Okay, let’s just forget that Medicare does now pick up the tab for the costs of some medications, and that our tax dollars are going for this, so by not negotiating for lower drug prices, this is screwing the tax payers.
Of course, the commie-pinkos running GM, Ford, and Chrysler, are pushing for government run health care.
Buncha damned hippies! So what if health care costs add more to the price of a car than the steel used to build them? Fuck 'em, all!
But Bill Ford will still be able to afford his “Mustang with a great sound system and a throaty V8”, right?
Don’t wanna leave any millionaires behind.
-Joe
The government (as a purchaser of medicine) raises all kinds of legal questions:
-in case of a lawsuit, who is the plaintiff?
-is the Govt. liable for errors?
We will never have any kind of national healthcare without involving TONs of lawyers.
Which is one intent, I suppose :eek:
Perhaps you’ve been napping for the last twenty years. There are ALREADY tons of lawyers whose sole stomping ground is medical-interest cases.
-In the case of a lawsuit against a drug manufacturer, the government is the plaintiff, just as it would be in a case against a defense contractor.
-What errors? Dispensing errors, yes. Prescribing errors, generally not.
Ralph is a conservative/libertarian. Napping for the last twenty years is a basic requirement for that ideology. Sometimes, for the last 50 years.
Don’t forget that the current Medicare drug plan was entirely the project of those commies over at the Republican party, who strongarmed it through the legislature (from this article):
Funny thing is, I just helped a disabled friend work through the benefits… the Medicare funded coverage really covers just about everything, and what they don’t cover, they give a discount on. That’s right - they’re already negotiating a discount, under the Republican implemented plan!
The Republicans were dragged, kicking and screaming, to the realization that they’d have to help somebody pay for prescription drugs. To ease their pain, they slipped in that anti-free-market clause about forbidding the gov’t from negotiating prices on the drugs. There was also something about protecting Eli Lilly Co. from mercury-in-vaccines lawsuits, but I don’t know if that made it into the law or not.
I’m a member of the United Auto Workers from an auto parts plant. I can tell you that we tried for decades to convince the auto companies that they could save a lot of money if health care money was funnelled through the government instead of dozens of private insurance firms. The car companies fought it every step of the way, but now they think it’s a great idea. Slow learners, I say. Very, very, very slow.
Don’t forget the fucking doughnut hole. The fucking fucking fucking doughnut hole.
Must. Resist. Cream filled doughnut. Joke.
Health Care is a bizarre issue in that the far left and huge corporations both want the government to shell out for it. As such, I’d bet money that the US will see a system comparable to Canada’s or the UK’s within ten years. I’d give odds that we’ll see it within 20.
It’s just too popular not to happen.
Easy as pie.
Legislate a corporate windfall for the insurance industry by expanding tax credits, etc. so that anyone can purchase adequate health insurance.
Set the insurance industry to negotiating with the pharmacy industry, mano a mano.
No matter who wins, tax the living shit out of them.
From treasury to private sector and back again, bada boom bada bing, bada bam.
Waaaay too simple. You’ve got to have some mechanism whereby paperwork has to be filled out in triplicate, filed, buried in peat moss, and finally recycled into toilet paper. Also, there needs to be lots of surly government employees who don’t give a shit for tax payers to deal with, every time they want to do something simple. Work all those out and then get back to us.
Ok, I’ve been out of the loop on American health care for a decade or so. What’s the doughnut hole?
The way the Part D (prescription drug) plan was designed is that you have coverage for your drugs up until you spend a certain amount. Then the coverage goes away and you have to pay 100% of the cost up until yet another certain amount. After that point, the plan kicks back in.
So the plan just sort of abandons you when things get bad, and then sneaks back in when things get really really bad. I believe the point at which it kicks back in is something like after you’ve paid $3850 out of pocket for the year.
My understanding: under present law, the health insurance companies are pretty much immune from lawsuits. They don’t want to be sued every time they deny some fradulent claim, so they got legal protection against any suit at all. They can basically deny anything they want, and there’s no recourse.
Nonetheless, the present system has TONS of lawyers and huge costs for doctors to insure themselves and defend themselves against malpractice suits that are often frivilous.
I don’t thionk anybody got my drift: what I am asking: the government now inserts itself as a third-party (between you and the drug mfg.). The goverment negotiates the price and quality level of the drugs YOU are allowed to buy/use. Now, the system breaks down-you are given an UNDER-STREGTH medicine 9chemotherapy)-the result of which, your cancer is not arrested, and you face early death: WHO is LIABLE?
This ought to provide TONS of work for lawyers!
Do you ever post from a perspective that isn’t MASSIVE PANIC??!?!!!
-Joe
The government already decides the quality level of the drugs you are allowed to buy/use. (The FDA.)
The government already chooses what treatments are considered “normal”. (Medicare.) And Medicare’s decisions absolutely affect everyone in the US, not just people on Medicare.
And I don’t know precisely why you seem to have such trouble hitting ( instead of 9, but I really wish you would stop.
I didn’t realize there’s a clause forbidding the government from negotiating prices.
What’s crazy about that is that the Medicare plan provides a discount for drugs while you’re in the donut hole. That means that the plan did include the negotiation of a discount at some point. So essentially, the authors of the plan (ie the Republicans) decided that they could negotiate a discount, but wrote the law so that nobody after them could negotiate pricing. Nifty little bit of grabass politics, that.
I wasn’t aware of that. I know about the Medicare Discount cards that came before this Part D, but not of a specific provision for discounts in the hole.
My husband is on Part D, but we have to spring for the comprehensive plans that offer gap coverage, so I’m definitely ignorant of some of the intricacies of the hole.