Healthcare

[ShowtimeMx]

Yes your country has a very uneven distribution of wealth, money is seen as success in the USA.If the insurance companies learned that 2 or 3 billion profit per year is enough instead of hundreds of billion then the cost of insurance could be greatly reduced thus increasing consumer spending in other areas of the economy and this would create employment aswell.

Well said this is one of the area's that we messed up our country, instead of ma and pa that own the corner drug store and care about people in the community and make a good living but dont try and squeeze every last drop of money from their consumers and employee's. now we have big corporate entity's such as banks with ceo's making bonuses of 250million which if that money would have went to lowering %rates on loans and home rates consumers would have more money. but then again its our own fault for spending so much. But little businesses are on the way out and big corporates are taking over and its not a good thing especially cause the government is not making it easier for small business to stay alive.

Lastly and im not trying to offend anyone but this is the cold hard truth. We allowed mexicans to come into this country and then gave them free medical and free money to take jobs and send money back to mexico. most of the hospitals that we have around here that have gone under are because of the illigal immigrants that get health care without paying for it. My poor cousin and his wife were going to school and were about to have a baby and not much money and they couldnt get medicare, but as they were leaving the medicare office a family of mexicans pulled up in a brand new cadillac escalade and went into the office and my cousin was curious to see if they would get medicare etc.. so he went back in and listened and sure enough come to find out they were given medicare and food stamps. Go to mexico and see if they will pay for you to live there and then see if they will treat you as good as we treat illegals in this country.

No offense to mexicans or anyother illegals but it should be our duty to help those that live in this country before we take care of other country's people. DDMX's parents or borderpatrols family our citizens and they should be given the health care first and foremost before illegals enough said.

[JB323]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


god damn amen to you


being in Arizona ive seen it so much.. like wtf. I wish the whole congress would get this motivated about immigrations as they have with this health care this past 6 months, everyone seem to forget about immigrations. Dont get me wrong, im not racist one bit but when i see illegal people around town or my state and USING the system just because they have "documentation issues" and have to be very careful about a job. Our state actually ran out of money to help support people back a month or two ago because of this very issue.


my dad is using the system as well now, because hes 60 and now has gone on disability and has paid a huge amount in taxes and paid his military dues, so this shit frustrates the shit out of me when we get informed because of this exact reason i have to let me dad suffer etc.

[JETZcorp]

In the 1960s, the US had great healthcare, even though the government didn't do anything about it. If you needed to go to the doctor, you went to the doctor, paid a tiny little fee (like, haircut money) and went on your way. That's not the case anymore. The root problem is that costs are just too high. Everyone complains that its the insurance providers taking too much profit, but when you look at the numbers you'll notice that their profit margin is less than half that of the news shows that are complaining about it! The way I see it, the two biggest things that caused this cost problem were the AMA and FDA.

The AMA is basically set up to be the only organization that is allowed to give out licenses to doctors. This effectively means that they control the price of admission, and how many tickets are available at the door, and no one can set up shop to try and out-compete them. They insure that there is always a shortage of doctors, because this leads to an increase in doctors wages. Ever wonder how it's possible to have a shortage of doctors when it's a job that gives big six-digit earnings? There's a gatekeeper, that's how. If the AMA were denied the monopoly power they have, someone else could start up a rival organization, XYZ Medical Association or whatever, and try to out-compete the AMA. XYZ could allow a cheaper and easier program for prospective doctors to earn their medical licenses, and increase the supply of doctors available to meet the medical needs of the country. If their standards for granting licenses is inferior to the AMA's, then hospitals will not accept prospective doctors with XYZ licenses as readily as AMA license-holders, and XYZ loses market share. This means that both XYZ and the AMA will have an incentive to license as many doctors as possible, by making the process cheap and easy, but also ensure that these doctors are as highly trained as possible. High quality with low cost means efficiency, and that's something a monopoly like the AMA alone cannot provide.

The same can be said for the FDA. They stand as a gatekeeper for all drugs that might enter the market. It's great that they do this, but they do it badly. Let's say that disease X kills 3000 people a year, and the Smith Drug Company has developed a product that may cure this illness. The FDA takes this drug, and nine other drugs that Smith Drugs has come up with, and shows that nine of them are unsafe. Smith has just spent a lot of money, and only 1/10th of it is going to show profit. That's unavoidable, but it illustrates part of the situation. Now, the FDA has shown, in a relatively short time, that this new drug is safe for use. But, they don't release it, even though people are on their deathbeds with disease X. They spend years, years trying to determine precisely how effective this new drug is. The people on the deathbed would love the hope of just having something that helps, regardless of whether it'll kill disease X in ten minutes or ten weeks. They need it, but they aren't getting it. The FDA is killing people through this inefficiency. If they had to answer to the market, and ABC Drug Quality Corporation, they couldn't get away with being so inefficient. Also, at the same time, the Smith Drug Company isn't getting any money while their drug is being tested. They're losing cash, and they have to be able to make up for it once the drug finally does make it onto the market. By the time it does make it onto the market, their patent is close to expiry, and a wave of generics are on the horizon. So, in the short window between the FDA releasing their drug, and the formula going to the generic market, Smith has to recover ALL the costs of developing nine failed drugs, paying the FDA a huge sum to test, and then to run the company on idle for ten years whilst the FDA waffles about with it. Of course they're going to charge big for it, they have no choice.

The best part is, if we opened the AMA and FDA up to competition, it would only require the stroke of a pen, and taxpayers wouldn't have to pay a cent. In fact, by privatizing the FDA and requiring that it sink or swim entirely based on its own efficiency (or lack thereof), the taxpayers would save billions in taxes, and billions again as the costs of medical care begin to approach sanity once again.

[ShackAttack12]

Damn jetz..... you nailed it

[Voutare]

There is one fundamental, and backwards ass problem to that though.

The medical professionals who run all that, are the millionaires and billionaires that run everything behind the scenes. Have fun trying to get a senator to pass legislation which ruins one mans life earnings, who can easily bribe said senator with money.


It's sad how our country is won, but it's true. The rich rule everything. Everyone wants their share, but it's not always fair.


And on topic of the FDA, there is no real cut and dry way to shorten the testing of prescription drugs. Think about all the processes which they need to go through. Do they affect you? Yes. How? Why? What else to they affect? Let's test that against 10000 other drugs? Now let's throw in a batch of XYZ and see if it's better. There is a reason that the labels are so damn intense. Not to mention all the side effects of the drug. What I'm saying is (unless it's a mortal disease), is the chance of cure worth the risks? I know that I would prefer to use a tried and sometimes true method than take up a trial of an under examined and undermind drug, which could cause even more problems.

More common motrin side effects may include:
Abdominal cramps or pain, abdominal discomfort, bloating and gas, constipation, diarrhea, dizziness, fluid retention and swelling, headache, heartburn, indigestion, itching, loss of appetite, nausea, nervousness, rash, ringing in ears, stomach pain, vomiting

Less common or rare motrin side effects may include:
Abdominal bleeding, anemia, black stool, blood in urine, blurred vision, changes in heatbeat, chills, confusion, congestive heart failure, eepression, dry eyes and mouth, emotional volatitity, fever, hair loss, hearing loss, hepatitis, high or low blood pressure, hives, inability to sleep, inflammation of nose, inflammation of the pancreas or stomach, kidney or liver failure, servere allergic reactions, shortness of breath, skin eruptions or peeling, sleepiness, stomach or upper intestinal ulcer, ulcer of gums, vision loss, vomiting blood, wheezing, yellow eyes and skin.

Here's an example. There is the side effects of Ibuprofin. A drug that everyone has most likely taken. Think of how long it took to realize that it would cause skin eruptions and peeling. Just saying, there are effects which need to be found, and shortening the process isn't going to make it easier. Shortening the legal bullshit will.

[JETZcorp]

I'm not necessarily saying we need to cut all of the testing and side-effect-discovery that goes into drug development, that would be a little silly. What I am saying, though, is that we privatize the process, because that's typically how you make it more efficient. Think of some of the most inefficient and screwed-up services in the whole of society, namely the Postal Service and Department of Motor Vehicles. Both have a total monopoly over the market. 40,000 people a year die on our government-run roads. Gang activity happens mainly in public areas, and not private ones like supermarkets.

A great example of how a privatized drug testing system could work is provided by the electronics industry. There's a company called UL, or "Underwriters Laboratories" which test and certify electronics and tons of other things to determine consumer safety. They even examine business' policies for efficiency, and have gotten into testing bottled water and sustainability. Retailers like Wal-Mart refuse to sell products certified by UL or one of its competitors whom it trusts, because if they did, their ass would be on the line if something went wrong. But, they don't have a monopoly on this bidness, because there's a range of competitors that would just love to gobble up some market share. If UL does a bad job, and certifies something unsafe, they stand liable to get sued, and in the process lose money and their precious reputation. In the same token, if they get really anal and waste a bunch of time and money, manufacturers will either get annoyed and switch to a competitor, or watch their retail price rise and sales fall. I don't see any reason why you couldn't have something like UL, or even UL itself, get into the business of testing drugs. They're clearly doing a better job than the FDA is, as evidenced by the fact that no one is complaining about a lack of pencil-sharpener insurance.

[jlv]

I haven't been able to find much in the way of actual facts on this, but this article makes it sound horrible. They have essentially banned the type of insurance I have. (I have cheap insurance with a high deductible and pay the doctor directly unless it's something huge.)

[Voutare]

That in theory would work, yes, but there's a bunch of problems that come up with it.


When you think about it, your comparing safe/harmless devices with medical prescription drugs. Apples and Oranges.

And the basis of a competition is what? Profit? Yes. So in order to have profit you must do what? Produce, and produce at faster amounts, and lower prices. Now, the lower prices are all fine and dandy, but producing at faster amounts usually creates less than average products. Not saying it couldn't be done, but there are a few fundamental problems in the way.

What pisses me off most, regardless of how it's made, is how it's sold. Go to Walgreens and buy a bottle of Tylenol. Cheap as fuck. Get that same bottle prescribed and you've lost $120 for something you get over the counter for less than ten. That's stupid.

[scheeve3]

Imagen you are born with an handicap. Becouse you have to buy each week around the 250$ of painkillers, vitamines and so on, you can't pay any healthcare by your own becouse the private's ones are to expensive. Becouse you give 3/4 of your monthly pay to the pharmacie. (if you are even able to work)
And on a day you has to go to the hospital becouse you have a bad moment (hard pains, feeling verry weak, even hartattack). But after 3days the hospital say. GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!! YOU ARE NOT PAYING THE HOSPITAL BILL.

Then what? Go home and die becouse you can't effort an hospital?

So in my eyes is it good. Even more then normal that a country like the USA has an healthcare now.
I would even say that only the rich and healthy people are complaining about this.

[Voutare]

You can get government assistance with that.

Welfare, Medicare/Medicaid.

[JETZcorp]

I don't like the idea of having the almighty government providing for people in need. The thing about the government is that they don't get what they have honestly - they don't produce or trade, they just steal. If Billy Bob needs $100 a week to stay alive, it's perfectly ethical to give it to him. One could even say it's an obligation. But it seems most people stop looking at it right there. Where is the government getting this $100? They're going around to 100 people, pointing a gun at their face, and taking $2 away from each. They take their $200, burn through $100 of it to pay for all the bureaucratic inefficiency, and give the rest to Billy Bob. Now Billy Bob gets to live, but 100 other people just got robbed! And if they got robbed in the name of saving people, they're damn well not going to volunteer to give some to charity. The statistics show that when some charitable cause is taken up under the government banner and paid for with taxation, voluntary charity falls. If you take away this government stealing racket, you open the door to private charity to help Billy Bob out. And, unlike government, these private charities have to compete with one another for efficiency. If I give $2 to XYZ Charitable Enterprises, and only $1 makes it to people like Billy Bob, I'm not going to donate through their organization if the Salvation Army will give $1.70 to people like Billy Bob for my $2. Even if these organizations are for-profit (which probably wouldn't fly to well with potential donors) I think they would operate far more efficient than some government department. And just as importantly, you wouldn't have to be robbed at gunpoint in the process.

And seriously, which would you prefer to be controlling healthcare? The people who brought us UL, or the people who brought us the DMV?

[TeamHavocRacing]

Please create a seperate thread called Politics/Religion. That would be a riot.

[Voutare]

UL by far, but I still believe it's apples and oranges.

And throwing this out there: I agree with you entirely in terms of what this bill is, and it's a bunch of pork, really. I'd much rather adopt the Republican alternative, or change nothing at all, except fix malpractice and our Medicare/Medicaid problems.

[JETZcorp]

Hmm... well, I can't really think of more to contribute. Except this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK8tJrlBfZA