Quote:
Originally Posted by AdvisorGuy
I agree.. What I take away from the movie is that the system is broken and no one wants to fix it because it makes them too much $$$$.. Scare tactics about every other system and how bad they are but no concern for how broken ours is. A friend is hiv+. He's decided to go on medication - $1800 per month if his insurance didn't cover it. Google "The Other Side of AIDS" and watch it if you have 90 minutes and are curious. 25+ years into the great HIV/AIDS scare/pandemic and where's the great pools of death ? No mass graves they scared us with, no medical care workers dropping like flies.... But there's $1800 meds....
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Yes, but how many different pills does he need to take? Who did the research and development of these pills? Who sent the 17 tractor trailers full of documentation to the FDA for review and approval and then waitied to see if the drug would be rejected? ( I used to help do New Drug Applications for S-P ) If you think that doing things like making drugs not patentable will lower drug costs, you are right, but there will be NO new drugs formulated...
Also I do believe that there are programs to help cover the costs of these meds if you cannot afford them.
I agree that health care needs to be 'fixed'. My friend who is a nurse is 99% burned out from working multiple 12 hour shifts that switch between day and night interspersed with 8 hour shifts so that sometimes she only gets 4 hours "off". Having nurses sent home to get them off the clock while patients keep rolling onto her floor, and in general being treated worse than any Ford factory worker was in 1933!
What is needed is a true reform of the industry staring with giving the people who hold OUR LIVES in THEIR HANDS enough sleep to make good judgments and remain able to do their jobs.
I just got off the phone with her trying to calm her down enough to go into work today. She is an excellent nurse with experience and lots of commendations from the hospital and kudos from her patients and their families, but the conditions she is working under have driven her to the point of quitting.
Nationalizing insurance will not do that as even city run and Federal , read, VA, hospitals pull the same crap.
The same goes for Interns and Residents. My sister in law had to pull 36 hour shifts during her residency. I cannot imagine having a young inexperienced Dr. making life or death judgments on a couple of cat naps in the lounge... It is no wondder malpractice insurance is so high. She now gets paid a lot but over 50% of her gross goes to MPI!
We need to fix the malpractice lawsuits to bring down the cost of MPI, reduce Dr's wages so that they take home the same amount, but since they do not need to pay out so much they can now charge less.
Fix the way hospitals treat their staff.
Make NDA eaiser and quicker to process, believe me a lot of the R&D budget goes to preparing for the NDA to go to the FDA
All this would lower the cost of health care.
Then to enable anybody without insurance that is willing to PAY for it, simply open the Federal insurance plans to anybody who wants them. There are dozens of good plans from BC/BS traditional plans to HMOs offered to Federal employees at very reasonable rates due to the size of the groups. If you allow the public access to these plans the cost per person would go down even more.
Make it voluntary and make them pay the premium and I have no problem with it. But to give away insurance will kill off everyting else and we would be stuck with NHS
END OF RANT
