I really could give a fuck if you believe me. I read it for me, not you. It's not like it was something difficult to do.

Fair enough. But they get exclusivity for however long the patent lasts. Then after it runs out, they hand doctors "discount coupons" and here's how it goes down:

Doc prescribes you Drug X name brand and hands you a card and says "drug x will cost you $200 per Rx and your insurance will pay the rest. the generic will cost you $10 and your insurance will pay the rest. but here, have this fancy coupon for $199 off from the maker of Drug X!!"

So you go to the pharmacy and get drug x for 1 dollar and think it's all awesome.

a month later you get your insurance statement and find out Drug X cost the insurance company $400 when a generic would have cost them $100.

That's all well and good to support the R&D efforts of the drug company, but you just cost the insurance company 4 times as much for the same drug---which raises your own and everyone elses rates eventually.

so there's a lot of sneaky dealings in the private sector too

I think a little dose of the "insurance model" in the health "insurance/private club racket" misnomer won't be easily accepted at first. Once the price-fixing racket it broken-up, we may see reasonable pricing.

:cry: Someone needs to wash the sand out of their vagina. :loser:

Possibly true. But you will see virtually no new innovations as there won't be any reward, so no one will take the risk. These drug companies risk millions upon millions on "maybe" drugs or "possible" innovations with absolutely no guarantees that they will ever see a return. Obviously, with limited upside, they would have to pull back and innovation would stagnate.

Oo anothe note, how do you all feel about tort reform, or limiting the amount that one can sue for malpractice? A cardiac surgeon friend of my wife said that almost 70% of his fee goes to malpractice insurance. He "makes" about 22K per surgery so over $15K goes to his insurance company for malpractice.

That is a good point that many people aren't thinking about. Most are only thinking about the consumer side, and not the other side of the issue.

mysdor nvr underestimate my determination. Just becouse you are a punk does not make me one.

Blah Blah, political bullshit, you're a dickhead cause you support Obama, no you're a dickhead cause you don't, fucking blah. Did this make it past the Senate yet? Or am I a day late and a dollar short once again. As for argueing over people being scumbag pieces of shits and not doing their part to support the country...in the words of Frank Rizzo, "this is America baby, survival of the fittest."

The unemployment rate is what, 10% now? We should hurry up and force everyone to buy healthcare. That'll fix that two birds in one stone!

And no, this won't make it past the Senate so long as they have their own bill on the table, then it has to be voted on to even SEE the house bill. Then they have to amend that to hell, then send it back, yadda yadda yadda. It's designed to work slow for a reason, so packages like the "recovery" bill don't shoot through cause some Blue-lipped turdwad and some MR cowboy held hands and told us it would work...

As long as there are illnesses there will be a market for innovation. Reform and reasonable pricing doesn't mean the healthcare industry will not turn a profit or implode overnight. If the corporate giants don't think they can make enough money then let them fold and someone who can turn a profit and do the work will show up.

Its more than necessary.

On another another note, how do you feel about salaried doctors? a la Mayo...

I've never heard of this. I suppose that I am OK with it. I wonder how many of them would be? You know that salary usually means more work + more hours = same pay.

Decreasing incentives for doctors is not a good idear...Doctors, like most folks, will provide higher quality care when given financial incentives to do so.

+1

I think we already have enough problems getting young people into engineering and doctorate programs.

I can guarantee you that if we payed engineers $10-15K/yr less 60% of my classmates would drop out right now...and I'd consider it.

You think I'm as productive this year when they stopped matching my 401k contributions and got rid of my bonus program? I do spend a lot of time sending my resume out, does that count?

About the survival rates for cancer. You're the best in 5-year survival in prostate cancer, and thats if you're white. You're in the top league for the other four cancers in the study (there is only one worldwide, in lancet oncology), still, only if you are white. And you still have a cost per patient that is more than 1,5 times what the rest of the top runners spend.

Just want to give you some numbers, sadly, the study itself is pay per view.

A lot of the medical exellence we see in the states is due to your big universities, harvard alone has a reseach budget larger than what 5-10 more regular universities have to spend. This shouldn't go away with a new healtcare bill.

Interresting reading though, keep it up :)

I'm shocked, I would have thought community colleges were leading the way....

The idea is for office visits. Rather than a get you in, get you out as fast as possible (dollars per patient or procedure), they actually give you the time you need.

You can still have incentives for doctors who perform well and not have it be tied to a quantity of expensive procedures.

Didn't the bill have something about group doctor visits in it?