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shawnmmcc
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Medicare/medicaid - excellent topic about something that is seriously broken. How to fix.
Pass a simple tiered system. Children and preventative care get first priority. All other care is prorated on cost/benefit and responsibility criteria. Seperate it into a "health care tax", similiar to what we have now as part of our payroll tax system.
If you don't take in enough to cover it, start pulling benefits. For example, if you were alchoholic and you need a liver transplant, tough. The angioplasty for a forty year old gets priority over one for an eighty year old. Major b*tch fest over how to prioritize, what gets cut, etc.
However, not enough money, things are automatically cut. Period. American taxpayers learn there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Let the tax rate for health care be set via referendum. Of course nobody is going to want this - but I can dream, can't I?
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Oerdin
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of Internet Music.
Sep 2001
time: 21:33
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One of the big problems with medicare is that only the sickest people get dumped on to it. If you're healthy then the private insurers pick you up but once you get sick with a cronic illness they find every excuse to dump people on to medicare to improve their profit margin. We need to spread the costs and risks out more in order to lower per unit prices. Universal health insurance is the way to do that while allowing privately owned hospitals to continue to provide the actual care.
Next drug companies have rigged to system to insure sky high drug prices. Every other 1st world country buys in bulk and demands bulk discounts on drugs. We don't plus it is currently illegal for medicare to comparision shop for cheaper drug prices on the open market. That's just obsurd and it is no wonder drug prices are soaring. If Walmart can comparision shop for lower prices and demand bulk discounts then the government should too.
Lastly we need patent reform. Currently drug companies can make a series of extremely minor changes (like changing dosage or binding agents) and thus continually claim to have created a new innovation deserving of yet another patent. This tact keeps drugs free of compeition for 20-40 years instead of the 10-20 year intended by the law. The law needs to be changed so that any "innovations" must be substantial and ground breaking in nature or else the original patient experation date applies. Also we should allow third parties to apply for patients on different delivery methods (binding agents, buffers, etc) as this will force companies to rush out and register minor patients right away in order to keep the compeitors away instead of dragging it out for decades in hopes of prolonging the competition free period.
These changes will still protect patient holders but it will also give consumers a fairer shake. It will result in everyone being covered but with per unit costs actualy going down and drug prices being halved almost over night. This has been adopted in Europe and the industrialized parts of Asia and drug companies are still very profitable but they aren't obscenely, ungodly profitable like they are in the US where the system has been rigged against consumers.
Last edited by Oerdin on 02-04-2005 at 21:37
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shawnmmcc
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Lack of quality stocks is what I was referencing via commodity versus investment pricing. That produces the perfect recipe for a bubble. Right now we don't have enough quality stocks, looking at the price to earnings ratio and how it has been climbing again (until the petroleum price shocks of the last several months).
Oerdin, everything you discussed will help with health care, but there is also the problem, as one book put it, Private Choices - Public Consequences. We do not have accountability in the current system for bad personal choices, and let those who make those choices force up the price for everyone.
Look at Mickey Mantle and his liver transplant. The entire cost should have been borne by him, as his behavior caused him to need it. Plus he should have gone to the back of the list, behind all of those people needing the transplant due to factors beyond their control. There are many diseases, etc. with those characteristics. Add in that modern medicine is adding years onto our lifespans due to modern drugs and medical procedures. All of this costs money, and I still argue that US voters are spoiled brats, i.e. they want a first world health care system at bargain basement prices.
Make voters approve a tax on universal health care, with a list of procedures, etc. that will be covered at various levels. That way the voters need to make a decision, and we won't have either Republicans claiming let the private sector do it while poor children get ignored, nor will you have Democrats pushing for the benefit without paying for it - but hey, wasn't that the Repubs that did that with the new drug benefit? 
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Oerdin
Next drug companies have rigged to system to insure sky high drug prices. Every other 1st world country buys in bulk and demands bulk discounts on drugs. We don't plus it is currently illegal for medicare to comparision shop for cheaper drug prices on the open market. That's just obsurd and it is no wonder drug prices are soaring. If Walmart can comparision shop for lower prices and demand bulk discounts then the government should too.
Lastly we need patient reform. Currently drug companies can make a series of extremely minor changes (like changing dosage or binding agents) and thus continually claim to have created a new innovation deserving of yet another patient. This tact keeps drug free of compeition for 20-40 years instead of the 10-20 year intended by the law. The law needs to be changed so that any "innovations" must be substantion and ground breaking in nature or else the original patient experation date applies. Also we should allow third parties to apply for patients on different delivery methods (binding agents, buffers, etc) as this will force companies to rush out and register minor patients right away in order to keep the compeitors away instead of dragging it out for decades in hopes of prolonging hte competition free period.
These changes will still protect patient holders but it will also give consumers a fairer shack. It will result in everyone being covered but with per unit costs actualy going down and drug prices being halved almost over night. This has been adopted in Europe and the Industrialized parts of Asia and drug companies are still very profitable but they aren't obscenely, ungodly profitable like they are in the US where the system has been rigged against consumers. |
Huh? The new patents don't cover the basic drug, just the new delivery system or whatever. They don't extend patent coverage, per se.
There has been patent reform that will lesson a form of abuse you did not discuss: delay in issuing patents. Until recently, patent term extended 17 years from issuance. Drug patents could be divided during prosecution a series of patent applications that might issues years apart, essentially extending the monopoly period for far longer than 17 years. The reform that took place was to make all patents expire 20 years from their filing dates. But this rule applied only to patent applications filed after a certain date. By now, most drug patent applications fall under the new rule.
There was another rule imposed by the out-of-control courts that Congress and even the president said he would address. This rule prevented generic drug companies from seeking FDA approval of their drugs until after the patent expired. Since the FDA approval can take a lot of time, this essentially added a court created patent term extension to drug patents.
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shawnmmcc
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Absolutely - as long as the AMT stays as is. However, unfunded partial dismantling of the system, i.e. private accounts sucking money out of the current system, I do not support. I also support eliminating the salary cap on Social Security.
However, and to make it clear, ownership of personal accounts has nothing to do with Social Security. That is a backdoor attempt to destroy credibility in the system. It is an insurance system, self-funded, and it has been from the start. What I would support is genuine, business level accounting by the US Government, a genuine balanced budget except when an Act of War has been declared, or when a recession as defined by the Federal Reserve has occurred? Yes, with a 2/3 supermajority subject to Pesidential veto necessary to override.
I said Ned makes good posts when you stay away from certain topics.
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:33
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quote:
Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Absolutely - as long as the AMT stays as is. However, unfunded partial dismantling of the system, i.e. private accounts sucking money out of the current system, I do not support. I also support eliminating the salary cap on Social Security.
However, and to make it clear, ownership of personal accounts has nothing to do with Social Security. That is a backdoor attempt to destroy credibility in the system. It is an insurance system, self-funded, and it has been from the start. What I would support is genuine, business level accounting by the US Government, a genuine balanced budget except when an Act of War has been declared, or when a recession as defined by the Federal Reserve has occurred? Yes, with a 2/3 supermajority subject to Pesidential veto necessary to override.
I said Ned makes good posts when you stay away from certain topics. |
Well, as far as I know, what Bush is proposing is what Democrats say they would accept, adding private accounts to the current system.
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02-04-2005 11:17
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