Help find an alternative to the old socialist healthcare system before its too late!

[The T]

Funny the military gets mentioned.

I can't think of a more socialist institution in this country. Or perhaps the world.

And what's your point? Fact remains that maintaining the Military is mandated. Can't escape that...unless the Constitution is Amended to reflect it. And good luck in that endeavour.

 

[mdn2000]

Funny the military gets mentioned.

I can't think of a more socialist institution in this country. Or perhaps the world.

Thats a broad definition of socialism.

 

[geauxtohell]

Funny the military gets mentioned.

I can't think of a more socialist institution in this country. Or perhaps the world.

Yeah. You want to see a good model of socialized medicine? Look at Tricare.

 

[geauxtohell]

Well, that would involve rewriting patent law, which could use a looking at. But in your hacker view of free information, you cut incentive for a company to develop a new drug particularly because they can't recoup the costs.

Which is exactly my point. If left to their own devices, pharmaceutical companies would focus on "lifestyle" drugs, which bring huge profits and ignore anti-virals and chemo drugs which they often lose money on.

Of coruse, you could tighten up the rules on what qualifies as a 'new drug'. Take Prilosec, add a time release and you get Nexium. Same drug, with time release. Prilosec becomes "generic" and Nexium is the new pimped drug with patent protection.

I know what omeprazole is. Thanks.

Markets go where the profit lies. That said, you are ignoring some other factors of a market such as "Self Correction". So the heart medication drugs dry up and so do deaths due to it. Suddenly the market begins to get hot in heart meds as people want to live longer without dying of heart attacks, so the profit goes up in developing drugs for that and since erections put strain on the heart, and there'sa glut of drugs already there, they go down in price and profitability as demand decreases. Damn, the market corrected.

Ah, the magic "free hand of the market" argument. Medicine has never been a purely capitalist venture and it rightfully never will be.

The issue is not that it WILL happen, it just won't happen fast enough for your preference. To which I say suck it up junior.

Don't tell me. I am young and healthy. I don't smoke, and I am not over-weight. Tell the members of your generation with an exploding rate of diabetes (for which cardiovascular complication is the leading cause of death) who are sucking down Big Macs and smoking a pack per day.

You guys whine about the "free market" now. When you are choking to death on the water in your lungs because you have right and left sided heart failure, you sure as shit won't be saying "suck it up". You will be blaming the drug companies in your hypothetical scenario for spending all their R&D money on viagra.

You guys can't have your cake and eat it too. If you haven't been at the mercy of some pathology that requires more thought than how to vasodilate the vasculature of the penis, just wait. Your time will come.

 

[geauxtohell]

Funny the military gets mentioned.

I can't think of a more socialist institution in this country. Or perhaps the world.

And what's your point? Fact remains that maintaining the Military is mandated. Can't escape that...unless the Constitution is Amended to reflect it. And good luck in that endeavour.

What about the healthcare in the military? To include the healthcare provided to dependents.