Just google search it. I found lots. Maybe not prescription strength.
So are people that get sick.
Unless you’re aware of a pandemic that I’m not, I’m reasonably sure that the US has no issue with keeping people alive. The discrepancy in life span between the US and Europe matches the discrepancy you would expect from the difference in average BMI, implying that there’s no factor in the US killing people faster than other countries beyond that - or at least nothing significant.
I’m reasonably sure that Trump has zero understanding of health care. His plan comes from other people who do understand what they are talking about, and in this particular case it’s not a matter of “Screw the rest of the world!” Or at least, it shouldn’t be.
Excluding vaccines and bandages, medical technology and medication does very little beyond what your body can do naturally.
One of the greatest cost savings that the EU practices is in paying as much for a thing as it proves itself able to extend the life of a person.
In a world where medical technology is a its peak and can never get better - all avenues have been exhausted and either discarded or turned into an affordable solution that works - then that system of health care financing works. But in a world where we are still advancing our knowledge, we need to push R&D money into the organizations that develop it and we have to reward them for the solutions that are on the path to future cost-effective technologies but which aren’t there yet.
At the moment, the US is the only country that is really doing this. We buy all the best, newest stuff that just barely performs better than a placebo. In the short term, it’s a waste of money, but in the long term, it’s - as said - rewarding the medical industry for working ahead in projects that may require multiple decades and even centuries to get to the next step.
Now, to be sure, this state of affairs didn’t happen through some enlightened policy. It’s just a side effect of history, and as such isn’t really optimised for the purpose. But it remains the point that Europe and the rest of the world don’t pay for medical advances. They let the US buy it, serve as its proving ground, and only then - if the cost benefit ratio works out - do that go ahead and buy it. And when they do, they scream and cry to get the lowest cost that the developer can afford in the last few months before their patent expires, because it took 20 years to develop the technology and get it through the FDA and/or whatever other hoops.
Talking about solving the issue with the US health care system is also the same discussion as saying that we intend to dissolve the US military and let the rest of the world handle the fallout. We’ve created an indispensable place for ourselves that, intentional or not, we can’t abandon without having first organizing a solution that will fill the same gap.
Tretinoin is not available OTC in the US. You may be confusing Retin-A with retinol or with adapalene, which is sold as Differin, the only OTC (in the US) retinoid. Or maybe you’re googling websites of questionable legality.
You were complaining about people in the healthcare industry having kids and mortgages. Which implied that you had concern about the financial well being of the people in the industry.
I was pointing out that people with mortgages and kids also get sick. And that has a severe impact on their financial well being.
Now you change the goal posts to factors killing people.
Depending on what you mean by “very little” there are literally millions of people who can tell you that you are wrong about this, and can do so only because of modern medical technology.
This is not really true. Other countries are creating new medications, and new procedures and new technology. The US does get the lion’s share, but to claim that the rest of the world isn’t paying for medical advances is simply not the case.
“Solving the issue” with healthcare in the US is nothing like dissolving the military. First, because solving the healthcare issue doesn’t involve dissolving healthcare in the US. It doesn’t involve putting healthcare suppliers out of business. So, on that front, your analogy fails. It also is nothing like “let[ing] the rest of the world handle the fallout”, as the rest of the world is not going to fall into any sort of mess because the US backs off researching the next boner pill or restless leg syndrome treatment.
Getting rid of this restriction was one of Trump’s few good campaign promises. No surprise it is not in the plan.
So are con artists. Doesn’t mean that we should let them rip us off.
Many countries don’t allow drug advertising. If we reduce drug marketing costs (which are higher than R&D costs) drug company people could still eat and we’d all be better off.
Check out the article in the Times Magazine last week about the optoid maker who encouraged high prescribing doctors with speaker fees even when no one was in the audience.
Vaccines are great, but they do not account for most of the increase in life expectancy we’ve seen. So it must be the band-aids.
I am probably alive today because I caught my A-Fib problem and am on blood thinners (generics) and a regulator for my internal pacemaker. Neither are things my body was going to do by itself.
If you could take a moment to advise us more specifically, that we may avoid such an unfortunate accident?
I’m several flavors of not-a-lawyer. So I’m not going to advise you on anything.
This article may be of interest: Online pharmacy - Wikipedia
I had a neighbor die by using aspirin. He was in his late forties or early fifties and in good health as far as I could tell. He had a bad stomach ache and decided to take aspirin to cure it for some reason. Lots of it. It turns out he had internal bleeding, and aspirin is an anti-coagulant. He was a good guy, and this brought back a bad memory.
Pfizer et al are very profitable: If drug prices were lowered, share prices would decline. Share prices have not fallen. IOW, the market suspects that Trump’s plan is “all hat no cattle.” BTW, don’t believe those who say drug companies need all that vast revenue for research — drug company profits, advertising, and kickbacks to doctors add up to much more than R&D.
Drug prices are very low where I live. A pack of Viagra-lookalike costs almost less than a pack of chewing gum in the states.
[off-topic] Aspirin, which is a cliché in the U.S. (“take two aspirin and call me in the morning”), is hard to obtain in rural Thailand — it can only be found at hospitals or at the very largest pharmacies in major cities. (This is inconvenient for me since I’m supposed to take an aspirin every day.)
The reason, I think, is that aspirin is contraindicated for dengue hemorrhagic fever, which is a major threat here.
I don’t have anything bad to say about this document or any of the plans within it. I was looking for the bad and fully expected it, but it seems like HHS under Azar is taking Trump’s populist clamor and running with it to try to implement actual reforms.
The last section is a hellishly long list of specific questions to solicit public feedback. I really hope they get quality feedback. I’m not so sure about the “Fixing Global Freeloading” part, but we know where that one came from.
US Big Pharma have two core issues with the PBS
- reference pricing:
Central to the processes of the PBS is the idea that drugs with identical or similar clinical outcomes should have similar prices, known as reference pricing. - they don’t want this mechanism or anything similar like the UK model used as a template for a scheme operating in the US.
How the US trade deal undermined Australia’s PBS
The one thing that we can do that will immediately and drastically lower drug prices is to extend the period of patent protection.
I hope like hell you’re being sarcastic.
And your evidence that this would “immediately and drastically lower drug prices” is what exactly? As this news report discusses, it is by the abuse of patent laws to effectively extend patents that drug companies are able to keep prices highers.
The problem is the only real solutions will enrage the pharma industry, and politicians are not willing to enrage them. The only way to lower drug costs is to pay less for drugs. Paying less for drugs = less revenue for drug manufacturers. They aren’t going to tolerate that.
Real solutions:
[ul]
[li]Make importation of pharmaceuticals from foreign nations legal and extremely easy to do. If Daraprim costs $750 a pill in the US, but $0.10 a pill in Brazil or India, make it easy to import Daraprim either on an individual level or in bulk so pharmacies and hospitals can stock up as well as individuals can order it overseas with ease. [/li][li]Make it easy for domestic manufacturers to enter the marketplace and compete with other generic manufacturers, so that 1 manufacturer does not have a monopoly. [/li][li]Prohibit pharma from blocking generic manufacturers from entering the marketplace[/li][li]Stronger laws preventing pharma from extending patents. [/li][li]Allow the US government as a whole to negotiate medical prices. [/li][li]Use comparative effectiveness research to make sure that the cheapest medication possible is the first one prescribed and used (this one is partly done already though).[/li][li]Transparent, easy to understand prices for all pharmacies listed both online and in person so people can get the best deal. [/li][/ul]
The list of interventions provided maybe touch on a couple of the generic ones, but not the other ones.