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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (381333)	4/29/2008 8:16:54 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574054

Mindmeld, > Well, for example, my company and most companies in America use their bargaining power to represent their employees to get better deals for them with the insurance companies. Try again. Dealing with insurance companies is not the same as directly dealing with pharmaceutical companies. Even when generics are available, insurance companies are under the gun by their customers to get them brand-name medication because, well, they saw the commercials. Plus there is a negative perception of generics that is arguably fostered by Big Pharma. And that doesn't even cover the problem when generics aren't available because the drug maker has the patent. How much should Big Pharma charge in terms of profits for patent exclusivity? Tenchusatsu

To: RetiredNow who wrote (381333)	4/29/2008 8:41:08 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574054

Well, for example, my company and most companies in America use their bargaining power to represent their employees to get better deals for them with the insurance companies. I hope you already knew that. So then what is the difference between our companies doing it for those of us who have company sponsored health care plans vs our gov't doing it on behalf of citizens who don't have company sponsored health care plans? As I have already pointed out about a half dozen times to JF, providers cannot collect enough money from government plans to survive. If a provider, for example, accepts only Medicare, he cannot make a living, and probably cannot even cover fixed operating expenses. Thus, commercial insurance is critical to the process, because without it, there are no profits for providers, thus no incentive for smart people to become physicians, thus the quality of health care declines. You cannot maintain America's level of health care (i.e., the best in the world) if you remove the profit motive from physician's practices, from drug companies (who will not take the huge risks to develop new drugs if they can't have a winner now and then) and from hospitals. This doesn't seem that complicated. I'm not sure why you guys are having trouble with it.