HealthCare

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Great Britain WickedCossack
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Re: HealthCare

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Post by WickedCossack »

lejend wrote:http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interac ... or-mirror/
I disagree completely with that. I've seen no evidence that other developed countries have better health outcomes than private-insured Americans. It's just a myth, a very popular one in Europe.


Really?

I just googled "healthoutcomes usa vs europe" and the first 100 results all suggested that America ranks behind the high income European countries but ok.

I've linked you twice a recent, very well respected independent study that was picked by almost every news outlet in America and you still missed that?

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives/2017/july/mirror-mirror/

lejend wrote:Advocacy researchers often put out "studies" giving the US health care system poor marks, but if you look at their methodology, you'll realize that the rankings are based on very poor and arbitrary metrics.

They generally tend to ignore areas in which America's system excels over other countries'. Americans have lower waiting times, better access to new/expensive treatments, better treatment of chronic illnesses. People can get a wide range of tests and treatments done at higher rates. Americans have higher cancer survival rates.


This study takes a huge array of metrics in account. Click around on Exhibit 2 and you can break down the metrics quite a bit. For every 1 America is ahead in it's behind in another 20.

Tell me more about how this is all just poor methodology and based on arbitrary statistics!

lejend wrote:The only way they portray America's health insurance as comparably poor, is by examining broader demographic data that isn't even related to health insurance, such as life expectancy, which are then blamed on America's private health insurance system, even though researchers say that's incorrect. The reason for America's lower life expectancy isn't due to the health care system, it is because of higher deaths from e.g. injuries. Once you adjust for that America has a higher life expectancy than Europe.


Just more flat out lies. It doesn't. Out of every high income country the USA has the highest mortality rate amenable to health care. Checking any statistics not from 1980 would tell you that.

Now is the USA worse on every single health outcome metric? Of course not, but it lags behind in the vast majority of metrics. Sure it does very well on some cancer related care.

But to pull out a couple of metrics from 1000's (one from 20-38 years ago that's completely untrue in 2018) and claim "If you look at the actual performance of the health care system, Americans likely have the best health care in the world" again just shows why I'm wasting my time responding to your complete dishonesty.

lejend wrote: I'm legitimately curious how government spending can be increased by $1-3 trillion, without raising taxes on the poor and the middle class or going even deeper into debt.


For the 1000000th time I can't take the argument that you think you have to pay more seriously when every other high income country on universal healthcare pays not only less but significantly less per capita (hello admin fees!). Well the only truth to that is corruption of companies who will lose power doing everything they can to stop change.
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Re: HealthCare

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Post by bigsmoke »

WickedCossack wrote:
lejend wrote:http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interac ... or-mirror/
I disagree completely with that. I've seen no evidence that other developed countries have better health outcomes than private-insured Americans. It's just a myth, a very popular one in Europe.


Really?

I just googled "healthoutcomes usa vs europe" and the first 100 results all suggested that America ranks behind the high income European countries but ok.

I've linked you twice a recent, very well respected independent study that was picked by almost every news outlet in America and you still missed that?

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives/2017/july/mirror-mirror/



That website does use very vague terms, I wouldn't use them to measure healthcare aspects. The care performance measures are really just things doctors do anyway and can be pretty opinionated.

This is not to say that America does indeed have a good healthcare system but rather the results are imprecise.

On legends graphs for instance it shows that Americans have a very high survival chance of prostate cancer. Every country with competent doctors should, it doesn't take a good oncologist to cure prostate cancer (metastasis of the cancer is another issue however)

Patient outcomes should not be a result of the healthcare system but rather their treatments, however treatments can be affected greatly by the system, for instance the waiting times for urology can impact prostate cancer treatment greatly.

Most of what you hear outside America is mostly the high cost of the treatments in the USA and health insurance and not of the actual system. Patient outcomes does not give us great detail for the system, for instance a rural centre with a few hardy patients will have a higher outcome due to less waiting times (presumably if the GP is competent) and more referrals to specialists. It does not mean the system is great due to the patient then having to travel, increasing the chances of a worse condition. This is as an example.

Now what would be more applicable to assess the healthcare system is (in order of most important)
- Waiting times
- Treatment availability
- Patient records availability (You could argue you don't need this to assess)
- Cost
- Competency of staff and management

An opinion of whether the patient received adequate healthcare is very confounding. Especially if its me in the morning with no coffee going into ED for 9 hours I'm going to say its a bad experience. However a long wait for ED is standard and I will have been fixed.
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Re: HealthCare

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Post by LegalPenguin »

If I may play the Devil's advocate here: as long as people don't believe in a strong social security or health care system, it's kinda hard to maintain and that's why health care in the US is not popular. The legislative and executive powers of the US don't have enough support to create a strong network of health care.

All market's statistics and politics aside, the problem is not really 'the government spending X-amount on health care, causing debt', it's rich people not wanting to support more unfortunate citizens.
IF everyone pays, the costs will be lower for those in need of support. IF some don't pay, the cost will be higher. IF the ones with the financial stronger shoulders refuse to aid, the ones with the financial broken shoulders will not see help arrive.

In a perfect world, money would never be an issue to anyone. Your kid breaks their arms and legs in a schoolbus accident? No problem, they will live and you won't have to suffer debt, because everyone is supporting you, financially.

The ones against health care are the ones so obsessed with their own profit, they forget what is important. If you want to leave this world a better place than how you found it, support health care. In the end, you can't eat a dollar bill, but the baker you saved from pneumonia with your dollar bill can bake you a bread.

Ideals are beautiful. Just imagine what a beautiful place earth could be.
Or just save the medicine man from the grizzly bears.
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Great Britain WickedCossack
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Re: HealthCare

Post by WickedCossack »

bigsmoke wrote:That website does use very vague terms, I wouldn't use them to measure healthcare aspects.


I'm sorry what? "Vague terms?" What in the flying fuck are you on about?

This has to be the dumbest comment I've ever read on this entire site.

Literally everything is sourced, everything. Every single god damn statistic is linked to entire studies devoted to the tinniest of things.
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Re: HealthCare

Post by bigsmoke »

WickedCossack wrote:
bigsmoke wrote:That website does use very vague terms, I wouldn't use them to measure healthcare aspects.


I'm sorry what? "Vague terms?" What in the flying fuck are you on about?

This has to be the dumbest comment I've ever read on this entire site.

Literally everything is sourced, everything. Every single god damn statistic is linked to entire studies devoted to the tinniest of things.


Most of them are based on patient reports. They aren't very accurate. How much do you think the average patient knows about their health system? To get an accurate answer you need an independent inquiry into the system.
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Re: HealthCare

Post by jap_jon »

This is purely hearsay from my brother who has seen this occur first-hand, but I've heard that anyone, including illegals, can go to an emergency room in the US and not pay for a cent of his expenses. Granted, that's just the emergency room and not long-term care.

Also, when my cousin had leukemia, she had plenty of non-government support through family, friends, and charity, and she pulled through fine. Their family had to ask for this help and participated in fundraising activities, so it took some effort. My point is that there's other means outside of health insurance or the government, even if you can't afford health insurance. Obviously it's not as easy, but there are options. And Americans do seem to give a lot to charities. I don't know if it's the same way in other countries, but having grown up in Japan, I've been quite surprised by how much charity is a part of American life. Even poor people would give extra change at the supermarket where I worked. There's also many churches that will help not only their own members, but other people non-members as well. Government or not, poor people do get help here from what I've seen.
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Re: HealthCare

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jap_jon wrote:This is purely hearsay from my brother who has seen this occur first-hand, but I've heard that anyone, including illegals, can go to an emergency room in the US and not pay for a cent of his expenses. Granted, that's just the emergency room and not long-term care.

Also, when my cousin had leukemia, she had plenty of non-government support through family, friends, and charity, and she pulled through fine. Their family had to ask for this help and participated in fundraising activities, so it took some effort. My point is that there's other means outside of health insurance or the government, even if you can't afford health insurance. Obviously it's not as easy, but there are options. And Americans do seem to give a lot to charities. I don't know if it's the same way in other countries, but having grown up in Japan, I've been quite surprised by how much charity is a part of American life. Even poor people would give extra change at the supermarket where I worked. There's also many churches that will help not only their own members, but other people non-members as well. Government or not, poor people do get help here from what I've seen.

damn, national health crisis averted 8-)
United States of America jap_jon
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Re: HealthCare

Post by jap_jon »

deleted_user wrote:damn, national health crisis averted 8-)


People say all the time that poor people are gonna die without insurance or the government stepping in. I was countering that claim with anecdotal evidence.
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Re: HealthCare

Post by deleted_user »

jap_jon wrote:
deleted_user wrote:damn, national health crisis averted 8-)


People say all the time that poor people are gonna die without insurance or the government stepping in. I was countering that claim with anecdotal evidence.

That's why I said damn, national health crisis averted 8-)
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Re: HealthCare

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Post by Jam »

It's bad enough that the government steals my money, but can you imagine if they used it to help sick people? Disgusting!
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Re: HealthCare

Post by lejend »

WickedCossack wrote:
Really?

I just googled "healthoutcomes usa vs europe" and the first 100 results all suggested that America ranks behind the high income European countries but ok.


Well then, that settles it. :|

I've linked you twice a recent, very well respected independent study that was picked by almost every news outlet in America and you still missed that?

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives/2017/july/mirror-mirror/

This study takes a huge array of metrics in account. Click around on Exhibit 2 and you can break down the metrics quite a bit. For every 1 America is ahead in it's behind in another 20.

Tell me more about how this is all just poor methodology and based on arbitrary statistics!


I was responding to that study in my post.

Just more flat out lies. It doesn't. Out of every high income country the USA has the highest mortality rate amenable to health care. Checking any statistics not from 1980 would tell you that.

Now is the USA worse on every single health outcome metric? Of course not, but it lags behind in the vast majority of metrics. Sure it does very well on some cancer related care.

But to pull out a couple of metrics from 1000's (one from 20-38 years ago that's completely untrue in 2018) and claim "If you look at the actual performance of the health care system, Americans likely have the best health care in the world" again just shows why I'm wasting my time responding to your complete dishonesty.


Did you read my post at all? I was not mentioning one metric while ignoring a thousand others. I pointed out numerous metrics, related to the performance of the health care system, as opposed to broader demographic data like life expectancy, clearly showing that America's system is among the best in the world.

I notice you mentioned that one metric, demonstrating US superiority to other countries' systems, "isn't true anymore" (allegedly). But I ask you, if America's system is so terrible, why was it true at any period in time? Why does Europe have to catch up to America at all? Could it perhaps be because America is where the newest treatments are first developed, tested and implemented on a large scale, before being exported to other countries? Could it be due to the greedy for-profit free market system that rewards innovation? Could it be that the rest of the world lives off of American health care innovations?

For the 1000000th time I can't take the argument that you think you have to pay more seriously when every other high income country on universal healthcare pays not only less but significantly less per capita (hello admin fees!). Well the only truth to that is corruption of companies who will lose power doing everything they can to stop change.


I think we can all agree that different systems have different advantages and disadvantages. But you haven't demonstrated that socializing health care would be an improvement in America.

How about you show me an actual health care proposal for me to comment on? "Just make it free" isn't legislation. How am I supposed to rebut that?

At this point Cossack the ball is in your court. I'm simply not going to spend days researching and writing posts, only for you to dismiss it all within an hour and call me a liar. That's just intellectually unserious.
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Re: HealthCare

Post by lejend »

LegalPenguin wrote:If I may play the Devil's advocate here: as long as people don't believe in a strong social security or health care system, it's kinda hard to maintain and that's why health care in the US is not popular. The legislative and executive powers of the US don't have enough support to create a strong network of health care.

All market's statistics and politics aside, the problem is not really 'the government spending X-amount on health care, causing debt', it's rich people not wanting to support more unfortunate citizens.
IF everyone pays, the costs will be lower for those in need of support. IF some don't pay, the cost will be higher. IF the ones with the financial stronger shoulders refuse to aid, the ones with the financial broken shoulders will not see help arrive.

In a perfect world, money would never be an issue to anyone. Your kid breaks their arms and legs in a schoolbus accident? No problem, they will live and you won't have to suffer debt, because everyone is supporting you, financially.

The ones against health care are the ones so obsessed with their own profit, they forget what is important. If you want to leave this world a better place than how you found it, support health care. In the end, you can't eat a dollar bill, but the baker you saved from pneumonia with your dollar bill can bake you a bread.

Ideals are beautiful. Just imagine what a beautiful place earth could be.
Or just save the medicine man from the grizzly bears.


The rich don't have as much as you'd think though. I am unaware of any welfare state that is funded entirely by the wealthy. Socialist havens generally have regressive taxation systems, while America's system is more progressive.

I'm always befuddled when people talk about free health care, free college. How's it actually free when they have to work six months just to cover their taxes? :|
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Re: HealthCare

Post by lejend »

jap_jon wrote:This is purely hearsay from my brother who has seen this occur first-hand, but I've heard that anyone, including illegals, can go to an emergency room in the US and not pay for a cent of his expenses. Granted, that's just the emergency room and not long-term care.

Also, when my cousin had leukemia, she had plenty of non-government support through family, friends, and charity, and she pulled through fine. Their family had to ask for this help and participated in fundraising activities, so it took some effort. My point is that there's other means outside of health insurance or the government, even if you can't afford health insurance. Obviously it's not as easy, but there are options. And Americans do seem to give a lot to charities. I don't know if it's the same way in other countries, but having grown up in Japan, I've been quite surprised by how much charity is a part of American life. Even poor people would give extra change at the supermarket where I worked. There's also many churches that will help not only their own members, but other people non-members as well. Government or not, poor people do get help here from what I've seen.


I think all hospitals are obligated by law to stabilize anyone who comes in, regardless of ability to pay. It's been the case for decades.

It's interesting, studies show that Europeans have similar or lower cancer survival rates than uninsured Americans. That's how excellent America's system is. The absolute bottom (allegedly) in health care access are still better off than the average European! :shock:

So I think private health care unfairly gets a bad rap.
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Re: HealthCare

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Post by Snuden »

Lolend at it again...
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Re: HealthCare

Post by deleted_user0 »

lejend wrote:
jap_jon wrote:This is purely hearsay from my brother who has seen this occur first-hand, but I've heard that anyone, including illegals, can go to an emergency room in the US and not pay for a cent of his expenses. Granted, that's just the emergency room and not long-term care.

Also, when my cousin had leukemia, she had plenty of non-government support through family, friends, and charity, and she pulled through fine. Their family had to ask for this help and participated in fundraising activities, so it took some effort. My point is that there's other means outside of health insurance or the government, even if you can't afford health insurance. Obviously it's not as easy, but there are options. And Americans do seem to give a lot to charities. I don't know if it's the same way in other countries, but having grown up in Japan, I've been quite surprised by how much charity is a part of American life. Even poor people would give extra change at the supermarket where I worked. There's also many churches that will help not only their own members, but other people non-members as well. Government or not, poor people do get help here from what I've seen.


I think all hospitals are obligated by law to stabilize anyone who comes in, regardless of ability to pay. It's been the case for decades.

It's interesting, studies show that Europeans have similar or lower cancer survival rates than uninsured Americans. That's how excellent America's system is. The absolute bottom (allegedly) in health care access are still better off than the average European! :shock:

So I think private health care unfairly gets a bad rap.


Studies show bigfoot exist. I think thin foil hats unfairly get a bad rap.
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: HealthCare

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Post by Goodspeed »

You've mentioned drug prices a few times. I'd need to do more research on each individual case before commenting, though I can safely rule out that prices are chosen just to be mean.
I think this is the core of your delusion. No, pharma companies won't increase prices just to be mean but they will do it to make more money. The phenomenon is and has been widespread. Your "free market solutions" aren't working for a very simple reason: the best business decision if you have a patent on a drug that has no alternatives and patients rely on this drug to stay alive is to increase the price 1000%. Inelastic demand, they call this. Companies have actually increased prices a whole lot more than that in the past. Look up Valeant.

As a result, insurers will face higher costs and will increase the premiums. Ultimately, the people who actually need the medicine are the ones paying more, insured or no. And a lot of people simply can't afford it.
That's why you need government regulation in pharma. Nobody needs to spend 5000 words discussing metrics. It's a discussion of simple economics.
Great Britain WickedCossack
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Re: HealthCare

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Post by WickedCossack »

I think I'll leave the conversation to the experienced off-toppers. As it's a topic that has had an impact on my life it's easy to get too passionate and make stupid posts like my last one.
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Re: HealthCare

Post by lejend »

Goodspeed wrote:
You've mentioned drug prices a few times. I'd need to do more research on each individual case before commenting, though I can safely rule out that prices are chosen just to be mean.
I think this is the core of your delusion. No, pharma companies won't increase prices just to be mean but they will do it to make more money. The phenomenon is and has been widespread. Your "free market solutions" aren't working for a very simple reason: the best business decision if you have a patent on a drug that has no alternatives and patients rely on this drug to stay alive is to increase the price 1000%. Inelastic demand, they call this. Companies have actually increased prices a whole lot more than that in the past. Look up Valeant.

As a result, insurers will face higher costs and will increase the premiums. Ultimately, the people who actually need the medicine are the ones paying more, insured or no. And a lot of people simply can't afford it.
That's why you need government regulation in pharma. Nobody needs to spend 5000 words discussing metrics. It's a discussion of simple economics.


But, Goodspeed, the reason drugs are priced lower in other countries, is exactly because they're priced higher in the US. It's all due to that greedy, for-profit free market system, which causes Americans to subsidize the rest of the world, without which health care innovations wouldn't be developed at all.

Drug research and development is extremely expensive and time-consuming, and patents last 10-20 years at most. They have to price the drugs at significantly above cost, just to get a little return on their investment. The alternative is that the drugs aren't developed at all. Would you rather pay $300 and stay alive or pay nothing and die? :hmm:

America has 5% of the population but invents 50-60% of new drugs, particularly "miracle cures." Europe's output is proportionally small. Most health care innovations are developed, tested, and adopted on a wide scale first in the US, and then exported to the rest of the world.

Ninety five percent of the new drugs coming on the market are developed for sale in the United States. They are paid for by American consumers, while other countries, such as Canada, Germany and France, free ride at our expense. The United States is the last major country that allows the market to set prices high enough to compensate pharmaceutical companies for their R&D investments...

The negative media pharmaceutical narrative reminds me of the boy who visited a museum noted for its dinosaurs, who afterwards could only talk about the teensy-weensy insect he saw in a glass case. Little details caused him to miss the dinosaur. The same lesson applies to the pharmaceutical industry – or “Big Pharma” as its critics call it. Yes, pharmaceutical companies do develop “me-too” drugs, use human subjects from the third world (Do you want to volunteer?), may cajole family physicians to prescribe drugs we do not need, and picture tranquil sleep, unobstructed breathing, and reliable erections in their TV spots. But these images of “Big Pharma” are the equivalent of the tiny insect that fascinates the boy who fails to notice the dinosaurs.

The “dinosaur” that we rarely hear about are the drugs that have improved, prolonged, and changed our lives. When President Eisenhower suffered a massive heart attack in September of 1955, his doctors could only inject a pain killer and prescribe bed rest. When Vice President Cheney suffered heart attacks almost a half century later, he was given powerful blood thinners, a stent was inserted, and he was released from the hospital shortly thereafter. Before acid inhibitors, ulcer sufferers had only operations that cut off ulcerated portions of their stomachs. Before AZT drugs, an HIV positive test was a death sentence. tPA saved millions of heart attack and stroke victims. HPV is an effective vaccination against cervical cancer. Anti-psychotic medications allow patients with schizophrenia to live productive lives. Viagra saved millions of men the shame of sexual dysfunction, and probably rescued thousands of marriages. The list goes on and on, but, in the future, it might get shorter and shorter.

According to the Britannica Encyclopedia, a new drug requires that 5,000–10,000 chemical compounds undergo laboratory screening for each new drug approved for use in humans. Of the 5,000–10,000 compounds that are screened, approximately 250 will enter preclinical testing, and 5 will enter clinical testing. The process from discovery to marketing takes 10 to 15 years, and only one out of every ten thousand discovered compounds gains approval. Although pharmaceutical companies routinely claim that new drugs cost an average of a billion dollars, the true figure is between $4 and $12 billion when the costs of failures are included.

Pharmaceutical companies finance new product development by devoting a higher percentage of their revenues than any other major industry (an astronomical 20 percent) to R&D. It is the American consumer who pays these costs by buying the new drugs at prices that cover these R&D expenses. Free-riding Canadian, German, French and Dutch consumers buy at much lower prices and avoid contributing to the costs of product development. China, Russia, India and most of the developing world ignore intellectual property rights and knock off the drugs for sale in domestic markets with no compensation to the developer.

In the United States, by and large, the market still sets prices of pharmaceuticals. In the United Kingdom, Canada, and Europe, the state either regulates prices or is the sole buyer, as studies by the AARP and the Senate Committee on Aging show. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) finds that average prices for prescription drugs in the United States are 50 to 100 percent higher than in other industrialized nations, even though generic drugs sell for less. A single dosage of Nexium (the Purple Pill) sells for $4 in the United States and for under a dollar in France and Germany. According to OECD statistics, Americans spend $983 per capita on prescription drugs, including cheaper generics, while the Germans and French pay $680 and $634, respectively. Americans do not appear to be over medicated as Pharma’s critics charge. They just pay higher prices.

Without the hard-pressed American consumer to finance R&D costs, we would not have AZT, Cimetidine, Nexium, tPA, Beta blockers, new cancer drugs, anti psychotic drugs, and all the rest. American consumers pony up, while the rest of the world benefits without paying its share.

American consumer groups fail to understand this dynamic. If Canadians, Germans, French, and Dutch have low drug prices so should we, they naively think. Our politicians demand that we re-import our own drugs from Canada and Europe at their lower prices. Such a remedy may play well to populist emotions, but even Congress and AARP understand that we must consider, as one scholar puts it, “whether the benefits in terms of lower prices will be worth the cost in terms of lower innovation.” In other words, we must fear killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderi ... e016181c05

http://life-sciences.blognotions.com/20 ... alization/
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Re: HealthCare

Post by lejend »

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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: HealthCare

Post by Goodspeed »

lejend wrote:
Goodspeed wrote:
You've mentioned drug prices a few times. I'd need to do more research on each individual case before commenting, though I can safely rule out that prices are chosen just to be mean.
I think this is the core of your delusion. No, pharma companies won't increase prices just to be mean but they will do it to make more money. The phenomenon is and has been widespread. Your "free market solutions" aren't working for a very simple reason: the best business decision if you have a patent on a drug that has no alternatives and patients rely on this drug to stay alive is to increase the price 1000%. Inelastic demand, they call this. Companies have actually increased prices a whole lot more than that in the past. Look up Valeant.

As a result, insurers will face higher costs and will increase the premiums. Ultimately, the people who actually need the medicine are the ones paying more, insured or no. And a lot of people simply can't afford it.
That's why you need government regulation in pharma. Nobody needs to spend 5000 words discussing metrics. It's a discussion of simple economics.

But, Goodspeed, the reason drugs are priced lower in other countries, is exactly because they're priced higher in the US. It's all due to that greedy, for-profit free market system, which causes Americans to subsidize the rest of the world, without which health care innovations wouldn't be developed at all.
Sure they would.
Drug research and development is extremely expensive and time-consuming, and patents last 10-20 years at most. They have to price the drugs at significantly above cost, just to get a little return on their investment. The alternative is that the drugs aren't developed at all. Would you rather pay $300 and stay alive or pay nothing and die? :hmm:
Try $300000. Valeant had this interesting business strategy of buying up other pharma companies, gutting their R&D departments and hiking the prices of their drugs 1000% or more. In some cases, 10000%. A lot of people got rich, and a lot of people died. Free market for ya. If it's that easy and profitable to focus your revenue on existing drugs rather than new inventions, I'm not convinced R&D is encouraged.
America has 5% of the population but invents 50-60% of new drugs, particularly "miracle cures." Europe's output is proportionally small. Most health care innovations are developed, tested, and adopted on a wide scale first in the US, and then exported to the rest of the world.
America has a lot more than 5% of the first world population. Also, of course you're going to settle your pharma company in a country where you can sell your drugs for 10 times the price. Maybe the system in the US is good for the rest of the world, I have no inclination to verify or argue against that claim, but the rest of the world shouldn't be the concern of the US government. It should be striving to make health care affordable for its own citizens.
Wiki wrote:2015 drug price inflation controversy

An important part of the growth strategy for Valeant under Michael Pearson had been the acquisition of medical and pharmaceutical companies and the subsequent price increases for their products.[68][69] Valeant's strategy of exponential price increases on life-saving medicines was at the time described by Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger as "deeply immoral" and "similar to the worst abuses in for-profit education."[70] This strategy had also attracted the attention of regulators in the United States[69], particularly after the publication in the New York Times of an article by Andrew Pollack on price gouging of specialty drugs.[71][72][73][74][75][76]

In September 2015, an influential group of politicians criticized Valeant on its pricing strategies.[74] The company raised prices on all its brand name drugs 66% in 2015, five times more than its closest industry peer. The cost of Valeant flucytosine was 10,000% higher in the United States than in Europe.[75][77] In late September 2015, members of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform urged the Committee to subpoena Valeant for their documents regarding the sharp increases in the price of "two heart medications it had just bought the rights to sell: Nitropress and Isuprel. Valeant had raised the price of Nitropress by 212% and Isuprel by 525%".[73][78] New York Times columnist Joe Nocera claimed that Valeant CEO J. Michael Pearson's "plan was to acquire pharmaceutical companies, fire most of their scientists, and jack up the price of their drugs".[79]

After Valeant acquired Salix Pharmaceuticals in 2015, it raised the price of the diabetes pill Glumetza about 800%.[76][78]
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Re: HealthCare

Post by spanky4ever »

when you lost a game, you shold say GG @lejend There is not a chance you can ever win a game of public heath care vs your insurce one. It just facts. Deal with it :P
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United States of America vardar
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Re: HealthCare

Post by vardar »

would have to agree with lejend on much of this!

except on pharmas i think, they have gone too far imo

Same goes with the FDA....its almost scary how restricting they have become

its all about that $$$$$
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Re: HealthCare

Post by LegalPenguin »

lejend wrote:
LegalPenguin wrote:If I may play the Devil's advocate here: as long as people don't believe in a strong social security or health care system, it's kinda hard to maintain and that's why health care in the US is not popular. The legislative and executive powers of the US don't have enough support to create a strong network of health care.

All market's statistics and politics aside, the problem is not really 'the government spending X-amount on health care, causing debt', it's rich people not wanting to support more unfortunate citizens.
IF everyone pays, the costs will be lower for those in need of support. IF some don't pay, the cost will be higher. IF the ones with the financial stronger shoulders refuse to aid, the ones with the financial broken shoulders will not see help arrive.

In a perfect world, money would never be an issue to anyone. Your kid breaks their arms and legs in a schoolbus accident? No problem, they will live and you won't have to suffer debt, because everyone is supporting you, financially.

The ones against health care are the ones so obsessed with their own profit, they forget what is important. If you want to leave this world a better place than how you found it, support health care. In the end, you can't eat a dollar bill, but the baker you saved from pneumonia with your dollar bill can bake you a bread.

Ideals are beautiful. Just imagine what a beautiful place earth could be.
Or just save the medicine man from the grizzly bears.


The rich don't have as much as you'd think though. I am unaware of any welfare state that is funded entirely by the wealthy. Socialist havens generally have regressive taxation systems, while America's system is more progressive.

I'm always befuddled when people talk about free health care, free college. How's it actually free when they have to work six months just to cover their taxes? :|


You do misinterpret my previous message, or my English didn't correctly deliver the message intended.
The rich don't fund health care, everyone does. Everyone, according to their abilities. If you can support more, it's only logical that you will. That way, people that absolutely cannot afford to support health care, will still be helped just like any other, whether you are rich or poor, religious or not, left or right, ... Same with college: everyone pays at the best of their abilities, so that people who need the support, can get it. It's not 'free' health care or 'free' college, it's more 'supported' by the public, for the public.
It's this simple thing where you get a leg up from your fellow countrymen and later in life, when you're settled and have a job, you'll repay the debt via supporting those in need of a leg up. You don't need those absolute monstrosities as 'student loans' to get a quality education.

I don't have any political allegiance, neither left nor right, but I do have some ideals that I consider so fundamentaly important that every state should have them. Health care is one of them.
Oh, and 'Socialist havens generally have regressive taxation systems' is absolutely wrong. Why on earth would a socialist want the rich to contribute less (in %)? Unless you're talking about tax-havens, but that's an entirely different subject.

I'm also done with these off topic discussions. Takes too many time to make too little a difference. Let's just save the doctor from the treasure guardians and keep doing what we all love: AoE.
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Re: HealthCare

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Post by thomasgreen6 »

lejend wrote:The rich don't have as much as you'd think though.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to wikipedia, in 2014 the top 1% of the United States population possed 40% of its wealth
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Re: HealthCare

Post by lejend »

Goodspeed wrote:Try $300000. Valeant had this interesting business strategy of buying up other pharma companies, gutting their R&D departments and hiking the prices of their drugs 1000% or more. In some cases, 10000%. A lot of people got rich, and a lot of people died. Free market for ya. If it's that easy and profitable to focus your revenue on existing drugs rather than new inventions, I'm not convinced R&D is encouraged.


Okay, so I've finally looked this up.

Valeant is far from a typical pharmaceutical company. For one, the average pharmaceutical company spends 20% of revenues on R&D, whereas Valeant was spending 3%. You're essentially condemning and generalizing an entire industry based on one company.

Valeant's misbehavior is by and large blamed on the CEO they hired in 2008, Michael Pearson. From what I've read, Valeant's troublesome behavior can be directly attributed to their unique executive compensation model, in which top executives get little in the way of cash compensation, but are instead awarded large amounts of stock. This indeed incentivized them to insanely emphasize short-term stock price increases above other considerations. They accomplished this goal by adopting a business model of buying pharmaceutical companies, cutting R&D budgets, firing employees, and hiking drug prices. (Pearson justified it by saying that due to health insurance and financial assistance programs, virtually everyone who needed Valeant drugs could still receive them). It was a short-sighted strategy of debt-fueled acquisitions and drastic lowering of costs, and resulted in skyrocketing stock prices.

Now you say that this is a common or viable business model. But is that really true? Let's see how well it worked out for them.

From 2015 to 2017, Valeant shares plummeted more than 90 percent.[87][88] Large hedge funds such as Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management, Paulson & Co., and Viking Global Investors lost billions.[88]...

In March 2016, the Board of Directors said that CEO J. Michael Pearson would be leaving the company as soon as a replacement is found and that investor Bill Ackman would be added as a director.[90][91]


They made atrocious business decisions and were soundly punished for it. It was an unsustainable business model that obviously was bound to catch up with them eventually.

"Their business model was: Borrow money, buy companies and boost prices," says Erik Gordon, who studies the pharmaceutical industry at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "That's a lousy business model, and it's a business model which you know obviously comes to an abrupt end."

“Why do people believe it?” asked David Maris, an analyst at Wells Fargo. “They follow Valeant because they want to follow it. They want to believe they have found a new way to make money in pharmaceuticals without investing in new drugs — it sounds like a magic money box.”

America has a lot more than 5% of the first world population. Also, of course you're going to settle your pharma company in a country where you can sell your drugs for 10 times the price. Maybe the system in the US is good for the rest of the world, I have no inclination to verify or argue against that claim, but the rest of the world shouldn't be the concern of the US government. It should be striving to make health care affordable for its own citizens


Well since the country continues to have the wealthiest population and the best health care system, I think most consumers will keep subsidizing the rest of the world. But you never know.

I do agree that the government can make health care more affordable. But that can only be accomplished by getting out of the market.

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