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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (3444)	12/24/2007 8:51:22 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Its a very good answer. No... it didn't address any of this: It would vastly reduce the cost of marketing/advertising. You watch TV right? How many ads do you see for drugs? It's ridiculous... and shows that the margins are out of the ballpark. Why? Because of government subsidizes of basic research. And in turn the drug companies subsidize the politicians political campaigns. ... The marketplace IS the government. It's organized itself in the most efficient fashion to reduce cost... you should like that. The outlier is the US, which chooses not to participate in the efficient marketplace.

To: TimF who wrote (3444)	12/24/2007 9:22:43 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 42652

I'm very skeptical that the 2nd will happen to any significant extent. I'm skeptical, too, because there's no strong advocate for it so no one is funding the research. But there is definitely opportunity there. The drug approval process could stand some reinvention. And the criteria of the approvers could stand some daylight. I'm reminded of the process for approving the sale of Prilosec over the counter. It was only approved for short term use so the regulators insisted on selling it in two week blister packs. I used to get a three month supply from my insurer loose in a bottle. Afterwards, besides having to pay more for it OTC, I was stuck with enough packing to exhaust a landfill and blisters that required tools to open. So I'd buy several months worth at a time and spend an hour breaking open the blisters and putting the pills in a bottle for easy access. Now, I don't recall what interest group pushed that excessive packaging. Their concern was safety but they just made the pills more expensive and a big hassle. This is just a small example of the machinations that go on in the approval process. Lotsa waste there. (BTW, after a couple of years of annoyance I switched to a different pill, one available by prescription. It's cheaper for me although not for the system and comes without the packaging cost and hassle. Consider that cost to the system of that switch multiplied by all users and it's significant. All because the approvers weren't prepared to acknowledge the long-term use profile of the medication.)