patrick.net

How can you support corporate health care, when corporations have screwed up so much?

That is a good question Larry. Healthcare is different than the finance/banking/real estate industries in an important way. When the banks were taking on huge risks that would lead to their downfall virtually no citizens knew it was going on. The banking industry spent years paying off congress and taking huge risks that would fall onto the tax payers eventually. And no one cared because their house values were going up.

Corruption like this would be discovered much faster with healthcare. If congress got paid off by a pharm company to require docs to give all kids a new drug from the pharm company. Millions of parents would know immediately and at least a small percentage would be demanding to know why they are being pushed this new drug.

I'm not saying the govt. program will be run perfectly. Medicare isn't perfect. but the concern you raise doesn't seem to be a parallel to banking.

If you think big pharma is not doing the same shit the TBTF banksters are, think again...

From Denninger's Market Ticker:

"That's right. The Pharmaceutical and Device industry has managed to get legislation enacted prohibiting the re-importation of devices or drugs sold overseas. These overseas markets demand price controls on the drugs and devices sold there, and get it. We, on the other hand, have a 'price at what the market will bear' system.

The result is that the heart stent that is used in Canada costs a tiny fraction of what the same stent costs in The United States even though they are made by the same company.

...

Yet today it is not lawful for me to buy 100,000 doses of Viagra in Canada (where they sell for a fraction of the US price) and then ship them back to the United States. This "unlawfulness" has been artificially created by the drug and device manufacturers, who claim concern for "purity" and "counterfeits" - a red herring and in fact a false claim. There has never been a right to import or sell a counterfeit product; what these manufacturers have managed to prevent is the importation of lawfully-produced and properly labeled drugs and devices made in their own factories!"

Read the rest here: Health Care FARCE Voted Up Last Night

Yes Pharma is trying to maximize profits. I never said they weren't corrupt. I am saying that people know about the corruption between healthcare and congress in a more transparent way than the corruption between banking and congress. Exactly the same way price discrepancies like the ones you quote are easier to discover than irregular accounting practices between major banks.

Yep, pharma is trying to maximize profits. Bankers are trying to maximize profits. Bankers pay off politicians. Pharma pays off politicians.

I'd have to say that most people I talk to about these issues know next to nothing about big pharma's financial/lobbying ties to congress. They know the latest health care political talking points, inasmuch as they hear it on the 5 o'clock news, but mostly they just bitch about it. But because the financial crisis has been all over the media so much for the last year, folks seem much more attuned to the congressional genuflection before the FIRE gods.

It should be pointed out that Medicare already sets prices, and insurance follows. That's true for most medical procedures.

The govt also sets policies for how providers do their job (certification of providers) and subsidizes insurance companies thru the Medicare advantage programs. The program also pays full price for prescriptions, meaning that they're passing along the extra costs to patients. Many of the benefits programs are administered by insurance companies - meaning that they are making a profit by providing care for people who they previously denied.

The government is already involved at a frightening amount of interference - but all of it benefits the pharmaceutical & insurance industries. We need to level the playing field - change the way that the govt is involved to benefit the patients, not the providers.

I agree with Larry. elliemae, what evidence is there that medicare "sets" prices? Many doctors refuse Medicare patients because Medicare doesn't pay adequately. I can say from first hand experience with my dad that Medicare doesn't police/monitor their providers very well either.

Regarding Medicare paying full price for presecriptions, I'm never surprised to hear when govt. overpays, since govt bureaucrats are spending other people's money with little or no accountability for themselves when they make bad wasteful decisions. I'm all for providing the most bang for the buck in healthcare, but govt. has a disaster of a record in that area.

When the banks were taking on huge risks that would lead to their downfall virtually no citizens knew it was going on. The banking industry spent years paying off congress and taking huge risks that would fall onto the tax payers eventually

You forgot to mention that government was encouraging the risky lending through govt. mandated lowering of lending standards ("you must lend more in 'underpriveleged' neighborhoods or we'll yank your FDIC insurance) while simultaneously underwriting it with Fannie and Freddie buying the bad loans.. all financed by us taxpayers.

Good question larry....Patrick, you have some explaining to do Mr....LOL

The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775 - you have had 234 years to get it right; it is broke.

Social Security was established in 1935 - you have had 74 years to get it right; it is broke.

Fannie Mae was established in 1938 - you have had 71 years to get it right; it is broke.

The "War on Poverty" started in 1964 - you have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor"; it hasn't worked and our entire country is broke.

Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 - you've had 44 years to get it right; they are broke.

Freddie Mac was established in 1970 - you have had 39 years to get it right; it is broke.

While it is clear that government is capable of screwing up just about anything the alternatives in health care are not desirerable. The idea of privatized medicine taken to its logical extension, that being no govermental regulation a totally free market based on supply and demand is an absurd 19th early 20th century solution. If you had money or barter you got treated if you did not you relied on charity or remained sick. Though no one is suggesting this as a solution, what is being suggested is that we head in the direction of a market driven solution for a problem that does not and cannot respond to such a solution, that is without untold human suffering. The will to live (at any cost) is far stronger then the will to buy a house, car or refrigerator. People and their families will pay any amount of money to live and this is why a free market will only work if we are willing to live in a society that bankrupts people and or lets them die or live in misery.

So the question is not if government is going to involved but how much. The current system is a hodgepodge and is too expensive, cumbersome and for the money spent provides rather poor results. The fear and I think it is warranted, is that the half assed solution making its way through congress will exacerbate the problem. I do give the Dems credit for making the effort as opposed to the Repubs that have offered no reasonable alternative because there is no free market solution, politically they just cant admit it.

I agree with rdm.

Health care is about whether you live or die. Buying a house is not.

If someone can demand as much money as they want from you with the threat that you die if you don't pay, that's extortion, not a free market.

The free market is great when there's a free market. There never was and never will be a free market in health care, except for small things that don't actually threaten your life.

All other countries do this better than we do: they spend WAY less money with their "socialized" care, and they have as good or better results. Are we so stupid that we can't do it too?

I agree with rdm.
Health care is about whether you live or die. Buying a house is not.
If someone can demand as much money as they want from you with the threat that you die if you don’t pay, that’s extortion, not a free market.
The free market is great when there’s a free market. There never was and never will be a free market in health care, except for small things that don’t actually threaten your life.
All other countries do this better than we do: they spend WAY less money with their “socialized” care, and they have as good or better results. Are we so stupid that we can’t do it too?

Agreed, I think we are too polarized by the rhetoric of shirts vs. skins. As a member of the bull-moose party I have been for Universal Healthcare since 1929.

:)

Go Mooses! Meese?

rdm, good post, although I disgree with you that the Dems "solution" is a move in the right direction. Most of problems regarding spiraling health costs can be traced to government spending and govt. restrictions. Medicare and Medicaid are broke, and what the Dems are suggesting is to Medicaid-ize private healthcare.

Health care rationing will occur under govt control or under (somewhat) free markets and I don't like the waiting lines and lack of available drugs and treatments that govt run systems produce. Many of the wealthy in Canada come to the US for treatment because they have the money to pay for it. The poor there do not have such an option. The countries that allegedly offer better health care than the US do NOT offer better care than those with insurance here in the US. The statistics are jiggered by different countries counting infant mortality different than we do (we go to costly extremes to save newborns that those countries do not) and there are other non medical societal factors at play which count against US life expectancy such as gang violence, obesity and drug abuse. Cancer survival rates here in the US are the highest in the world. If you survive to 60 here in the US, you have a longer life expectancy on average here, than in any other country on earth. The other countries are not "just as good" at delivering health care, and I see those who want to have govt play a greater role as trying to drag our care down to that level

Some Canadian provinces do not have access to certain drugs because their province decided not to. Waiting lists for operations in Canada are at an unacceptably long level and the number of MRI machines per capita are well below that in the US. It's worth noting that most other countries are permitted to sponge/leech off our drug research. Canada, for example, threatens to break patents on drugs unless our drug companies sell it to them at whatever they offer them, pennies on the dollar. These countries have made it uneconomical to do drug research in their countries through govt mandates, so the USA is dominating drug research, while other countries are permitted to mooch off of ours through threats. This is wrong, and it places an unfair economic burden on American healthcare as Americans shoulder all/most of the costs and it needs to stop

Most of the problems in our current system can be traced directly to govt.. More govt healthcare will make things worse. We all need food to survive and would pay anything to get it, so perhaps govt should take over the grocery store industry too, complete with demonization of 'evil greedy' grocers who don't want your children to eat properly.

4x,

Can we stop ragging on the USPS postal service? They get a letter cross-country for 42 cents in 3-5 days. Nobody else can provide that service. USPS had a 2008 loss of $2.8B, or $2800M on revenue of $75B. That is is less than a $10 loss per citizen of the US.

You cannot be serious that this is an example of "government screwing things up". FedEx has a 2008 loss of $2B on revenue of $38B !! There's private enterprise at work for you, dude.

In general,

the blatant lying that "government cannot do anything right" has got to stop. It is false, counterproductive an plays into the hands of those who want nothing better than wrecking the government. Do not forget, the government belongs to *US* [that could perhaps be a new slogan].

You guys are thinking Kitty when there's a Tiger coming down the trail.

"Health insurance" is not "Universal Healthcare" you guys are throttling Irony.

I'm pretty sure the generalized hatred of all government programs without regard to how effective they are is due to well-place propoganda (eg, Fox News) funded by very rich people who easily manipulate social tensions, patriotism, religion, whatever, to make sure they themselves can evade taxes and yet receive corporate welfare. See:

http://www.amazon.com/Rules-America-Politics-Social-Change/dp/0072876255

"there is a corporate community (Chapter 2) that is the basis for a social upper class (Chapter 3). This intertwined corporate community and social upper class have developed a policy-planning network (Chapter 4) and an opinion-shaping network (Chapter 5) that give them the means to win a majority of seats in the electoral process (Chapter 6) and to shape the policies of interest to them within the federal government (Chapter 7)."

Right on, Patrick, that is exactly how it works.