See my #52. It is my position that the insurance and pharm companies own the hospitals in order to set their own prices. large cost of health care is what is driving insurance up. Meanwhile the insurance company is free to adjust it's bottom line by claiming write off out of it's hospital holdings.
It is insurance that keeps the cost up- It is never cheaper for someone else to pay your bills for you. The illusion of great cost is what props up the insurance health, and pharmaceutical industries.
Remove the insurance and the prices will fall in line by supply and demand.
yeah but if you are old and sick or something cuts your leg off, you’re going to be whacked with a major bill
Insurance and pharm companies do not own hospitals. Doesn't happen. In fact, it may currently be illegal to do so (with Medicare Part D). Merck divested itself of even its PBM (as Medco) so as to avoid this conflict. Not that that went smoothly, but the larger point is still true. Hospitals are not owned by either insurance companies or by pharm companies.
Secondly, hospitals are not failing at tremendous rates. In fact, higher hospital bills are one of the fasting growing costs in the healthcare segment. Most hospitals get paid at a percentage rate of the billed charges. So, if the hospital bills $20,000 and gets 80% from the insurance company, they get $18,000. As no one really sees that bill (or more importantly, most likely pays 10% or even a per diem amount of $300), people tend to think hospitals are not expensive. Check out the hospitals in your area. If they're like EVERY hospital in St. Louis, they're constructing something somewhere.
The principal driver of healthcares costs is demand. We utilize healthcare at a much greater rate than other countries. Higher demand, higer prices.
Remove the insurance and the prices will fall in line by supply and demand.
And here we agree.
Yes the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies do keep the costs up. I have no sympathy for the insurance companies, but I will defend the pharmaceutical companies in certain ways.
It takes years to bring new drugs to market. Out of something like 100 drugs that are evaluated, very few get to clinical trials. Out of those still more drop out as ineffective. And when a drug does come to market, it doesn’t always mean a patent will stand for the full 17 years, or 20, whatever it was changed to about ten years ago.
Let’s say a pharmaceutical company does a lot of chemical research for a new medication. When it finds a promising area, it will not only patent the exact chemical composition, but will patent all molecular variants in close proximity. The primary drug may make it through in a year or so, but further research may go on for a decade or so before a secondary medication is developed. At that point, only seven to ten years may remain on that medication. If it takes 15 years, only two to five years may remain for name brand profits to help recoup all the development costs.
There’s no denying there is a lot of money being made, but there are hundreds of millions of dollars in start up costs on these medications.
That’s one consideration. There is another.
While some people carp about the cost of new medications, some of them are very incredible today. In the past people would have to be hospitalized at great cost for certain ailments. Today there is no or very little hospitalization while new antibiotics, new heart regulation medications, insulins and other wonder drugs keep people up and running outside the hospital environment.
What people complain about, is the incredibly expensive new medications. What they don’t appreciate is they won’t have to pay for hospitalization when they are prescribed these meds as an alternative. Not only that, they will live a better quality of life as long as these meds do their work.
Avoiding hospitalization also avoids exposure to hospital contracted stafcillin resistant infections.
In the old days, folks would get sick, get worn down, become vulnerable to secondary ailments and pass away. Today the main problem is addressed with advanced medications, preventing it’s dilitarious effects and thereby the secondary effects that would lead to being confined to a bed, a possible nursing home environment and possible death.
I know that pharmaceutical houses are a prime target these days, but I’m not a big fan of trashing them. They make profits to be sure, but we want a healthy pharmaceutical industry. They’re saving lives as much as anyone else in healthcare is.
Is there some room for criticism? I believe there is. I don’t believe it reaches the level of the vast overcharging some people attribute to it.