Have You Caught On Yet?

[CowboyTed]

The vast majority of pharmaceutical R&D expenditures are done in the US. Other countries use our drugs and benefit from this and don't have to recoup the R&D costs like American firms do.

It is about 50% an US is decreasing share...

Is there abuse? Yes.

Also, we use the most advanced medical technology on Earth, and that costs.

Everyone in the first world has the same stuff.. Pharma and biotech have massive margins, they sell to everyone and try and get the best price... EU don't have a law to stop them negotiating like in the US, it is the exact opposite...

I have proposed the fix to our costs many times on this forum.

I should be able to pick the phone and call ANY health insurance company in the country, exactly like I can do with home, auto, and life insurance.

There's a reason you can't. Health insurance companies hate competition. It's a simple as that. And they have bribed both parties to keep it that way.

You are right about competition but Health Insurers don't se health providers costs...
Even if the Feds took over the Health Insurers the fundamental problems still exist.. EU have different HEalth insurers for each country and have way lower costs...
This is 'the market will decide' religious experience... Some times the Market doesn't...
IT is the costs of providing that is so high in US and not because they are getting better product/service, US died younger than Europeans by over two years.

When you hear a Republican say they want people to be able to buy insurance "across state lines", that is not the same thing as buying insurance from any company in the entire country.

It's a scam.

Secondly, you are held hostage by your employer-provided health insurance. This is bending the cost curve up.

No argument there...

The reason I called Obamacare a bait-and-switch con is because Obamacare more deeply embedded this situation of being hostage to your employer.

Obama was heavily paid by labor unions to do this, to raise the tax exemption level for their luxury employer health care plans.

If I could buy insurance over the phone myself, I am no longer hostage to my employer.

What's more, I don't lose my insurance if I lose my job.

Obama was left with the position of don't let perfect get in the way of batter...
Obamacare has a load of problems but it is all Obama could get at the time (and he suffered for years in the polls before people backed it).

Even better, I get big discounts if I bundle all my insurance together.

If we could buy health insurance from any company in the country, that would engender fierce competition, and this means lower rates.

Discounts are a sales tactic... It is a method of favourtism... Sounds great but it is effectively bullshit...

Let me point out one thing in the Irish system.
If you offer a insurance plan to a 20 year old (with no health problems, you have to offer at the exact plan at the exact same price to a 50 year old with tons of pre-existing plans... To the customer that is what it is... You pay a small premium if you join after 55 years old.
My health insurance about $150 a month and I am diabetic type 2.. My mother has the same plan and she pays $150 a month. By US standards I have been told it is excellent (i.e. no excess if admitted into hospital and $220 per excess on Prescription Drugs).
When you go to a public hospital they ask would you like to go Public or Private..

 

[AyeCantSeeYou]

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