirements. . . A market medical system leaves him the probability of higher personal wealth, so naturally I'll have to back it. That, and my belief that government is inept in providing services like health care. I mean, look at other services and how long those take to have anything come of them.) |
| May the blessing of Our Lady of the Workshop be upon you. | |
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| Tom Joad | Aug 8 2006, 09:44 PM Post #2 |
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Gap tooth so my dick's got to fit.
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Privatize it all. I don't know enough about what Tech Junkie said so I won't argue a point that I don't understand right now (if everybody did that the world would be better), so I will just agree with Tech Junkie until further notice. |
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| piercehawkeye45 | Aug 8 2006, 10:18 PM Post #3 |
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Franklin Pierce
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Wait, I'm confused. Isn't heath care privatized now? The drug companies have full control over the prices and that is why they are so high, right? If this is true than I think the government should socialize healthcare because there is no excuse for companies to jack up prices to where they are unaffordable just so the guys on top get some extra cash. Heathcare can be a matter of life and death and some selfish bastard shouldn't be determining if someone should get it or not. Unless they prove that they spend most of their profits on research they should be forced to lower prices unless I'm missing something which I very well may. If heathcare is socialized then why are the prices so high? |
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Dropped the atomic bomb let them know that it's real Speak soft with a big stick do what I say or be killed I'm America! I have found the enemy and he is us. | |
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| Tech Junkie | Aug 8 2006, 10:57 PM Post #4 |
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Styx Ferryman
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A nice little hole in socialized medicine. Lower cost of pharmecutical A. Developers of A don't recouperate their R&D costs from creating A before their patent expires. For reference, a US Patent lasts 17 years. The FDA's testing and the like tends to take between 7 and 10. Developing a new drug is a very expensive process. If they want to make back their investment, this leaves them 7-10 years to make back what the development of the drug cost them, plus the cost of mass production, before the drug goes generic and the market forces prices down as alternatives become readily available. This is the reason drug prices are so high: Testing costs money. Research and Development also cost money. These costs must be made up. If the cost is cut to the point where R&D costs aren't covered, the company faces the choice of slowing/abandoning R&D or operating at a loss. Since operating at a loss leads to the closing of the business, and no R&D cuts into future revenue from future products, slowed R&D is the result, leading to fewer new products reaching market. Socialized medicine, by forcing the prices to remain low, will create one of 2 things: 1) The abandonment of the industry by companies that can afford to as the industry tries to reach equilibrium. 2) A shortage of supply, if the price ceiling is set low enough, as it doesn't seem profitable to meet demand. Basically, the best way to do things seems to be to give these companies more time to recoup their R&D costs by extending drug patents. This means that they'll be able to lower their price to recover their costs over the extended period. And with lower costs will come greater business (depending on the elasticity of their particular product). Of course, we could always relax drug standards, but the lawsuits that would follow . . . well, that's why other health care is as expensive as it is. Further, there's the supply of specialists. Take a field like Neurosurgery. Neurosurgery is expensive, due to things like the lawsuits directed at neurosurgeons, the insurance costs for said surgeons, and the low number of people in the field (not in that order). Or Plastic surgery. While the number of specialists are higher, the demand for such is also higher. This means people are willing to pay more for the service. Of course, they have lawsuits and malpractice insurance to deal with, too. Oh, and for a privatised system, "selfish bastards" do what's in their best financial interests. They charge enough to cover their expences, plus make a profit. They know that if they charge too much, they'll lose business. Say something costs $1000 per pill. Who will buy it? If there're cheaper alternatives, people will jump at them. And there usually are. Therefore, it's in their best interests to figure out what people are willing to pay beyond the costs of the good/service and charge the price that results in the most income. And higher prices (like higher taxes) don't always result in higher income. |
| May the blessing of Our Lady of the Workshop be upon you. | |
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| piercehawkeye45 | Aug 9 2006, 12:19 AM Post #5 |
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Franklin Pierce
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Thanks for explaining that Tech, I get it now. I didn't realize R&D cost so much. |
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Dropped the atomic bomb let them know that it's real Speak soft with a big stick do what I say or be killed I'm America! I have found the enemy and he is us. | |
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| 严加华 | Aug 9 2006, 02:52 AM Post #6 |
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Magister Ludicrous
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I always get a giggle out of people defending American-style privatised medicine. It's so funny watching them talk about how superior it is and then quickly looking at WHO statistics and finding that among the healthiest people on the planet are the Swedes who have the least-privatised medicine in the world. But all that aside, it's impossible to get a truly healthy nation with privatised health care. Why? Because if you have healthy people, the medical companies don't get paid. Which is what they're in business for. So they advocate symptomatic controls instead of cures. And they focus on treating diseases instead of preventing them. In socialised health care systems, there's more focus on prevention. Take Canada, for an example, which is stupidly going the American route but isn't there yet. Everybody in Canada can go to the doctor for a nominal fee. Even the poorest of the poor can afford to go to the doctor regularly to make sure they remain healthy. (Sadly the poorest of the poor are often too stupid to do this, but this is a different social problem. Short of fascism we can't force people to do the smart thing. But don't worry. Our current PM intensely admires Bush, so fascism in Canada isn't far off. But of course he also intensely admires privatised health care, so we won't get the health benefits of fascism....) Conditions that cause trouble are caught, as a result, before they become the Big Money items that HMOs, pharmaceutical companies, et al like to see. (Note: I'm not holding Canada's medical system up as an example of a really good one. I think we need to go more social like Sweden.) |
LC Sez:
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| piercehawkeye45 | Aug 9 2006, 03:29 AM Post #7 |
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Franklin Pierce
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How does the swedish system work? You said they go more for prevention than cures. Do they go to the doctor more but pay less to go? They can catch the diseases earlier so they don't have to pay so much for the treatment and medicine? |
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Dropped the atomic bomb let them know that it's real Speak soft with a big stick do what I say or be killed I'm America! I have found the enemy and he is us. | |
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| Dr. Jim | Aug 9 2006, 03:31 AM Post #8 |
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Nihil estis, Omnes sum
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The problem comes from the high cost of drugs, which in turn cuases problems in insurance fields and hospital costs. Doctors don't get paid right away, it takes around one to three months to get money from an insurance company who doesn't dispute the claim. If they do, you may never see that money. Because of this the price has to be high. The solution is to control drug prices, but that means controlling drug companies, which goes a step towards socialism, which is what we're trying to avoid, right? |
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...Matt was no exception to this. When he stood in the street and noticed his chest started to really hurt again, he made the decision to look down. He screamed like a grown man would scream when that grown man sees a laser burning his chest, and that is like a little girl... -From Super Naked Moose Man | |
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| piercehawkeye45 | Aug 9 2006, 03:40 AM Post #9 |
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Franklin Pierce
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I don't see what the problem with socialism is? Does this make sense to anyone. We split items into two categories, wants and needs. Needs would be gas, eletric, healthcare?, oil?, etc. Wants would be basically everything else. Food would go under wants because right now food isn't a big problem. The needs are taken with a socialist approach. The government sees over the production and prices of these products (gas and eletric is already socialized where I live). This would make sure a monopoly won't start and people won't be denied their needs for survival. Profits from these companies will mostly go to research for new technology and advancements. The wants are taken with a captialistic approach. This allows people to own their own businesses and gives them freedom without messing with peoples survival. |
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Dropped the atomic bomb let them know that it's real Speak soft with a big stick do what I say or be killed I'm America! I have found the enemy and he is us. | |
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| 严加华 | Aug 9 2006, 04:20 AM Post #10 |
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Magister Ludicrous
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Pretty much as you describe. All medical care is free. (This is what Canada gets wrong.) There are rules and procedures for its use to help prevent abuse of the system. (This is also what Canada gets wrong a lot. I always get the urge to slap around parents who bring children to hospital emergency centres for colds instead of the clinics that are set up everywhere to the point you can't heave a brick in a major Canadian city without breaking the window of one.) But basically their system (and the less-capable Canadian one) is based on health maintenance. You go to the doctor regularly for checkups, etc. and thus catch what could be life-threatening conditions early on in the cycle where they can be treated for much lower costs. |
LC Sez:
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| Tom Joad | Aug 9 2006, 01:42 PM Post #11 |
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Gap tooth so my dick's got to fit.
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The real stupid people in Canada are the doctors who have to go to school for eight years to get paid the same as a post office employee. That is the problem with socialized healthcare, there is no incentive to get in the business if you aren't going to make any money out of it. |
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| Tech Junkie | Aug 9 2006, 02:24 PM Post #12 |
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Styx Ferryman
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Is it just me, or is there this pattern of thought emerging in this thread: Drug prices are too high (check) Drug companies need to find a way to lower prices (check) The ONLY way to do that is government control of that industry (And the logic train derails) Er. . . how exactly is it that the ONLY way to control drug prices involves the government either setting the prices or taking control of the industry? As Mr. Joad pointed out, socialized health care eliminates incentive. For a comparison, look at the US Postal Service (package delivery). Until some competition appeared, this ENTIRELY government-run organization consistantly operated at a loss, was horribly inefficient, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Enter Fed-Ex and UPS. They had an incentive to be efficent and operate at a low cost: lower costs mean lower prices and greater profit. This meant they oculd undercut the prices at the post office. And if the post office wanted to keep getting business without their monopoly, what did they have to do? Course, I suppose 1 example of how an Idea works isn't enough. Question: Where does the US currently rate on the W.H.O list thing? |
| May the blessing of Our Lady of the Workshop be upon you. | |
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| Necronomicon | Aug 9 2006, 03:13 PM Post #13 |
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omar comin' yo
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People don't get into medicine to make money. People get into business to make money. |
| omar yo. omar comin | |
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| 严加华 | Aug 9 2006, 03:27 PM Post #14 |
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Magister Ludicrous
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And yet you have a higher infant mortality rate than any other first-world country. You have a lower lifespan than most first-world countries (and even a couple of THIRD-world countries are in your neighbourhood with both of these!). Your average height is slipping, slipping, slipping while your average mass is growing, growing, growing. Most countries with socialised medicine are seeing their average height go up and, while mass is increasing slightly faster than height (i.e. they're getting chubby too) the fattest of the fat remain the good old USA. (This is a nutrition issue -- something socialised medicine is also decent for, seeing as doctors are good sources of nutritional information and can easily spot the warning signs of bad nutrition.) Basically, unless you're in the middle class, you take your life in your proverbial hands living in the USA with its pathetic medical system. Oh, yeah! Free enterprise really did great things there! |
LC Sez:
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| Chris Larkin | Aug 9 2006, 03:49 PM Post #15 |
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Planning World Domination
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That is a truly fantastic system of socialism. It does very well in ensuring the provision of basic things required for life, and also providing the open market for private investment and innovation. Well suggested. |
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A squatter's made a mural of a Mexican girl, With fifteen cans of spray paint in a chemical swirl. She's standing in the ashes at the end of the world, Four winds blowing through her hair. - Bright Eyes | |
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