[Ludi]

"In 2016, when the penalty is fully phased in, it will be $695 for an individual (up to $2,085 per family) or 2.5 percent of household income, whichever is greater. The penalty will increase annually based on the cost of living.

Ordinarily, the penalty would be treated as a tax, and you could be prosecuted for income tax evasion if you didn’t pay it. But the new health law explicitly says that there will be no criminal sanctions for failing to pay the penalty, and no liens or levies on your property,"

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/ ... urance/?hp

[Shaved Monkey]

The real question should be can Americans not afford to have healthcare insurance.
The only losers are Doctors who have to accept to work within a price ceiling the rich who can afford to pay for their own health care needs and don't want to pay for others and the delusional who have been brainwashed into believing Socialism is bad (even when its good for them).
In Australia if I need to go to the doctor its free (bulk billing clinic)
Even if you have no job its free.
There is a waiting list for elective surgery and if you take out private health insurance you can jump the queue.
Your drugs are subsidised as part of the scheme too.

My mum had treatment for cancer for about 5 years
She wasn't insured (she was an old age pensioner)
She went to a private specialist once a month
It cost her $15 a month more than the Medicare rebate, if she went to a public hospital it would be free.
If she was in the US dad would have had to have sold his house to pay for treatment and would now be homeless.

[Lore]

Go figure and yet the Australian dollar is currently one of the strongest currencies in the world.

The U.S. is really looking to return to the third world.

[AgentR11]

Well, if yall didn't learn something from Obama's first couple years in office, I guess you can't be taught. That said; US health care policy is stuck in a perfect storm.

Democrats require massive support from the trial lawyers. Anything that cuts into the total pot that the trial lawyers can access, can not be supported by the Democratic party.

Republicans are equally locked into pharma & individual doctors and their associations. Anything that breaks the total pot available to those groups, can not be supported by the Republican party.

This means, that when pencil eraser tapped the calculator in the Democratic party meetings over a real national health service; they balked, because the pot available for the trial lawyers to access was no where near large enough for them to keep rolling.

To be certain, the Democrats could have chosen to institute a real national health service; they had the votes, the presidential signature; nothing the Republican party could say would have had even the slightest impact. And yet, those chose not to.

Republicans.. second verse, same as the first; they could have the votes in place to pass reform that would give patients the right, authority, and motivation to say "NO" to procedures that they do not feel provide adequate value for the money... but such a system would destroy the pot that individual doctors and pharma rely on. And so, they will never do so.

Stuck, in the middle of the hurricane. No way out but down. To the grave.

[Lore]

Doctors perform unnecessary procedures because they are afraid of getting their pants sued off if they don't cover all the bases. The problem with modern medicine is we can currently extend life beyond dignity and reasonable limits. Just 100 years ago if you contracted acute appendicitis in the hinterlands of the country, you were screwed.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', ' ') Doctors perform unnecessary procedures because they are afraid of getting their pants sued off if they don't cover all the bases.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', ' ') Doctors perform unnecessary procedures because they are afraid of getting their pants sued off if they don't cover all the bases.

[Fishman]

Wow, I agreed with Lore for a moment! Litigation drives so much in healthcare. That 2% or so that is quoted is a total joke. No doctor can tell a patient their care is futile. I've seen situations were a person was on a ventilator, getting chemo and on dialysis, the most futile thing I've ever seen. And the family demanded it continue.
Shaved, there is NO such thing as free care. The government paid, and the government can withhold. Go to the British healthcare system. They screen for breast cancer starting at age 50 with q THREE year mammograms and colon cancer screening is NEVER a colonoscopy unless your stool cards have blood. They provide SOME care to all. Their death rates are much higher for these cancers than the US also. They also protect their doctors from litigation compared to the US.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', 'i')s it the right of only the wealthy in this country to secure the benefits that modern medicine can afford them, or should an advanced and democratic society be able to extend these to everyone?

[Shaved Monkey]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fishman', '
')Shaved, there is NO such thing as free care. The government paid, and the government can withhold. Go to the British healthcare system. They screen for breast cancer starting at age 50 with q THREE year mammograms and colon cancer screening is NEVER a colonoscopy unless your stool cards have blood. They provide SOME care to all. Their death rates are much higher for these cancers than the US also. They also protect their doctors from litigation compared to the US.

[AgentR11]

in reply to comments concerning extending lifespan..
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', 'Y')ou're latter statement is more of a question; is it the right of only the wealthy in this country to secure the benefits that modern medicine can afford them, or should an advanced and democratic society be able to extend these to everyone?

[Lore]

The Scandinavian countries have national health care and they are doing just fine with it. Granted they are far smaller societies and while not perfect they certainly represent a model of the fact that it can be successfully done.

An example would be Finland where the doctor population ratio is the same as the U.S., or 1/300. About 18.9% of health care is funded directly by households and 76.6% by taxation. The government however controls pharmaceutical costs and limits liability while still offering patient rights. Their primary health care is obtained from district health centers employing general practitioners and nurses that provide most of the day-to-day medical services. Which is just killing our hospitals here as poor people are using the emergency room as their primary health care clinic and then skip the bill. Finland also has the highest number of people satisfied with their health care system, about 88% compared to the EU average of just 41% .

[Jenab6]

How do you choose "one" option in the poll, when all four of the options are true statements?

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', '
')Here's what bothers me, a lot; the presumption that many doctors have that "since Bob can afford it, Bob definitely wants it, and it shall be done unto him, even if he's told everyone and their dog to leave him the ***** alone."

[Shaved Monkey]

Seriously don't think you can afford not too
Check this out
http://www.visualeconomics.com/healthca ... 010-03-01/

[onlooker]

Ha, resurrecting a long dormant thread. Oh well. Just reading all these posts about US healthcare makes me cringe. Of the things that I dislike about the country I live in none more then the healthcare. The war on drugs is a close second. Just as an example my father a few years back contracted cancer. He was operated and a by-product of this operation was that his heart rate was abnormally rapid. So doctor prescribed him this medicine to control it. Problem is that some time after this, his heart rate was okay and me and my sister found out that this medicines was diabolically potent, it was intended to be used just temporarily as it's side effects were quite pernicious. The doctor did not once try and get him off it. Our family simply deceived the doctor to finally get him off. My point is that the US for profit health system I think some time ago ceased to be a system that genuinely cares about the patient or is efficient at treating diseases and maladies. Our medicines treats symptoms does not cure and certainly does not educate people about general health. Unnecessary procedures, over-reliance on prescription drugs, denied care, too expensive and therefore inaccessible. Not to mention of course how it is contributing to bankrupting our nation are just some of the problems with it.

[Pops]

Health-Care is a misnomer, the US has a fee-for-service based, Medical Business System. Outcome is not the point, billing is the point.

It's the American way.

[Tanada]

Discovered a four year old story about a 2006 FDA decision and this seems like the best place to talk about it.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')FDA Suddenly Bans Drugs That Have Been On The Market For Decades
from the perfect-gin-and-tonic-for-fun-and-profit dept

As Techdirt recently discussed, the drug pipeline is running dry, as Big Pharma's patents are beginning to expire, and the drug companies are freaking out. For years they have been spending more money on research and testing and getting fewer results. This year alone they are going to have 11 patents expire on drugs that bring in approximately $50 billion in revenue to the big pharma firms. Of course, the flip side to this is that consumers can start saving about 95% on the price of those drugs, as generics hit the market. The drug companies have gotten to a point where the incremental increases in efficiencies are so small as to be meaningless. What is coming is more personalized and targeted treatments for diseases -- treatments that do not require bulk production of a specific chemical, but individual testing and personalized care, and not lifetime treatments and repeat sales, but cures. The treatments will be expensive to begin with, but they will become less expensive over time. The business model of healthcare is about to change dramatically, and Big Pharma needs to do something to maintain their profits. Unfortunately, they seem to have chosen the path of regulating the competition out of existence, rather than competing and innovating.

One way the drug companies have been coping is to repackage and rebrand health food supplements. Drugs like Lovaza, which is nothing more than the fish oil you can get in health food stores, and lovastatin which has been in use for roughly a thousand years (800 AD) in the form of red yeast rice. In the case of lovastatin, the FDA banned the supplements because they are "identical to a drug and, thus, subject to regulation as a drug." That is very convenient for the drug company, which now charges monopoly rents on the product -- which can increase prices at ridiculous levels.

More recently, the FDA banned 500 prescription drugs that had been on the market and working for years. To be fair, it was really 50-100 drugs (pdf), made by different companies, but that just highlights how there was actual competition in the marketplace for these drugs, which has now been removed. For all of the drugs, there is either a high-priced prescription version, or all the small manufacturers have been removed, leaving a virtual monopoly for one or more larger companies. This process began in 2006 when the FDA decided to remove marketed unapproved drugs (pdf).

The reasoning is that these drugs weren't ever technically "approved" by the FDA. While the FDA has been around for about a century, the business of having the FDA first approve drugs before they could go on the market came about closer to fifty years ago, and a bunch of "unapproved drugs" that were in common usage before that never got approved. The FDA is targeting many of those, even if they have a long history in the marketplace. Conveniently, of course, there always seems to be a pharma company with a monopolized substitute ready.

In 2006 the first "new" monopoly that was created by this FDA process was for the malaria drug quinine sulfate. This left only Mutual Pharmaceutical Company to manufacture quinine in the US (pdf). While malaria is not a disease that affects many people in the US, it is big business worldwide. Malaria causes 300 to 500 million infections and over 1 million deaths each year. Treating this disease with quinine used to cost pennies a day. In fact, the British turned this treatment into a cocktail, the gin and tonic (quinine water).

Another drug removed was the antihistamine carbinoxamine, which was created prior to needing FDA approval, in the early 1950s. It was approved by the FDA in a slightly modified form in 2006. It is now sold exclusively by Mikart, Inc and Pamlab, LLC with no future competition because the FDA has banned all 120 other versions of carbinoxamine. You can imagine just how much that must increase the profits for Mikart and Pamlab on carbinoxamine, though that seems to come at the expense of consumers.

It's really nice being granted a government monopoly.

As for the drugs now being banned in this latest purge, you can argue that it's not really 500 drugs, because many are different combinations of the same 50 to 100 drugs. To be sold, these disapproved drugs will require drug trials and certification -- a massive and expensive process. Under current law, after successful completion of FDA trials these drugs will be granted approval. But in every case these trials are almost certainly not necessary. And, "coincidentally" in almost every case, there is a chemically similar patented version ready to go. This is a pure money grab: replacing old tried and true drugs, with monopoly priced prescription drugs. It just requires removing competing drugs from the market to increase profits.

And with that, I'm off to go have a gin and tonic, while it's still legal...

[dissident]

This sort of corruption and abuse of power is why the US media keeps the public fixated on problems in foreign countries and always whipping up threat hysteria. The public is put in a cognitive dissonance box.

India has been fighting this racket run out of the USA for years. Various US racketeers have tried to patent traditional Indian foods and medicines. The FDA and the legislation under which it is acting only has power in the USA and Canada (via the sycophant Health Canada outfit). This BS will not fly in China and Russia. But I am sure that some US court will try to enforce these kangaroo laws extraterritorially in the future. Although it will fail.

[vox_mundi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.').. The question is, do these same Powers That Be have the same kind of influence over foreign governments?