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Come up with something Better.

274ina said:
HC is not expensive.
Every other western nation proves it.

no profits, only salarys.

and no $800 bags of salt water that cost $1 to make.
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In the US, there is one particular reason why a $1 bag of salt water costs $800 and it has nothing to do with profits: EMTALA
 
iguanaman said:
Funny but you are the 2nd one say that and provide no link. Every link I can find says the opposite but you just keep up the meme. Ignorance is bliss I guess.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100840148
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Well.. I have posted citations many times before but here you go.

This past year, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) responded to a request by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) by examining 5,203 bankruptcy cases from the files of the U.S. Trustee Program. The filings occurred between 2000 and 2002, the same time frame as the filings studied by Himmelstein and colleagues. The DOJ reported that 90 percent of filers had medical debt of less than $5,000. Of those reporting medical debts, those debts accounted for only 13 percent of total unsecured debt. The DOJ summarizes the evidence against Himmelstein and colleagues’ thesis as follows: “The conclusion that almost 50 percent of consumer bankruptcies are ‘medical related’ requires a broad definition and generally is not substantiated by the official documents filed by debtors.”

Taking these surveys under consideration, we observe that although medical costs have risen sharply over four decades, medical debt remains a small part of the overall burden of those filing for bankruptcy.
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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzed the 75 percent increase in personal bankruptcy filings between 1994 and 1998 by reviewing the “voluminous” literature on personal bankruptcy in a 2000 report.16 By all accounts, the period under review was one of flat to expanding health insurance coverage. The total health benefit cost per active employee rose less than 5 percent, and the cost of health benefits for active and retired workers actually declined in 1994 for the first time in memory.17 The fact that bankruptcy rates nonetheless rose sharply suggests that something besides medical factors was to blame. Congressional Budget Office, Personal Bankruptcy: A Literature Review (Washington: U.S. Congress, 2000).
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Fay and colleagues employed multivariate probit regression to determine the contributing factors. Among those factors were whether the household head or spouse experienced health problems in the previous year. Controlling for debt levels, Fay and colleagues found no statistical link between bankruptcies and health problems. This finding is consistent with the idea that medical debt is like any other debt—a cause but not the most important cause of bankruptcy. They conclude that bankruptcy is the response to an accumulation of debt, not to one particular factor such as a health problem. Fay et al., “The Household Bankruptcy Decision

Data from the 2005 Commonwealth Fund biennial health survey support this conclusion. The survey found that 41 percent of adults ages 19–64 had a high rate of medical bill problems or incurred medical debt. Sixty-two percent of these nonelderly adults had insurance when the problem occurred. Yet although a sizable . minority of these adults put off filling a prescription or going to the doctor, only one in ten of those who were insured all year said they had to “change [their] way of life to pay medical bills.” Even for those who were uninsured for some period during the year, only 28 percent reported a lifestyle change.19
M.M. Doty, J.N. Edwards, and A.L. Holmgren, “Seeing Red: Americans Driven into Debt by Medical Bills,” Issue Brief (New York: Commonwealth Fund, August 2005)
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the reality is that the studies don't recognize that medical problems that cost high medical bills are correlated with a job loss (if you are sick enough to get high medical bills you are often too sick to work). And its this job loss that's the culprit in bankruptcy not the medical bills. As the points above show that medical bills are a tiny percentage of debt load. Even those that seek medical bankruptcy.
 
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Lutherf said:
Out of curiosity, if I make $1000 on each of the 100 units of whatever I sell am I making more or less money than if I make $500 per unit on 1000 units sold? Maximizing profits is a function of BOTH profit per unit and number of units sold.
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sure.. but lowering the price of drugs does not make people sicker and increase demand.
 
jaeger19 said:
sure.. but lowering the price of drugs does not make people sicker and increase demand.
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Neither does raising the price. The objective is to produce only the amount you can reasonably expect to sell and then to sell them at the highest price possible that doesn't exclude your potential buyers.
 
Mycroft said:
In the US, there is one particular reason why a $1 bag of salt water costs $800 and it has nothing to do with profits: EMTALA
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Nothing to do with the issue of criminal extorsionists.

And EMTALA would be banished under UHC.
 
274ina said:
Nothing to do with the issue of criminal extorsionists.

And EMTALA would be banished under UHC.
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The EMTALA should never have been enacted in the first place.
 
Mycroft said:
The EMTALA should never have been enacted in the first place.
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It had too, as a poor band aid for a criminally negligent HC system. of course every other western nation
never had to sacrifice lives to learn this lesson.
 
Lutherf said:
Neither does raising the price. The objective is to produce only the amount you can reasonably expect to sell and then to sell them at the highest price possible that doesn't exclude your potential buyers.
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exactly.. so whats your point? Obviously they felt that raising the price 5000% there were able to sell their product which is the only known effective drug for toxoplasmosis. Don't take it and risk death?
 
274ina said:
It had too, as a poor band aid for a criminally negligent HC system. of course every other western nation
never had to sacrifice lives to learn this lesson.
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LOL!!

Our health care system has never been "criminally negligent".

The EMTALA was a misguided government solution that totally ignored the laws of supply and demand...and our health care prices predictably suffered because of it.
 
274ina said:
Nothing to do with the issue of criminal extorsionists.

And EMTALA would be banished under UHC.
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emtala would not be banished under UHC.

Where do you guys think this up?
 
Mycroft said:
LOL!!

Our health care system has never been "criminally negligent".

The EMTALA was a misguided government solution that totally ignored the laws of supply and demand...and our health care prices predictably suffered because of it.
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SURE it is.........

Over 26,000 annual deaths for uninsured: report | Reuters
Family sues insurer who denied teen transplant - Health - Health care | NBC News
Health Care Renewal: How Can a $124.8 Million a Year CEO Make Health Care More Affordable?


Supply and demand do not apply to Healthcare. Because HC has infinite, and immediate needs.
You can wait 20 min or 5 years for a Gucci handbag, you cant wait for a vein to stop bleeding.
 
jaeger19 said:
emtala would not be banished under UHC.

Where do you guys think this up?
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yes it would be.

When EVERYONE, gets all the HC they need, when they need it, during their entire life times. The emtala is functionally banned and irrelevant.
 
274ina said:
yes it would be.

When EVERYONE, gets all the HC they need, when they need it, during their entire life times. The emtala is functionally banned and irrelevant.
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UHC does not give healthcare to everyone. Unless you are covering illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, and tourists. Which no UHC covers by the way.

and there are no UHC countries that everyone "gets all the HC they need, when they need it".. Most have either rationing, or they have a private system for people to step outside the public system or both.

Oh and forgot.. Many UHC countries have emtala like rules to prevent patient dumping. Others don't have such rules and patient dumping is a common occurrence.
 
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jaeger19 said:
exactly.. so whats your point? Obviously they felt that raising the price 5000% there were able to sell their product which is the only known effective drug for toxoplasmosis. Don't take it and risk death?
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I won't claim to know all the reasoning behind the pricing but the drug was previously produced by GSK. GSK could afford to sell it at a loss because they produce lots of other stuff that can absorb the loss on a limited production unit. They also have billions of dollars set aside for the inevitable lawsuits that come with selling a drug with known side effects. Turing doesn't have any of that stuff so they have to sell it at a high margin just to raise capital so they can do other things. The sales price in such circumstances is temporarily inflated until other profitable products can be brought to market to maintain the necessary flow of capital. In this particular case it was a good business decision to purchase the rights to a proprietary product so that the necessary cash flow could be generated.
 
jaeger19 said:
Yes and thus its not really what anyone would call "obamacare"..
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Is the Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148 and P.L. 111-152) no longer Obamacare? If not, then sure. If we are talking about the ACA, then yeah it's been amended a number of times since its passage. And yeah, wide-scale value-based physician payment under Medicare was a product of the ACA.
 
274ina said:
SURE it is.........

Over 26,000 annual deaths for uninsured: report | Reuters
Family sues insurer who denied teen transplant - Health - Health care | NBC News
Health Care Renewal: How Can a $124.8 Million a Year CEO Make Health Care More Affordable?


Supply and demand do not apply to Healthcare. Because HC has infinite, and immediate needs.
You can wait 20 min or 5 years for a Gucci handbag, you cant wait for a vein to stop bleeding.
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Criminal Negligence
The failure to use reasonable care to avoid consequences that threaten or harm the safety of the public and that are the foreseeable outcome of acting in a particular manner.
Criminal negligence is a statutory offense that arises primarily in situations involving the death of an innocent party as a result of the operation of a motor vehicle by a person who is under the influence of Drugs and Narcotics or alcohol. Most statutes define such conduct as criminally negligent Homicide. Unlike the tort of Negligence, in which the party who acted wrongfully is liable for damages to the injured party, a person who is convicted of criminal negligence is subject to a fine, imprisonment, or both, because of the status of the conduct as a crime.

Criminally negligent legal definition of Criminally negligent
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You've branded an industry as being "criminally negligent". Yet the definition of the phrase applies to a "person" involved in a crime.

Link 1. It is not a crime to file suit against a law.

Link 2. It is not a crime to apply standards for health care coverage to a particular case.

Link 3. It is not a crime to pay an employee for their services to a company.

And none of the links involve the death of a person as the result of the operation of a motor vehicle by a person who is under the influence of drugs, narcotics or alcohol.

Words matter. I suggest you employ words properly.
 
Lutherf said:
I won't claim to know all the reasoning behind the pricing but the drug was previously produced by GSK. GSK could afford to sell it at a loss because they produce lots of other stuff that can absorb the loss on a limited production unit. They also have billions of dollars set aside for the inevitable lawsuits that come with selling a drug with known side effects. Turing doesn't have any of that stuff so they have to sell it at a high margin just to raise capital so they can do other things. The sales price in such circumstances is temporarily inflated until other profitable products can be brought to market to maintain the necessary flow of capital. In this particular case it was a good business decision to purchase the rights to a proprietary product so that the necessary cash flow could be generated.
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No offense but bull. The cost for producing the drug was about 1 dollar a pill and they were selling it around 13.00 which was a good profit. The new owners jacked the price to over 700 in an effort to maximize profit. It wasn't about " capital to do other things".. its not a philanthropic company. they did it to help their profit.. end of story.
 
Greenbeard said:
Is the Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148 and P.L. 111-152) no longer Obamacare? If not, then sure. If we are talking about the ACA, then yeah it's been amended a number of times since its passage. And yeah, wide-scale value-based physician payment under Medicare was a product of the ACA.
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Wide scale value based physician payment was not a product of the ACA. Such programs existed prior. Multiple times always with a large amount of failure and it would have to be changed.. Same old same old.

Yes.. the ACA was amended.. because the ACA amended other programs that started PRIOR to the ACA.. like CHIP. Its why multiple republicans cosponsored the bill.

The point still stands that on the actually NEW legislation that OBamacare brought to the table.. employer mandates, insurance mandates, penalties, expansion of Medicaid, etc... there have been next to nothing on changing or working with congress on these things from the administration.

You pointing out a reauthorization of CHIP as "look how they are willing to change Obamacare".. is just BS.
 
Erick Hedberg said:
Come up with something Better:

If the Republicans want to replace Obamacare why don’t they craft something better?

If it was better wouldn’t the President sign it?

They want to repeal it on day one and just stand there wondering what they should do.

Face it. Health care is expensive and there’s no easy or pretty way to pay for it.

Give Trump a Democratic Congress.
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Obamacare makes it illegal to not buy something you cant afford. Genius. And democrats wonder why they were slaughtered last November.
 
Greenbeard said:
A controversial admission!
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Please.. nice try.

but I think we all know that when Ludin is discussing "Obamacare".. he is not talking about portions of the ACA like CHIP.. that have been around for years and years before the ACA and were included in the ACA and were recently reauthorized. ..

Please.
 
QuadpolarNutjob said:
Obamacare makes it illegal to not buy something you cant afford. Genius. And democrats wonder why they were slaughtered last November.
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Lachean said:
If only your side wouldn't equate "not doing something bad" with "doing nothing."
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What kind of meaningless statement is this?

People can't afford Obama care because there wasn't sufficient stimulus.
 
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