Half of all Health Care dollars are wasted?

This forum is for discussions on the noteworthy events, people, places, and circumstances of both the past and the present (note: pop culture etc... is on the back porch).
Greg
Posts: 8486
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:15 pm

Re: Half of all Health Care dollars are wasted?

Post by Greg »

That last one, its time has come.

Blegs and GoFundMe are now becoming mainstream. And Americans are very (well except for the liberals) very charitable people.
Maybe we're just jaded, but your villainy is not particularly impressive. -Ennesby

If you know what you're doing, you're not learning anything. -Unknown
Sanity is the process by which you continually adjust your beliefs so they are predictively sound. -esr
User avatar
Weetabix
Posts: 6106
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:04 pm

Re: Half of all Health Care dollars are wasted?

Post by Weetabix »

Jered wrote:
- reel in the FDA's regulated monopolies,
I'm not sure how we'd do that. Drugs and medicines are expensive to develop and pharmaceutical companies need a way to pay for the failures of their drugs. That also infringes on the US Constitution's authority of Congress to grant patents. We definitely need to figure out a way of offsetting the costs of medical treatments and medical devices, though.
I was thinking of the case of the woman stung by a scorpion in AZ or NM where her anti-venom cost $10,000, but if she'd been stung right across the border, the same medicine would have cost $400. But I don't know if the medicine had a patent that the pharm companies in Mexico were violating.

I understand the need for patents, but as I understand it, there are a lot of drugs that work that you just can't get here for a reasonable price. My understanding was that that was due to the FDA's working with the big pharm companies' desires to keep the less expensive stuff out. It's not like we've ever seen the federal government subsidize a pet industry, right? :roll:
Note to self: start reading sig lines. They're actually quite amusing. :D
User avatar
Vonz90
Posts: 4731
Joined: Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:05 pm

Re: Half of all Health Care dollars are wasted?

Post by Vonz90 »

Weetabix wrote:
Jered wrote:
- reel in the FDA's regulated monopolies,
I'm not sure how we'd do that. Drugs and medicines are expensive to develop and pharmaceutical companies need a way to pay for the failures of their drugs. That also infringes on the US Constitution's authority of Congress to grant patents. We definitely need to figure out a way of offsetting the costs of medical treatments and medical devices, though.
I was thinking of the case of the woman stung by a scorpion in AZ or NM where her anti-venom cost $10,000, but if she'd been stung right across the border, the same medicine would have cost $400. But I don't know if the medicine had a patent that the pharm companies in Mexico were violating.

I understand the need for patents, but as I understand it, there are a lot of drugs that work that you just can't get here for a reasonable price. My understanding was that that was due to the FDA's working with the big pharm companies' desires to keep the less expensive stuff out. It's not like we've ever seen the federal government subsidize a pet industry, right? :roll:


There are a lot of countries that have price controls on drugs, which is good in the short term but basically means absolutely no inovation since you could never recoup the research and development costs.

On the flip side there are a lot of stupid things we do with our approval process that drives the cost through the roof. Add in featherbeding in various forms and that drives it higher for some products - it is just bad going either way.
User avatar
Jered
Posts: 7859
Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2008 1:30 am

Re: Half of all Health Care dollars are wasted?

Post by Jered »

Weetabix wrote: I was thinking of the case of the woman stung by a scorpion in AZ or NM where her anti-venom cost $10,000, but if she'd been stung right across the border, the same medicine would have cost $400. But I don't know if the medicine had a patent that the pharm companies in Mexico were violating.
That's this story.
An Arizona woman says she's still reeling from a scorpion sting she suffered last year after she was billed $83,046 for an anti-venom drug that costs just $100 per dose in Mexico.
Anascorp, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year, is sold by distributors to Arizona hospitals for about $3,780 per dose, the Arizona Republic reported.
This is a 2012 story. That means the drug was approved in 2011, so, it was probably still under a patent. I'm not sure if Mexico has price controls or not. So, it could mean that the drug available in Mexico was a knockoff, it was stolen, or Mexico has price controls. It's probably something fairly low risk to steal...
I understand the need for patents, but as I understand it, there are a lot of drugs that work that you just can't get here for a reasonable price. My understanding was that that was due to the FDA's working with the big pharm companies' desires to keep the less expensive stuff out. It's not like we've ever seen the federal government subsidize a pet industry, right? :roll:
It might also be due to how the US market works because we have a lot of buyers which gives the drug companies more power.

If hospitals and pharmacies wanted to increase their power, they could create an organization that studies the effectiveness of drugs and use that as a negotiating tool in order to lower prices.

Vonz90 wrote: There are a lot of countries that have price controls on drugs, which is good in the short term but basically means absolutely no inovation since you could never recoup the research and development costs.
Hmm.

*thinks for a bit*

That might actually be a legitimate area for US government involvement. There actually is a US Court of International Trade. Why not make it an unfair trade practice for a country to require a US based company to charge a particular price for a product? If a country is found to engage in an unfair trade practice, we could sanction that country, and bar that country's goods from the US market and disallow travel of that country's nationals to the US. The US is the world's largest market. In any trade deal, we have the leverage because we have the gold, and, "He who has the gold makes the rules."


On the flip side there are a lot of stupid things we do with our approval process that drives the cost through the roof. Add in featherbeding in various forms and that drives it higher for some products - it is just bad going either way.
Yep. The institutional culture of the FDA is inclined toward the "don't approve drugs" side of the house.
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
Post Reply