a non starter for Medicare for conservatives? (my simple answer is campaign contributions - that is certainly part of it, but it can't be all). Reagan put them on physician services and hospital and healthcare services, and there they stay today - btw, probably the best domestic policy he enacted in 8 years because they worked and still do. They even exist, vis a vis drgs on inpatient care. Yet for drug companies and prescription coverage, it's a no-go. I understand the risk - don't want to stunt R &D - but let's not forget med schools and hospitals also do a lot of R &D and they were subjected to price controls. Price controls are a HORRILE idea when the consumer is the private sector - but a must when the public sector is such a huge purchaser as it is in health services and as it will be in drugs.
JD, on Healthcare issues, the Republicans are bought and paid for by the drug companies and the HMOS and large healthcare companies. They take their marching orders from them. Cut and dry. Drug prices is an issue that has grown so much that they have to make some concessions to the needs of elderly patients, but whatever they agree to has to be okayed by their special interest bosses. Price controls clearly are opposed by the drug companies.
Maybe they are the same person and the CottonCreepy Mr. Hyde says things in a way that JD Dr. Jekyll is too civilized to say
Street junkie? Well, to be honest, JD, I have a friend that just got out of rehabilitation for an addiction to illegal drugs... I'm not dropping him because of his problem, either... Your powers of perception are amazing...
apparently you do want to stunt r&d, as well as steal the property rights of the owners of drugs to sell theor products for a price of their choosing. you dont tell anyone the value of their items. you dont tell anyone how much they are allowed to sell something for . its not yours, its theirs.
Martin, as a capitalist myself I can appreciate the rights of anybody to sell their products for whatever the market will bear but in the case of life sustaining drugs why the hell do Americans have to pay so much more than Candians for the same drugs manufactured by the same American companies? There was a business called rxdepot operating out of Tulsa, OK with locations in several states where a person could walk into their storefront with their prescription. Rxdepot would fax the prescription to a Canadian pharmacist who would fill them at Canadian prices and ship the filled prescription overnight to the home of the patient. I was going to post the link to the Rxdepot site so that you could compare the vast difference in prices but when I just checked it out the have at least temporarily been put out of business by the 10th Circuit Federal Court and the site has info on that. http://rxdepot.com/ When I first checked them out a couple of weeks ago there were price comparisons and for one of the medicenes I take there was an almost $300 difference for a 3 month supply between the Canadian price and what I pay at Walgreens for exactly the same drug manufactured by the exact same company in the exact same dosage. Of course R&D is a costly process and they are in business to make a profit but lets say that after all costs are figured in it cost a drug company 50 cents per pill for manufacturing and distribution. The company makes a profit in Canada by selling the pill for $1.25 apiece so why the hell do I have to pay $3 dollars per pill in the USA? For me its fortunate that I have health insurance but I personally know people without insurance whose lives are most likely being shortened because they can't afford to pay for the full required monthly dosage of their medicenes as prescribed by their doctors so they try to get by taking less than their doctors prescribe in order to stretch it out over the month. Recently I saw an article in the newspaper about the drug companies planning to limit Canadian distribution of their products to their estimates of actual Canadian usages so as to limit the supply of cheap drugs to Americans. The very same companies that develope all these miracle life prolonging drugs are literally killing people with their pricing policies in regard to Americans.
hmm, interesting. i admit i am not the authority on this. why is canada so much cheaper? whats stops us from buying all our drugs from canadian dealers? apparently some sort of government manipulation of the market. i mean why would anyne buy somethging for alot more, when canadian companies are selling the product for so much cheaper? obviously the only answer is government red tape, and specifically in your example, Federal Judge Claire Eagan of the 10th Circuit Federal Court. its price control and government manipulation of the market that ruins everything. it seems there is far from a free market happening here. i dont see any problem here that more freedom cant solve. "drug companies planning to limit Canadian distribution of their products to their estimates of actual Canadian usages so as to limit the supply of cheap drugs to Americans." is it because of canadian price controls, that make the companies have to sell products below market value? price controls are are terrible for the market. if this is the case, then of course companies would have to inflate prices in the US to make up for lost revenue in canada. everyone should just allow the market to make its own prices.
That's nice - now tell us why physicians and hospitals are subjected to price controls? Further, NO ONE is calling for price controls in the the private sector - it is price controls WITH GOVERNMENT AS PURCHASER. No one MAKES these drug companies sell to the government so NO ONE IS STEALING THEIR PROPERTY RIGHTS. And what does the right wing handbook say about the property rights of the minimum wage worker whose cash is taken by the government and passed over to Exxon? The other nations apply price controls and the drug companies have no problem doing business with them. And further, is block purchasing a price control? Private parties do this all the time - they tell a vendor, we will pay $X - take it or leave it. That's all I'm asking the government to do to drug companies. Again, they do it to Physicians; they do it to Hospitals. HMOs do it - large hospital companies like Columbia do it - and they do it because of the volume of business they bring. Why doesn't the government do it because of the volume of business they bring? (Answer - they do do it for physician and hospital care). Other answer - the conservatives want to move Medicare into the private sector - fine in theory, but completely unworkable in reality. Old people get sick - some get real sick and often. That would be enormously expensive and subject to severe adverse selection. And as we know, poor people and really sick people have no political clout - what will happen is what will happen with vochers - a 20% real underclass with nothing, subject to political whimsy - which means cut, cut, cut. And AARP can continue to be the spokesperson for the wealthy elderly - the exact people who don't need lobbyists.
