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Drugs eat up a tiny fraction of total medical cost. If you dig into the breakdowns of where money is spent, and look at other countries, you'll find we are more
by ChrisLomont 8y ago
Drugs eat up a tiny fraction of total medical cost. If you dig into the breakdowns of where money is spent, and look at other countries, you'll find we are more expensive at every step. This includes doctor and nurse salaries, and litigation costs. It includes forcing drug companies to lower costs, which will reduce R&D since many rare conditions need high cost drugs to cover the R&D to bring a drug for a few people to market. It includes forcing everyone to pay into the system, so the insured aren't paying the medical bills of the uninsured emergency visits, which is proving difficult to do. It would involve denying care to those costing too much, which we do to some part, but not like many countries.
If you want to make our costs similar to other countries, we'd need to lower costs at each place, including doctor and nurse salaries (which will be politically impossible), cap litigation (which consumers complain about), and dozens of other components.
There is no one area that is the cause. It's death by 1,000 papercuts.
- mjcl 8y ago> There is no one area that is the cause. It's death by 1,000 papercuts. Yup. A few minutes (of unnecessary) oxygen in an ambulance cost my insurance company about $500. A single oral dose of generic Keppra while in the hospital cost more than the cash price an entire month’s supply from CVS. The room I stayed in was billed at about $7300/day, but hey, it did include unlimited room service. In fact, the only clearly reasonably priced item from my hospital stay was the generic Tylenol, I assume because it’s common enough to generate complaints.
- megaman22 8y agoI've been charged (or rather my insurance was) $42 for two slices of white bread, a slice of turkey, and 12 ounces of skim milk. Prices are outrageously padded everywhere. It really boils my blood that I can take my dog to a vet and get a procedure done or procure drugs that would cost one or sometimes two orders of magnitude more if I was the one getting work done. I'm half tempted to dress up like Goofy and see if they'll be fooled...
- Regardsyjc 8y agoOn over priced drugs-- there's an episode of Dirty Money on Netflix on Valeant Pharmaceuticals' price gouging and fraud... It's mind boggling and depressing.
- ChrisLomont 8y agoI'm not even sure they're overpriced. Profit/revenue for the pharma industry is not terribly high when taken over all pharma companies. They do well, but it's no where near the highest profit/revenue industry. I think industry profit margins are around 15%, which is not unreasonable for a high tech industry.
- mercutio2 8y agoHmm. I’m with you on most of these being areas of inefficiency, but I don’t agree it’s death by a thousand cuts. Labor costs dominate healthcare. Doctors and nurses are very popular. No one wins elections saying “hey, let’s pay healthcare providers half as much, like they do in other developed countries”. But that’s my understanding of what it would take to actually move the needle on US health care costs.