Medicare for all???

Me too yet the right side fringe says its free stuff! If they would only be honest about it! But like the knee jerk left they just cant.

Like tulsi I think we should keep private sector Healthcare for the richer among us but have single payer for the 90 percent as an option. That is reasonable imo.

 

If you do that then wind up with two entirely different healthcare systems, one for the wealthy have's and one for the poor have nots. Guess which one all the really skilled doctors and nurses will gravitate to???As far as I know they wealthy pay into Medicare right now just like all we peons do.

 

Looks to me like obese snowflakes eating twinkies in mommy and daddy's basement are taking their toll. Add to that the opioids Democrats bring in through their open southern border and the numbers are very misleading.

A major component of cost are drugs. The US doesn't tell companies how much they are allowed to charge for a given drug. Other countries do. Thus, the American patient is subsidizing the pharma costs of other countries. Since most of the cost associated with pharmaceuticals is in the development, testing and clinical trials, we have to force other countries to pay their fair share by law. Drug companies should still be allowed to charge whatever they like in the US, but as long as it is less than or equal to their charges in other countries. The freeloaders will either die or pay up.

 

Diabetics are required to take insulin shots to maintain their life.It was discovered in the 1920's by a Canadian doctor so there are no research and development costs to any current manufacturers yet they jack up the price every chance they get.

 

You don't think right wing, corporate think tanks like Cato or Heartland or Heritage massage hidden stats? How about Forbes?

I actually posted a graph from Bloomberg. Do you think they are making up facts for the government?

 

Or you could have regulation of big pharma and drug companies and an actual insurance plan for drugs.

Right? Or is that impossible. Actually, Trump has been making noises about getting generic drugs from here because they are so expensive and the patent process so ridiculous down there.

I hope the government refuses after how Trump has treated his allies and friends.

 

Just look at the sprawling urban campus office environments many of our health insurers have, which spell out their obscene profits.

 

Americans pay for most of the research and development costs of new medical treatments and drug discoveries. That is why healthcare is so much more expensive here.

A government takeover of healthcare would not make American healthcare less expensive. It would only add a layer of bureaucratic cost to the already high price tag.

We could lower costs if other countries had to split the R&D with us. Obviously, we're going to continue to do research and development with or without other countries paying their share. Americans are good about providing welfare....to other countries.

 

Call it "Ain't Going To Happen Care". Even AOC is trying to let the Socialists down softly, saying that a Public Option is the best that Sanders could realistically get pushed through Congress.

 

They are already heavily regulated. The FDA adds a tremendous amount of cost to drugs.
You can look at any drug company and analyze costs. Production costs are insignificant relative to development related costs. Developing new drugs will either be worthwhile or there would be no investment. The US is responsible for alot of the advances in medicine. That wouldn't happen if drug companies were not allowed to make a profit. The right answer is for them to be able to make their business worthwhile by spreading costs across their entire base of customers, not just Americans.

I have an insurance plan for drugs. The selection of the correct plan for every individual varies based on the drugs they are taking. Different plans offer payment for different drugs without a copay.

That this problem has been around as long as it has with no solution in sight short of Trump trying to force a solution by making it possible for people to source drugs from Mexico or Canada, is evidence enough that there are mountainous obstacles. Trump's MO is to propose something extreme to get people talking.

 

Good post! Thought provoking anyway. I'm going to do some reading on how regulated they are and whether the prices they charge are reasonable in relation to R&D just for my own interest.

I still think a good government insurance plan could regulate costs and smooth out bumps in the development process for drug companies but unlike user-pay, universal insurance for medical care which I know works in other countries, in terms of drug medication I am just not sure if government intervention would stifle research especially in the US. I just think that plans like Obamacare gave to much power to dictate costs and terms to insurance and drug companies. The US can do better.

We are still working on an insurance plan for drugs here but the government enforces generics into the market in an attempt to control costs.

 

Yeah, anything Sanders or AOC could come up with will be a fight getting through congress depending on what happens in the senate in November.

I will be interesting to see how they frame the argument once the campaign really gets going and they have to fight off Trump's scare tactics about turning America into a socialist country.

It's gonna get nasty if Bernie is the candidate - well for any Democratic candidate but Bernie will have all the years of Red scare and fighting the communist scourge as baggage to deal with and you know Trump can and will use that to full advantage.

Democratic socialist ideas are pretty normal for other countries but the US is certainly not going to go down that road easily.

 

Why are drugs which have been around over 100 years quadrupling in price???

 

The answer is simple unmitigated capitalist greed.

 

How has he treated our allies and friends? NATO was formed to protect Western Europe from the USSR. The US has footed most of the bill despite the fact that all parties were supposed to contribute a certain % of GDP to support their own defense. He held them to their agreement. Is that bad? While we were footing the bill for Germany's defense, they were working with Putin to build a gas pipeline. Is that good? Trump simply demands reciprocity, nothing more, nothing less. Some enemies of the US have wanted us to pay a price for being the sole Super Power in the world after the demise of the USSR and paved the way for China to step in to compete. Thankfully, Trump wants no part of that and reversed the undermining of our defense. That isn't treating friends and allies poorly. That's protecting Americans.

 

He JUST jacked up the import tariffs on imported Airbus aircraft from !0% to 15%.

 

He has treated his allies and friends miserably hurting the economies of friend and foe alike with sanctions and tariffs on.....well pretty much everyone.

NATO was formed as a way to project American military and financial power into Europe after the war and the US has been by far the largest beneficiary of that power. It has allowed America to maintain economic hegemony over Western Europe and the Atlantic consensus to be the ruling credo of the European monetary and industrial expansion since the war.

And it was created largely to create an manufactured enemy in the former WWII ally, the Soviet Union which was being set up as the new enemy even before the war ended because Britain and America simply could not entertain competition with a rival economic model that it loathed and refused to come to terms with.

Stalin in his paranoia was acting out of concern that America would betray him after the war because of the refusal to come to a comprehensive agreement on the new world order and arms reduction and saw American nuclear posturing as a huge threat to Russia's existence. Don't forget that the Soviet's had just lost 27 million people beating back the Nazi beast. The last thing Stalin wanted was another hostile regime in Germany from where he had been attacked twice in 40 years.

NATO was Stalin's nightmare come to life and has been the principle threat America has posed to Russia ever since.

You can bring that forward to the fall of the Soviet Union when NATO officially should have become obsolete. In fact, James Baker III promised Gorbachev that if he let the wall fall, NATO would not move one inch past the German border.

Now Russia is completely surrounded by American military bases and American military power acting under the umbrella of NATO.

If Europe shook of the projection of American power and came to accommodation and military agreement with Russia, it would be much better off.

Why should NATO pay to project American military power and destabilize the entire Eastern part of the continent?

As for the way Trump has treated Canada in economic negotiations? A disgrace among allies.

 

Yes, he should call it the I'm blowing rainbows out of my ass healthcare plan.

 

It is up to the govt if they create a decent single payer . So the big boys of insurance must not be allowed to write single payer nor invited to the table.

The private sector companies would be small in comparison to single payer and should lose their power. Only a few Americans would be customers of for profit wall street insurance.

 

No, they are not massaging stats. If they were massaging their own financial information they could go to prison. They are simply reporting the stats given to them by other entities, especially governments who do massage stats.

 

I agree the drug prices are off the wall and something needs to be done which I might add, President Trump has mentioned many times to Mrs Pelosi and Mr McConnell but their lobbyists keep getting in the way.

As for the Docs, keep them out of the government's hands.

 

You might not have one (yet). People who can't afford it do.

Unless you're already in a socialized healthcare system like Medicare or veteran health-care.... everybody else has a problem. Because even though Obamacare slowed down the increase in healthcare costs, it was not designed to stop them altogether. And though it will take longer than it would have otherwise, the tendency has not stopped. And it will also eventually affect those who think they are safe in their socialized healthcare... screw everybody else....

 

Obamacare significantly increased the cost of health coverage. I'm on Medicare and it is noticeably worse than all of the private insurers that covered me for decades and not any less costly.

 

Baloney Medicare pays 80% of all bills deemed reasonable and market appropriate to your geographic area, and if you're retired you pay $144.60 per month.

 

BC has a smart forward Looking government.

Here in the USA the swamp is filled with carpetbaggers filled by the Top 1 %