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

To: Lane3 who wrote (41374)	3/9/2017 8:33:06 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

>> I think the idea is worth further examination. Yes. I liked the idea of the "donut hole" in Medicare Part D and I believe it was effective. People have to have skin in the game to the extent they can or you're not going to have cost containment. Before the donut hole was removed Part D was extremely well controlled in expenditures coming in on average 40% under budget during those years. Part D last year came in at 97% of budget. It is projected to run roughly 100% of budget through 2025; if it does that it will be something. I believe the phaseout of the donut hole ends around 2021 or something like that. So, you can't really ATTRIBUTE its excellent budgetary results to the donut hole, but it is at least evidence that it makes a difference when intuitively it would. The counter-argument is that some people just can't afford to pay any part of their drug costs. There is no doubt that it was important in creating awareness of generics and that may have contributed to the rather substantial early success. Anyway, I think it could be a model for government sponsored health care systems in the future. The noise about giving government the right to "negotiate" for drug prices is just nonsense; private insurance companies have been able to put together cost-effective formularies that seem to working well for the most part.