So how do you derail single payer if ye are a powerful group of companies?

[nadinbrzezinski]

Well don't know if you guys have noticed this... but Wallymart has generics for four bucks a month. So does Target, CVS et al.

Anybody care for coincidences? Or realize that one of the impulse for single payer IS the high cost of meds. As I am now fond of saying, coincidence is for fools and idiots.

But that is ONE way to take the impetus away from single payer...

[JDPriestly]

1. The insurance companies are asking that the same rules be applied

to private an public insurance options. If that is so, then the public insurance could get the cheap meds too. By the way, with the public insurance, you could probably choose to get your meds at Walmart. Why not? You get to choose your pharmacy with single-payer insurance. The government would not be giving you your meds. I'm on Medicare, and I don't get my meds sent to me by the government. I get a prescription for a pharmacy or my supplementary insurance provides them. Single-payer insurance would not change your health care that much in so far as where you get services.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. That's not the point

these are not insurance meds, but generics for four bucks for a month... not a deductible

I have no problem with that, since generics ARE cheap

But the way major companies are working together has a name... hmmm let me see if I remember, oh yes FIXING prices

And the reason for that is to get air off sails for the will of the people... after all if you need lipitor, which runs over one hundred bucks, we can and will sell you the generic for four... no matter where you buy them in town.

By the way, price fixing used to be a crime in this country,.. and this is not a coincidence.

[billyoc]

2. Bribe the leaders of whatever poliitical party is in power.

It's a time-tested formula.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Of course and in this case bribe the people as well, with generics

I just noticed that all of these places have the same price for generics...

Either that is a hell of a coincidence, or price fixing.

Alex I will take price fixing for 1000

[Occam Bandage]

14. It's not price fixing when everyone's prices are *low.*

That's called "competition." Wal-Mart realized they could attract many more customers into their stores by bribing them with cheap generics. Everyone else had to follow suit or let Wal-Mart poach every one of their customers who use generics.

I worked for Target in HR when they rolled their generics plan out. I wasn't involved in the decision, of course, but I read all the internal mail, forecasts, and scouting reports on the competition, and I can promise you that Target's decision was 100% made to prevent Wal-Mart from poaching customers.

[dflprincess]

4. Remember when big pharma claimed that drugs imported from Canada may not be safe?

I just read that most generics are made in India and China - (it makes me queasy just to think about that and I don't feel very confident about the quality of my generic prescription) no wonder they can sell generics so cheaply.

Actually, I don't think the low Rx costs are anything more than a gimmick to get you through the doors ar these outfits. It really doesn't have a thing to do with single payer because it does nothing to get you access to a doctor.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. I know and I know my diabetes meds didn't work

for one month, FORTUNATELY I was in Mexico when that happened and got them same CANADIAN generics for the same price... they ahem worked

Oh tried to tell the health department, not that it mattered.

But these same exact price has me going price a-fixing... is going on.

[TahitiNut]

6. On the other hand, folks could wake up to the OBSCENE profit margins they've been paying.

I just got a 3-month supply of my hypertension meds (lisinopril) at my LOCAL pharmacy for $12 ... and they admitted they had to lower their prices just to compete with CostCo and others.

I specifically asked my doctor to prescribe a med (other than Benicar HCT, which is PRICEY) that I could take that didn't cost an arm and a leg. He'd been giving me office samples and they really weren't very easy on me. The lisinopril seems to be just fine for me.

Benicar HCT costs over $100 for a 30-day supply, depending on where I'd get it. That's costly enough to send my BP off the charts.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Yeah but it dawned on me, all of them are charging the same exact

price, this goes beyond COSTCO

And Lisinopril works fine, I know

[Occam Bandage]

16. They all charge the same price for many things.

Video games, for one. New release CDs, often. The things that get people off their asses and into stores for special trips in are almost always the exact same price from store to store. It's no more a conspiracy than it is a conspiracy when two gas stations across the road from each other charge the same for gas. They aren't trying to prevent single-payer gas.

(Hell, Target would love single-payer, as that would mean they'd stop having to worry about benefits. I imagine CVS wouldn't mind either, given that would increase people's willingness to spend on healthcare.)

[Bonobo]

9. Shouldn't you be busy warning us about the flu instead of these trivialities?

;)

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. All is trivial to you, I know

by the way I won't bother trying to connect dots for you.

Or for that matter splaining what you refuse to understand.

Why don't you do yourself a favor and put me on ignore?

Yes I am tired of the willfully ignorant in this country, NO MATTER what political party they claim to be part of, or how much tinfoil they like to use.

[Mojorabbit]

10. I went off my MS med

in January when they raised the copay to 800$ a month. This meant that when I reached the donut hole in medicare I would be paying almost 3000 a month till I came out the other side. I told my husband I'd rather spend the money on a trip to Paris.

[Occam Bandage]

12. You've heard of loss-leaders, right?

They've been doing this for a few years now. Generics are dirt cheap to make, and Wal-Mart realized a couple years back that they could pull in more shoppers by giving them their generic drugs for four bucks. They'd still make a profit, and they'd encourage more people to walk through their doors. Target immediately followed suit, and they were followed a few months later by the chain drugstores, who realized that they were bleeding customers to the big-box stores.

Not every business decision is made with intent to affect American politics years down the road.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Of course, in fact had to splain this to a store manager once

what concerns me is that we have EVERYBODY doing the same thing, with the same exact price

Yep, I'll take price fixin for One Thousand Alex

:-)

[Occam Bandage]

17. Generics are fungible, and cheap generics are a significant part of their business plans now.

If anyone would charge more than anyone else, they'd immediately lose every customer who has a prescription. If they would charge $3.00, they'd end up losing too much money on the deal. They could probably charge $3.93 or something, but round numbers work a lot better for products that you're advertising as part of a branding effort.

When prices are all low and uniformly low, that is not called "price fixing." That is called "competition."

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. Well if you think it is competition fine

to me it is also part of an effort to sink the process called single payer

Sorry, been around the block a few times, and at times things have more than one explanation

[Occam Bandage]

19. You may have "been around the block,"

but I don't think you learned nearly as much as you think you did on your trips.

The $4 generic program has been going on since the Republicans had control of the Senate and House and single-payer wasn't on anyone's agenda save in the longest of long terms. It was instituted purely to bring people in through the doors. Everyone else followed Wal-Mart's lead so as to not be out-competed.

There's absolutely no link to single payer, except in your mind. There's no significance to the fact that everyone charges the same thing, except inasmuch as it implies you don't quite understand the importance of branding in a modern business.

"Well maybe it's for the list of rational reasons you have listed AND A SECRET, COMPLETELY UNCONNECTED PLOT TOO" is not insight. It is nothing but your aggressive determination to remain ignorant of things you like to criticize.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. Well round the block also includes a fair amount of history books

and it is you who chooses to remain ignorant of the history of bidness in this country, and efforts to sink what the people want. Oh and it is just not this country. It is just too convenient that everybody is using the same price... the exact same price

Oh and for the record, round where I live... gas stations across each other don't necesarily have the same prices either.

There is also this law of unintended consequences... but I am sure in your reality unintended consequences are also tinfoil hattish. To me they are real... and range from really horrific situations... to things that may be innocent on the surface and just part of the business cycle.

And yes, I will repeat this, I know what loss leader is.

[lpbk2713]

13. Pay Limbaugh under the table to carry your message.

Oh. Never mind. That's already been taken care of some time ago.

[Chisox08]

20. Well in the Chicago all they have to do is

show pictures of Stroger Hospital and it turns people againt single payer in a heartbeat.
I passed by one of those teabag rallies and one of the teabaggers shouted out if you want single payer look a Stroger Hospital and see if you want single payer.

[Occam Bandage]

21. Stroger Hospital is such a hole even Stroger didn't go there. nt

[Chisox08]

22. I've gone there once and will never go there again