Health Care: Why does the u.s. spend so much and deliver so little?

[poe]

Pulitzer prize wining journalists Donald Bartlett and James Steele argue in CRITICAL CONDITION, only the top 2 or 3 percent of the wealthiest Americans can expect top shelf medical care.

[Hieronymus]

1. The US has a worse record on infant mortality than Cuba.

:eyes:
The World Health Organization ranks the US number 37 in overall healthcare in the world.

[leesa]

2. Same reason they spend so much on the military and have no bullets or

armed trucks. It's going into the corporatists Swiss accounts.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Maybe it's because we're paying for research & development

and don't even realize it?

[Warpy]

6. Nice try.

Two to three times as much money is thown at advertising than gets spent on R&D.

Most breakthrough drugs are developed by universities using NIH grants. Drug company R&D is used to create "me too" drugs, different enough from the NIH formula to merit a separate patent and allow a company to compete with the drug company that won the NIH license.

We have piss poor medical care because illness is not a consumer decision and health care doesn't belong in the consumer marketplace. Sucking profit out of any system degrades service. This can be a little annoying in a Walmart. It is fatal in healthcare.

As long as our government preaches the dogma of the marketplace and competetion (while megamergers of health care conglomerates destroy any competition that might have been), we will continue to get ridicioulously expensive, piss poor healthcare.

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. Okay. You win. I like your explanation better.

[blondeatlast]

21. I was ready to respond, but you beat me hollow. Thanks for

putting the argument in a nutshell. Very well done!

:toast:

[stevebreeze]

7. In fact drug companies pay more for advertising then R&D

And much of the drug development they do is finding new ways to extend patents rather then new medicine. For instance Paxil is the ingredient one of two ingredients in Previcid. It is the one that does all the work. But since it is chemically different they got a new patent, new adds send reps to Dr's to convince them that Paxil is the newest and best drug for acid reflux, and million ask their doctors for the new more expensive drug when the old one would work just as well.

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. I hear there is quite a few side effects to Paxil. Possibly the

others like it will have the same side effects?

[Warpy]

11. Paxil and prevacid are completely different drugs

with completely different actions.

You might be thinking of Prilosec, which was altered slightly to become Nexium (after the manufacturer managed to chisel an extra two years on the original patent) or Clarinol which was altered slightly to become Clarinex when its patent expired.

Paxil is an antidepressant that has no effect on acid reflux. Prevacid is a proton pump inhibitor that is great for acid reflux but doesn't do a thing for depression.

[stevebreeze]

15. up got my drugs mixed

but the concept is correct

[efhmc]

4. Profit driven in an area that should have other goals.Capitalism in its

worse form.

[JordanTO]

17. Precisely.

No basic human right, which is what health care is, should ever be dealt with from a profit/loss perspective. Our system may not be perfect, but we live longer than Americans do, are healthier during our lifetimes, and spend less of our GDP on health care than do you. Those facts should give some who oppose nationalised health care pause for reflection on the reasons for their opposition.

[stevebreeze]

5. every couple of years I re-read America who really pays the taxes

by Bartlett and Steele. It is still relevant.

anyway, we pay so much and get so little because those who are skimming off the top fund our elected officials. These officials having been vetted by the money really believe that we have a good an efficient health care system. The big money wouldn't hire them if they didn't. Show any signs of thinking for yourself and you will go unnoticed in our electoral system for lack of money.

[poe]

13. 2 salient points- 2 solutions(?)

1) hospitals charge 35,200 for an appendectomy for someone without health insurance, as opposed to 7,000 for someone with coverage, and then sue the patients when they can't pay their bills.
2) low cost treatments for cancer circa 1950- 194 out of 100,000 died; high cost treatments circa 2001- 196 out of 100,000 died.

1)single payer health care on a national level.
2)create local health care funds such as the ithaca health fund on a local level

[AP]

10. Why do the rich get richer and the poor tread water/sink in the US?

[stevebreeze]

16. it's government policy

not some kind of natural phenomena

[AP]

18. Exactly. And the government policy re health care is:

make profits for insurance and drug companies on the backs of taxpayers (and even doctors).

[napi21]

12. I think all of you are right, but there's another reason too.

I'm 61, and when I was young, everyone went to a GP when they were sick. A GP delivered both my babies, and treated those children until they were grown and left home. There were specialists, but they treated just that...special problems thay required concentrated very involved treatment. I would call my GP and tell him what the sympthoms were, and he'd call in a prescription, or tell me what to do OVER THE PHONE! Now, I can't gat the GP to diagnose ANYTHING without an office visit, several tests, and most of the time, a referral to some specialist!

Most of the new technology is wonderful, and can help diagnose virtually anything, but it sure appears to me that Drs are afraid to use their training and knowledge to tell you the simplest things without expensive tests to back them up. I've even offered to sign a document stating that I will never sue them, but they just say no.

I think there are 2 big reasons Americans pay the most and get the least is that was too many tests are ordered for CYA reasons, and way too many Americans demand all kind of new drugs that they saw on a TV ad. Lately, I've seen several articles and TV shows about "Overmedicated people". Too many people are on Prozac, and every other thing so they can avoid reality.

[eridani]

14. For the same reason your bathtub empties if you don't put the plug in

The purpose of private insurance is legalized theft. It's like paying someone to tap into your power line between the meter and your house and siphon off as much as they can.

[gjb]

19. Close. It's because they don't want it to work, so by spending billions ..

.... which are stolen by corrupt HMO's, thus bankrupting the system makes a perfect argument against 'Communist' healthcare. You destroy the system and get rich at the same time. Brilliant!

[blondeatlast]

20. Reading it now. It's all about the drug money, baby.

It's a great book. We need to try to push this one up the bestseller lists.

[dsc]

22. There are several reasons

one which isn't discussed much is that we have so much more gun violence than other nations. That both drives our cost up and lowers life expectency. We also have more drug abusers than alot of countries which also drives up cost and drives down life expectency. Insurers deserve alot of blame here but we deserve a share of it too.

[eg101]

24. that is SO rich

you gotta quit reading so many AEI/Heritage/Cato webpages, dude/dudette...

[dsc]

25. There can be more than one problem

The simple fact is we live about the least healthy lifestyles on planet earth. That fact is going to be reflected in both the costs and the results of health care. We also demand drugs for everything on God's green earth. That doesn't excuse or minimize the role of insurance companies in this mess but even if we fixed that problem tomorrow we still would have both a lower life expectency and a higher cost than virtually any European country and Japan.

[eg101]

23. it's all about keeping the plantation slaves humpin' hard as possible

They got our asses over a barrel--healthcare is controlled as a quasi-monopoly. Gotta keep us toting that bale of cotton as long as possible. Caint have none of that there "universal healthcare" like that got over there in that Europe. Gotta make make the slaves work as hard as possible, dontcha know....