Amazing how much lifesaving meds are overpriced in the US

[DandyDon]

Ok, well, it's good that I didn't try to unload my four-month supply. The blood thinner they put me on is affordable enough, but it accelerated my pulse over 100 - a known, possible side effect. The monitoring agency nurses who get my daily BP readings transmitted to them kept calling to check on me. They put me back on Xarelto so I pulled it out of storage. I love that I can get it in generic at 18¢ a pill.

 

[tridacna]

Ok, well, it's good that I didn't try to unload my four-month supply. The blood thinner they put me on is affordable enough, but it accelerated my pulse over 100 - a known, possible side effect. The monitoring agency nurses who get my daily BP readings transmitted to them kept calling to check on me. They put me back on Xarelto so I pulled it out of storage. I love that I can get it in generic at 18¢ a pill.

Which one caused that effect?

 

[Angelo Farina]

I would like to see evidence that taxes are higher than insurance and co pay for medical care at inflated prices.

For many years the U.K. had the best performing and most cost effective healthcare in the world and was state run. Has an insurance based country ever been the most effective health system globally?

Of course a tax-based public health dystem has lower costs pro capita than an insurance-based system.
A public health system operates in permanent loss and is one of the most significant causes of the continuously-increasing public debt of European countries. Here in Italy public health is by far the biggest contributor to public debt.
Instead in an insurance-based system both insurance companies and hospitals operate with significant profit. This means that citizens are paying more than the net cost, whilst here we are paying less than the net cost.
Furthermore the tax-based system is strongly progressive, ensuring that only the rich pay a lot, whilst everyone gets the same good medical treatment.
An insurance based system ensures good treatment only to the rich, whilst poor people only receive basic healthcare and are excluded from top level treatments.
The way to discourage unhealthy behaviour is to tax it heavily.
Here we have a lot of taxation on tobacco and alcohol...

 

[DandyDon]

Which one caused that effect?

Cilostazol.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Lots of waste and handouts… and doesn’t change the fact that healthcare is never free!

Defense spending.
With the amount we spent in Afghanistan we probably could have given every man woman and child in the US free health care and had money left over for that time period. What did we get for all our efforts?
What does it cost us to maintain a defensive stance in Europe, and what do they pay for their own security in comparison?
Some things to think about when wondering why we don’t have free health care like some other nations.

 

[tridacna]

Defense spending.
With the amount we spent in Afghanistan we probably could have given every man woman and child in the US free health care and had money left over for that time period. What did we get for all our efforts?
What does it cost us to maintain a defensive stance in Europe, and what do they pay for their own security in comparison?
Some things to think about when wondering why we don’t have free health care like some other nations.

If only…

This from the liberal WP.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/19/omars-off-kilter-comparison-defense-health-care-spending/

A more conservative opinion:

Could Medicare for All be Financed Entirely by Cutting Defense Spending? | Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

Last week, The New York Times published an op-ed entitled “We Don’t Need to Rais

www.crfb.org

 

[DandyDon]

This from the liberal WP.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...lter-comparison-defense-health-care-spending/

Paywall blocked.

Medicare is nice, but not all providers accept it. When I need a new doctor, I always ask first, or get my PA to refer me to one that does.

 

[tridacna]

Paywall blocked.

Medicare is nice, but not all providers accept it. When I need a new doctor, I always ask first, or get my PA to refer me to one that does.

“Anyone taking an introductory macroeconomics course is quickly introduced to the “guns versus butter” model. It is a framework for discussing how much can be spent on a nation’s military budget vs. social programs. There’s a finite amount of money available, and so the concept illustrates the tension between defense spending and civilian spending.
Omar’s tweet is a perfect distillation of this concept, as she questions why money is being spent on defense when it could instead be spent on a single-payer health-care system, popularly known as Medicare-for-all.
We originally thought Omar was proposing to eliminate spending on “guns” to maximize the “butter.” But her spokesman, Jeremy Slevin, says that is not the case. “The point, which progressives have made repeatedly, is that we prioritize spending on hundreds of military bases, ground wars and weapons contracts instead of basic needs like health care, housing and nutrition,” he said.
Still, this tweet calls for a review of the numbers. It may be news to Omar, but the U.S. government already spends more on health care than on defense.
The Facts
Defense outlays in 2021 are expected to be about $733 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Omar’s tweet — $2 billion a day on defense — suggests the annual budget is about $730 billion, so that’s on target.
Assuming no money was spent on defense, that would give you $7.3 trillion in extra cash to spend on a single-payer system for the next 10 years.

That sounds like a lot of money, but it’s chicken feed compared with what the nation already is projected to spend on health care. The government projects that national health spending will amount to about $50 trillion over the next decade. (The most recent estimates, for 2019-2028, total $49 trillion.)
Just in 2028, annual health-care spending is projected to be $6.2 trillion.
Right now, individuals and companies pick up a lot of that tab. A national health-care system would require the federal government to pick up more of the cost.
How much more is unclear, though there have been various estimates in recent years, all of which are subject to dispute. The Congressional Budget Office recently sketched out the impact of five different options for enacting a single-payer plan, so we will rely on those estimates.
According to the CBO, federal subsidies for health care would increase between $1.5 trillion and $3 trillion a year — far more than any annual savings for eliminating the military. The nation’s national health-care expenditures would increase slightly or decline as much as 10 percent.
(Obviously, one way to increase the size of the pie available for health-care spending is to boost taxes. Nothing in life is ever free, and neither is free health care.)
As for Omar’s suggestion that the government currently spends more on defense than health care, that’s wrong. The CBO projects that defense outlays would total $8.2 trillion in the next 10 years. By contrast, even before any version of Medicare-for-all is enacted, outlays on major health-care programs — such as Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare and the Children’s Health Insurance Program — is projected to total $19.9 trillion in the same period.

One could reduce that figure by $2.3 trillion if you net out Medicare receipts, but even so, federal health-care spending is already twice the size of the defense budget. Adding a single-payer program on top of that would make the ratio greater than 3 to 1.
The Pinocchio Test
Omar appears to have been making a rhetorical point, not a mathematically sound one, so we will leave this unrated. But in the continuing debate over guns vs. butter, it’s important to remember that butter at the moment has the upper hand.”

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Of course a tax-based public health dystem has lower costs pro capita than an insurance-based system.
A public health system operates in permanent loss and is one of the most significant causes of the continuously-increasing public debt of European countries. Here in Italy public health is by far the biggest contributor to public debt.
Instead in an insurance-based system both insurance companies and hospitals operate with significant profit. This means that citizens are paying more than the net cost, whilst here we are paying less than the net cost.
Furthermore the tax-based system is strongly progressive, ensuring that only the rich pay a lot, whilst everyone gets the same good medical treatment.
An insurance based system ensures good treatment only to the rich, whilst poor people only receive basic healthcare and are excluded from top level treatments.
The way to discourage unhealthy behaviour is to tax it heavily.
Here we have a lot of taxation on tobacco and alcohol...

The biggest obstacle I see in the American health care system is the insurance industry sitting right between the patient and the doctor.
One very simple example: I’m self employed and have to buy my own insurance. I say “have to” because if I don’t I get fined. In California we are forced to buy medical insurance or else we pay a fine at the end of the year through out income taxes. So at 60 years old the cheapest insurance I can find through the insurance market is about $1000 a month. I still have to pay about $7000 out if pocket before the deductible is met if something serious happens. The $1000 mo. covers nothing, that’s just for access. I still have to pay a lot of money.
My office visits are $150 each time I go in. The only thing fully covered is annual physical check up.
So for $12,000 a year I don’t get much.
If I wanted a premium plan I would have to pay about $2000 mo for a $30 office visit and a $2500 deductible.
I get skin basel cell carcinomas from too much sun in my life and my dermatologist doesn’t take Obama care. So I just pay out of pocket every time I go in which is $95 office visit then between $200-$400 for procedures. She’s really good. If I went through my medical plan the other options are very dismal. My plan has a list of so called “covered doctors” which aren’t really covered, they are just the ones who will take this insurance plan. It’s cheaper for me to pay her out of pocket for minor skin care because if she did take my insurance I would have to pay a jacked up rate, office visit would be $150 and they would only pay her probably $60-$70 of that, they keep the rest. Insurance companies are making all the money in this whole scam, and they are holding back care to maximize profits.
I would love to keep the grand a month and just pay out if pocket but Obama won’t let me. I have to pay for every other poor person who doesn’t want to work, and I’m not a rich man by any means.
I see this whole thing as catastrophic on so many levels.
My personal health plan is just to stay healthy, continue to eat well, work out, and dive as much as possible. I absolutely cannot afford to get sick.
Hopefully I will never need to be on any expensive prescriptions.

 

[tridacna]

The biggest obstacle I see in the American health care system is the insurance industry sitting right between the patient and the doctor.
One very simple example: I’m self employed and have to buy my own insurance. I say “have to” because if I don’t I get fined. In California we are forced to buy medical insurance or else we pay a fine at the end of the year through out income taxes. So at 60 years old the cheapest insurance I can find through the insurance market is about $1000 a month. I still have to pay about $7000 out if pocket before the deductible is met if something serious happens. The $1000 mo. covers nothing, that’s just for access. I still have to pay a lot of money.
My office visits are $150 each time I go in. The only thing fully covered is annual physical check up.
So for $12,000 a year I don’t get much.
If I wanted a premium plan I would have to pay about $2000 mo for a $30 office visit and a $2500 deductible.
I get skin basel cell carcinomas from too much sun in my life and my dermatologist doesn’t take Obama care. So I just pay out of pocket every time I go in which is $95 office visit then between $200-$400 for procedures. She’s really good. If I went through my medical plan the other options are very dismal. My plan has a list of so called “covered doctors” which aren’t really covered, they are just the ones who will take this insurance plan. It’s cheaper for me to pay her out of pocket for minor skin care because if she did take my insurance I would have to pay a jacked up rate, office visit would be $150 and they would only pay her probably $60-$70 of that, they keep the rest. Insurance companies are making all the money in this whole scam, and they are holding back care to maximize profits.
I would love to keep the grand a month and just pay out if pocket but Obama won’t let me. I have to pay for every other poor person who doesn’t want to work, and I’m not a rich man by any means.
I see this whole thing as catastrophic on so many levels.
My personal health plan is just to stay healthy, continue to eat well, work out, and dive as much as possible. I absolutely cannot afford to get sick.
Hopefully I will never need to be on any expensive prescriptions.

Why not just pay the $850 penalty in California and save the $1,000 per month for insurance you're not using? If you have a serious illness, you're screwed but it sounds like you're in pretty good shape.