Well, since the pharmaceutical companies butter my bread, I figure I ought to chime in here. ;-) As I have gotten people bent before, please accept my apologies if anything comes across as being offensive, pompous or arrogant. I don't really mean you(MSI) when I say you--I mean the average consumer. And last before I start this rant, this is a political discussion, so please take this with a grain of salt. Cheers.
First, those drugs don't just jump out of some happy place called the NIH. The NIH funds the best basic research on the planet at universities and companies all across the planet, but you the taxpayer still have to wait 15-20 years and see 99.99% of the drugs fail from the time an idea is formulated to the time you get your safe, effective, and novel drug.
Don't like spending 200-800 million dollars and 5-10 years in clinical trials for a 10% success rate? Tell the FDA you'd like to put what you want in your body.(after you did a thorough google search, of course<ggg>) Don't like Schering Plough making money? Stop telling your doctor to write you a prescription for Clarinex and go shell out the bucks for Claritin. Get your doctor to prescribe a diuretic instead of your fancy beta blocker. Feeling depressed? Go see a shrink and get over yourself.
It's a big mess and it's not all drugs, follow the money:
Had a baby lately? 20K-30K when you add in all the doctor visits and the hospital bill. Total Healthcare Employee Time(THET): 2-3 man weeks.
Had basic surgery lately? 10-15K THET: 1 man week.
Had an MRI? 1-3K THET: 1 day.
Ultrasound? $800 total THET: 1 day.
Got HIV?
Year's supply of drugs is about 12-15K. THET? zero(absorbed in the cost).
Babies spitting out babies, drug addicts, severe infectious disease and trauma are probably the major cost on the publicly funded healthcare system, which is what the politicians threaten to cut when the budget gets tight and every nickel and dime is scrutinized. Ask any doc who handles workers comp and medicare what a huge pain in the *** it is.
Meanwhile the average joe on insurance is paying $500 bucks for that pair of Gucci frames for his glasses, popping his beta-blockers, nexium, flonase, and zoloft, which his doctor happily prescribed along with a dose of oxycontin for that back problem. . The more crap he takes the more he needs to see that doctor, because he feels better...(at $100 bucks for an office visit) To get the script and all the patient had to do was ask. All paid for out of his insurance dollar.
Got a little blockage in your artery? Time for a bypass. Snoring a little too loud? How about somebody shoots a laser up your nose, insurance is buying,, so why not? "You'll feel better when I'm done" says the doc who's making an extra 10K on the deal.
Everybody in the system is fattening the bottom line, from bottom to top. Doctors are overtreating drkoop.com , overprescribing, my.webmd.com and Hospitals are overcharging because they have to treat the indigent. consumersunion.org
Insurance companies are using the ruse of "fear of being sued" when they know that the more they expand the costs the bigger their bottom line becomes. Politicians know that the instant they cut healthcare the elderly will squeal, and as the newer more expensive treatments that are proven to be effective they simply become the standard of care.
Full disclosure is nice, but I gotta tell you--- just like you've experienced, many doctors are raking in the money by making things more complicated than they really are and making you more responsible for your treatment options. It's one thing to have the information available, it's quite another to be able to understand it. My advice to anyone looking for care is to dig up the oldest fart of a doctor you can find. He'll have ethics and has already paid off his house, and got tired of driving that Porshe Boxter. ;-) Residents at any of the wonderful med schools are a Godsend too. If you haven't done that yet, compare to your private practice guy and you'll get a pretty vivid contrast to what conflict of interest is.
And finally, I leave with a last question: Suppose we did away with basic health insurance and let people shop around for care and drugs. What would happen to doctor costs? To drug costs?
Voodoo |
