Well, I’m less then impressed with that number when I think that my wife’s retinal surgery was $57k, and did not involve an overnight stay in the hospital. I believe that states with tort reform did not see major decreases in healthcare costs. I’m not saying that I agree with the current system - medicine is not perfect, and we shouldn’t pretend it is and sue if it comes out wrong. But this problem is orthogonal to the bigger one.
I find the juxtaposition of these two quotes interesting.
It does. Interestingly enough, thalidomide was not used in the US, which does not have UHC, but was used in the UK, which does.
Regards,
Shodan
This has nothing to do with UHC. WillMagic was arguing for, as best as I could tell, no FDA testing or regulation of drugs. Thalidomide, which the FDA wisely kept off the market, was widely used in other countries, such as the UK, to the detriment of those who took it. Therefore, it is a common example of why keeping the FDA around might be a reasonable precaution.
The FDA kills as many people as it saves.
Don’t believe me?
Take the example of beta-blockers. The FDA finally permitted the sale of timolol, a beta-blocker, in 1981. It had been prescribed by doctors for ten years previously, and studies estimated that the drug would have saved 7,000-10,000 lives every year in the U.S. So in keeping this drug off the market the FDA is at least somewhat responsible for those 70-100K unnecessary deaths.
For people with life-threatening diseases, the FDA’s caution can kill. In the end, why should you be prevented from taking a drug that your doctor thinks will help you? You own your body, not the government.
That’s not to say I’m against drug testing and accreditation. I just don’t see a reason why it can’t be provided by the free market…think like Consumer Reports for healthcare.
No, that’s a straw man.
Actually, Voyager was arguing in favor of greater government regulation of drugs as part of UHC, and offered thalidomide as a example of a drug that caused damage because there was insufficient government regulation. However, the UK has implemented the option that he recommends - UHC - and suffered from the damage, and the US, which did not, did not so suffer.
The notion that conservatives want to abolish the FDA as an alternative to UHC is the fallacy of the excluded middle. “Let’s not stifle innovation with excessive regulation from UHC” is not the same thing as “let’s abolish the FDA”.
Regards,
Shodan
WillMagic, if I recall correctly, you’re the guy referenced upthread who believes anybody should be able to practice medicine, regardless of training or licensure. Not so?
Emphasis mine. In Canada (and I’m not implying Canada’s UHC is flawless, of course) the government doesn’t prohibit me from getting laser eye surgery or my stomach stapled if I feel sych treatment would improve my quality of life. They simply don’t pay for it.
So unless you’re implying something else by “health care beyond that which the government provides,” WillMagic, this is an incorrect assumption to make.
Diceman
What did you think of my suggestions, then?
Is it? I’ll believe it if WillMagic tells me I’m misstating his argument, but I don’t think I am.
I think you should go back and reread that exchange between Voyager and WillMagic. Specific, these parts:
No, I don’t. How do you know how many people FDA regulation saves?
Medicine has had a history of attracting charlatans, hucksters, and quacks forever. It’s not as though the FDA was forced on a perfectly functioning system - there was a market failure. If you want to make a case that quality of healthcare would improve in the aggregate without FDA regulation, I’ll listen. But so far I’ve only heard libertarian theology.
Two different things. No health care system is going to pay for everything all the time - if nothing else, that encourages fraud. I was questioning that government people would be more hard-ass than private people. In fact, this would be a good thing to outsource back to the insurance companies who do it now. I was objecting to the idea that private companies are more willing to shell out than the government - not in my experience!
The second point concerned policy. If cutting administrative costs are not enough, we are going to have to ration health care. We do it now by the economic level of the patient and insurance policies. We might decide that there are certain treatments not worth paying for. This has nothing to do with the first point.
The contention was that regulation of new drugs was wasteful. I don’t see that having anything to do with UHC. It’s not like the European countries who approved thalodmide didn’t have FDA like entities - we got lucky thanks to one woman in the FDA who got suspicious and stopped it. Maybe I’m missing how this is relevant.
No I wasn’t. I was just defending government regulation of drugs as it now stands. How to tradeoff the safety of the drug supply versus the need to get new drugs out sooner is not easy. I’m not in favor of increasing regulation in particular. Whatever policy gets adopted, there will be cases where in hindsight it was wrong.
I haven’t noticed anyone, including WillMagic advocate this. it seems to me that the same mindset that is so suspicious of government, and opposes UHC for that reason, also opposes the FDA. I’ve not noticed other conservatives, in this thread at least, take that position.
In a word, no. Although I admit I am not typical in terms of my health care. I have never dealt with an HMO or a health insurance company.
I have a question for all the people who advocate a user-pay based system. What are the advantages of this system to the average person? To me it would seem that drug prices would go up, because less people could afford the current prices, and the demand is fairly inelastic.
Also, do you guys feel the same way about other types of insurance (ie. car, home)?
These arguments are really making me laugh.
gitfiddle, if you want UHC in the US don’t waste your time trying to convert self-styled Conservatives on some website; anyone who could so dead set against this idea, a free and equal health care system for all, is probably either a right-wing free market idealist or well covered themselves so it won’t be them who will be dying if it doesn’t happen.
Go out and preach to the ones who fall through the cracks, the overlooked voters; unite the poor, convince the working poor, the lower middle class, the young, the elderly, and the new citizens. IMHO, if Americans themselves aren’t willing to set this system up, then you don’t deserve to have one.
Just like if Canada is not willing to defend their own system they don’t deserve it either. Tommy Douglas be damned!
If you could get these people to vote in number and in a block, and you could educate them to vote for politicians who would support issues important to them (as opposed to voting for the MTV sax player or for the one against gay marriage), and you could educate them to vote out politicians who don’t follow through, then you might have a chance at getting this implemented.
Good luck.
Except for one thing…whats the actual percentage of folks who ‘fall through the cracks’ and have no insurance at all? 10% of the voting public? Less? More? I can’t believe its more than that but even if it were, say, 20%, you are still not talking about a vast horde of folks out there…even assuming you could get them to vote as a block.
As you say though…good luck.
-XT
Actually, I think the people to preach to are the managers of large businesses who are getting screwed by the current system. We have the GMs and the like who have gotten hurt by it, are trying to cut back, and are facing bad press and unhappy workers. We’ve got WalMart who is increasing health care under severe public pressure. If these guys, and their lobbyists, feel that a UHC system could let them compete better with either foreign companies or the small stores that don’t feel the pressure to provide benefits, UHC is far more likely to happen than if a bunch of Democratic voters write letters. If we could get the perception going that UHC is business positive, we’ll have a chance.
It may not be small business positive, actually, but let’s let the imbalance of power in the US do something useful for once.
First off, I have to admit that I probably shouldn’t have participated in this thread, as I don’t consider myself a conservative - rather, an anarcho-capitalist.
** Sal Ammoniac **, Yes. I’m against any sort of laws prohibiting someone from practicing medicine. Those cartelization laws serve the doctors and not the consumers, by restricting supply and pushing up the price of health care. Again,
Now, this statement does beg a number of questions, I do realize. Many of you I’m sure have images of Dr. Nick not knowing the difference between flammable and inflammable.
However, first realize that I didn’t say anything about getting rid of liability or malpractice suits. If a doctor harms you or performs malpractice then you have every right to sue him into oblivion.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that some people will use the bad doctors and get hurt.”
Well, no. But would you go to a doctor who consistently gets sued? Of course not. Who would? So doctors have a huge incentive not to hurt their patients. Not only are they liable for damages, but they will go out of business, as no one will patronize a bad doctor.
“But what about having that FDA-approval? I feel comfortable when I see that label, and it keeps me from having to do too much research.”
Very true. Many people have the same reaction. But I contend that consumer protection services can be offered more efficiently by the market. Consumers demand prior evaluation of healthcare services, so there would be plenty of money to be made supplying it, by creating a Consumer Reports for healthcare. There would be competition between the rating companies, so, again, huge incentives for their recommendations to be correct, because if they recommend a bad doctor or a dangerous medicine they go out of business. Competition at work.
And the thing about this system is, there are no situations where people die because they aren’t able to acquire unapproved drugs, like the situation I mentioned with beta-blockers earlier.
In response to ** Do not taunt **:
Nope. Tell me. I do know that it killed 100,000 people in ten years based on prohibiting the sale of beta-blockers.
I’ve addressed what I call the “Dr. Nick” objection above. But here’s another tidbit about FDA regulation.
In the status quo there is one marker that you need on your product - FDA-approval. Once you get it you are in the clear. With no other competing agencies evaluating and rating your product, there’s a huge incentive to meet the FDA requirements but little incentive to go any further.
So what you have in regard to health care and medicine is a system where the quality of all health care converges at the bar the FDA sets, and very little healthcare goes above it. Why? It doesn’t make any sense. If you are an entrepreneur, why would you spend X amount of money to make your product better/safer when both your product and your cheaper competitor’s have the same little label and the same FDA-approval? It’s pointless!
With competing rating systems, entrepreneurs are incentivized to produce the best product they can, as they aren’t brought down by the monopoly rating system.
FDA regulation:
- disincentivizes innovation in health care.
- disincentivizes the creation of new medicines that could save lives.
- sometimes prevents people from taking drugs that could save their lives.
- in doing these things, leads to health care costing more and helping fewer.
Hi WillMagic. This may seem like nitpicking but I have three questions about this statement which I’d appreciate your help with.
First of all, do you have a cite for your claim that 100,000 people died because the FDA prohibited the sale of beta-blockers? I’d be interested to see how that number was derived. Secondly, do you know why the FDA prohibited the sale of beta-blockers? Perhaps they had a good reason. I tried googling but couldn’t find anything. Thirdly, and most importantly, if you don’t know how many lives have been saved due to FDA policy, what basis do you have for the claim that “The FDA kills as many people as it saves.” For all you know, FDA policy could have saved tens of millions of lives.
Nor mine, and that was not what I was advocating.
One disadvantage of taxpayer-funded UHC would be, in my opinion, a further disconnect between the cost of health care and demand for it. Taxes (largely due to withholding) are even more subject to the illusion of “free money” than employer-paid health care. ISTM that there would be even more pressure on the government to fund everything and anything, and a corresponding pressure for the government to regulate everything and anything to hold down costs.
If I thought that the government was prepared to set hard limits on spending, and simply shrug their shoulders at arguments that therefore people were dying as a result, I would be much more open to the taxpayer funding 100% of US health care instead of 47%. But in a land where the government will mandate a 48 hour stay for normal obstetric deliveries, with no medical reason for it besides that it is popular, I am not so sure.
Entirely true. And, for the reasons stated above, and because governments rely on being re-elected, they are far more reluctant than a faceless insurance bureaucrat to make decisions that are unpopular but make economic sense.
Point taken. I am not a strict libertarian, which I think WillMagic is, although I have heard plausible arguments in favor of a FDA that functions sort of like Underwriter’s Laboratory.
But I think part of the point was that the government was going to simply try to set drug prices by fiat, and I do think that would tend to stifle innovation, which is driven mostly by the desire to make a buck. That’s the kind of regulation I was thinking about. But a lot of the increase in health care costs is on stuff that is only marginally useful in terms of increasing life span.
In my view, governments are even more likely to think of themselves as being above the marketplace than private corporations. And I would like to see increased market pressure to hold down costs in health care. I thought health care spending accounts were one way to do this. But making the government your insurance company is not tending in that direction - just the opposite.
Regards,
Shodan