Is this why government run healthcare will never be less expensive?
Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at
3:09 pm
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You hit the nail on the head the government will always over pay for anything, remember the $800 sunglasses?
You have a pretty good handle on it.
you are 100% correct.
and medicare patients are at times charged 3x more for hospital services than other "insurance" carriers.
wtf.
how much $$$ could be saved with just a little oversight.
Why are Americans so dense that they refuse to learn anything from the experiences of other countries?
Health care in the USA costs almost DOUBLE per capita what it costs in the UK. And the in the UK, health care is – wait for it – administered by the NHS, a government agency.
You can do it in your country, if you can get your heads out of your keisters and be bothered to get it right.
Save America, Nuke Washington.
Both parties are to blame and both should be vaporized. Time for a fresh start.
It doesn’t make any sense to me either. When I got deployed to Kuwait the Army was renting Chevrolet Suburbans for $1000.00 a month EACH. Then after three years the vehicles were returned to Chevrolet. So that’s $36K pissed away when the Army could have easily purchased those vehicles for far less.
Insane.
To cheer you up I ran across this email from an Australian who is making fun of IBM’s health care and teleprompter. It’s pretty funny and here it is:
President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats are bringing America together during a series of completely unscripted and plant and Astroturf -free town hall meetings. Let’s listen in on a typically unifying exchange:
OBAMA: … and … uh … that’s how … um … that’s … damn it, Rahm, you’re standing right in front of the thing! … Okay. Got a clear line of sight now. And that’s how the right-wing smear machine tries to take me down, talking about how I’m dependent on my tele … [waits for screen to load] … prompter. Now, how about we hear some questions from you good people.
CROWD: [General clamour: “Me!” “No, pick me!” “Me, me, me!” “Lord, let me walk again!"]
OBAMA: The young blonde-haired girl in the twenty-third row there, seven seats from the aisle, wearing the blue and white dress. You look like you have an important question to … [waits for screen to load] … ask.
GIRL: Thank you Mister Pwesident!
OBAMA: You’re welcome, Tammy.
GIRL: Mister Pwesident, my name is Tammy Wilkerson and I’m vewwy worried about the destwuction of democwacy in our country. There were people outside the town hall tonight with signs calling you a cu … a cun … [waits for screen to load] … a cunning political tactician whose town hall meetings are mere window dwessing for a health policy even you don’t understand. What’s that about, Mister Pwesident?
OBAMA: Oh, ha ha ha ha ha ha Tammy! Ha ha ha ha ha! Isn’t she just so adorable and spontaneous? Ha ha ha ha!
GIRL: The answer to your qwestion, Tammy … oops.
OBAMA: The answer to your question, Tammy, is that some people don’t understand why we’re trying to help them. They think they can look after themselves better than we can. Just imagine that, Tammy.
GIRL: You’re going to hell.
OBAMA: What?
GIRL: [Waits for screen to load] You’re going to … help my gwandpa, aren’t you Mister Pwesident? He’s all sick with acute wenal failure. Please wescue him. He’s not a wegistered Wepublican or anything like that.
OBAMA: You know, Tammy, before your question tonight, I probably would have left him to die. But now I won’t. You have my word on it.
CROWD: [Wild applause]
OBAMA: And you can tell your “gwandma” we’ll look after her, too, sweetie. You tell her that.
CROWD: [Deep sighs of warm appreciation]
GIRL: With wespect, sir, I am 18 years old. My speech defect should not be a subject of widicule, especially during discussion of …
BROADCAST TERMINATED
=]
As noted in the article you cited, the health care industry is currently spending $2 million a day lobbying Congress. Also note that it is usually the conservatives who defend "free market" pricing and object to using the government’s considerable bargaining power to reduce costs.
Remember the struggle between the Republicans and the Democrats concerning bargaining in the Medicare Prescription Drug bill. The Republicans claimed that Democrats were trying to institute a system of severe price controls. They actually weren’t but even that moderate effort at containing costs was opposed by the Republicans.
You’ve got a good part of it.
A big problem is that Medicare and other government-sponsored health care programs are prohibited from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to obtain lower prices. That’s why we pay so much more for prescription drugs than people in other countries do.
Lipitor, a cholesteral-lowering drug, is made by Pfizer, an American company, but Canadian, British and French pharmacies pay far less for Lipitor than our pharmacies do, and the savings are passed through to patients.
I wonder how many millions of dollars Big Pharma gave in political contributions to avoid having to negotiate prices for their drugs. I have read stories about people without insurance or in the Medicare donut hole who cut their doses in half to save money or do without some prescribed drugs because they can’t afford them.