Health Care Reform is Dead
- Thread starter Pesqueeb
- Start date
The pillows... they'll be yuuuuuge!
Not down or synthetic pillows either. They'll be stuffed with WINNING cause there'll be a glut of it.
Seriously - are these people completely retarded?
" Among the public, 33% say that health care coverage is not the government’s responsibility, but that programs like Medicare and Medicaid should be continued"
When did you become such a liberal extremist?Seriously - are these people completely retarded?
" Among the public, 33% say that health care coverage is not the government’s responsibility, but that programs like Medicare and Medicaid should be continued"
Did you dig up your old Che Guevara t-shirt?
You can't make this shit up.
The pass some crap so it looks like you did something but hope it dies somewhere else strategy
https://www.yahoo.com/news/creative-gambit-gop-senators-ask-house-not-pass-health-care-bill-193226124.html
The pass some crap so it looks like you did something but hope it dies somewhere else strategy
https://www.yahoo.com/news/creative-gambit-gop-senators-ask-house-not-pass-health-care-bill-193226124.html
I'm not. But when we are, as a nation, are spending over $3 *TRILLION* dollars in a year (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/health-expenditures.htm) for healthcare... I don't care HOW inept a gov't agency is - they ought to be able to do it for FAR less than that.
Although we continue to spend retarded amounts of money on defense shit too... so maybe I'm wrong.
Nice one...
they should pass a bill approving the funds to hire Canada to run our healthcare system.
I'm not. But when we are, as a nation, are spending over $3 *TRILLION* dollars in a year (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/health-expenditures.htm) for healthcare... I don't care HOW inept a gov't agency is - they ought to be able to do it for FAR less than that.
Although we continue to spend retarded amounts of money on defense shit too... so maybe I'm wrong.
Nice one...
The terrifying thing is that healthcare spending has become such a big part of our economy that fixing the system would be a bloodbath.
All the smart people working in healthcare could start working on autonomous cars.
Too big to fail fix?
But if you don't make Toshi ugely wealthy you're being unamerican!
At least Toshi is a healthcare provider. I wonder what the tail to tooth ratio is in healthcare. The number of paper pushers vs actual doctors/nurses/pharmacists.
I'm strongly in favor of completely dismantling the for profit medical insurance industry. Blood bath be damned.
I'm an overproducing exception in my section like Stoney, but the hospital collects (as opposed to billing for, which is just fantasy) about twice as much as I get paid.
This is the 1000lb gorilla. Everyone has their hand in the cookie jar, which has ballooned the cost of everything. Emergency rooms contract out, so you end up paying some random jackass company that the doctors work for AND the hospital. New medical positions are created and inserted into the hierarchy, etc. Maybe all of these things give those who can pay better health care, but it squeezes out people from being able to get it because the costs just keep going up and up. Something has to give.
The parts industry is nutz.
My wife is the purchasing agent at our local hospital.
Some of the prices are just insane.
There is a suturing material that is pretty much fishing line.
Comes down the line, goes left and gets wound into xx yard spools.
The stuff that goes right gets cut into xx inch strips and put into sterile packages.
For what the medical stuff goes for, I could buy a box of spools, cut and repackage then buy an island in the Caribbean to retire to.
Don't get me started on the little stainless steel mesh squares for hernias.
When you hear of each Tylenol tablet going for several dollars, kind of makes you want to hand the cashier a couple of 500 tab bottles and tell them to keep the change.
My wife is the purchasing agent at our local hospital.
Some of the prices are just insane.
There is a suturing material that is pretty much fishing line.
Comes down the line, goes left and gets wound into xx yard spools.
The stuff that goes right gets cut into xx inch strips and put into sterile packages.
For what the medical stuff goes for, I could buy a box of spools, cut and repackage then buy an island in the Caribbean to retire to.
Don't get me started on the little stainless steel mesh squares for hernias.
When you hear of each Tylenol tablet going for several dollars, kind of makes you want to hand the cashier a couple of 500 tab bottles and tell them to keep the change.
Dear Mitch...eat Sh!t
— Senate Republicans suffered a significant setback Friday morning in their drive to fulfill a seven-year campaign promise to dismantle the Affordable Care Act when a plan to advance a scaled-back version of the went down to defeat.
The Republican measure was rejected 51-49 as three Republicans joined a unified Democratic caucus in opposition.
The bill, an eight-page plan called the Health Care Freedom Act, had been released by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell just hours earlier.
— Senate Republicans suffered a significant setback Friday morning in their drive to fulfill a seven-year campaign promise to dismantle the Affordable Care Act when a plan to advance a scaled-back version of the went down to defeat.
The Republican measure was rejected 51-49 as three Republicans joined a unified Democratic caucus in opposition.
The bill, an eight-page plan called the Health Care Freedom Act, had been released by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell just hours earlier.
Fuck, might as well just call it "The Right to Freedom Health Care and Bacon Act".
My early retirement plans rely on the failure of Republicans to "reform" health care...
Last night my wife needed to fill a prescription. Prescription was written for 30, 100mg tablets of X medication which cost $38 . The pharmacist was kind enough to point us in the direction of an over the counter package of 100, 95mg tablets of the same X medication for $9.
Another example:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/06/how-two-common-medications-became-one-455-million-specialty-pill/530808/
Company combines $40 worth (monthly cost) of medication into a single pill and bills $3,252 for a monthly supply.
this is my industry. sutures are definitely not fishing line.
you're right in one aspect, the materials themselves aren't expensive. it's the 5-10+ years of R&D and testing to prove that they're safe and effective that cost a shitload of money. validating the manufacturing processes so that the first part that comes of the line is the same as the 10th, the 100th, the 1000th, 10,000th, etc. is expensive. manufacturing in clean environments is also expensive.
in my experience the people complaining that things are too expensive are the first to complain when the cheap stuff breaks.
agreed, and i work in the industry. the biggest issue is allowing insurance companies to operate as for-profit.
Looks like McCain went crazy Ivan and voted against the party when it mattered.
When I worked in big pharma a dose of our drugz typically was sold in single payer markets for $3/dose. I don't know what the final price was but as the single payer system was buying I doubt there were "upcharges" along the way, certainly overhead for distribution.
The same medication sold in the US for $10/dose. It was sold to large pharma distributors who sold to pharmacies who sold to hospitals who sold to consumers. Each step along the way a special price is negotiated depending on the final customer and who pays. Not sure what the actual patient price is but the googlez tell me that offshore pharmacies sell it back into the US for $50-$60 /dose. Of course with that stuff I am sure no one complained about the cost as they are probably on a respirator and about to die.
When I worked in big pharma a dose of our drugz typically was sold in single payer markets for $3/dose. I don't know what the final price was but as the single payer system was buying I doubt there were "upcharges" along the way, certainly overhead for distribution.
The same medication sold in the US for $10/dose. It was sold to large pharma distributors who sold to pharmacies who sold to hospitals who sold to consumers. Each step along the way a special price is negotiated depending on the final customer and who pays. Not sure what the actual patient price is but the googlez tell me that offshore pharmacies sell it back into the US for $50-$60 /dose. Of course with that stuff I am sure no one complained about the cost as they are probably on a respirator and about to die.
That may be the case, but it still a monofilament of nylon, poly or similar.
Production is the same, extrusion into a water bath.
Hell a doc back in the 20's started using fishing line because it was superior to anything that was "medical" at the time. Has the chemistry and manufacture really changed that much between the two, or is it mostly a marketing driven "value add"??
Strange that fishing line gets used as suture material elsewhere.
Very big in Africa and other places that can't afford the "real" stuff.
at least the stuff i've dealt with are proprietary polymer blends. the production controls are a lot tighter than fishing line. some sutures now come coated with an antibiotic coating to prevent infections.
also, lol @ fishing line. that was the 20's. heroin was used as a pain killer. cocaine was an OTC pain killer.
yea, and in those regions you also still see doctors reusing syringes without sterilizing or even cleaning them.
also, IIRC all sutures sold for human use in the US are required to be sterile.
Not just sterile, I am sure chemical composition is highly scrutinized as well as tight controls to prevent external contaminants.
The shit I/we used to have to go through when a .8 micron particle of Teflon was detected. Whole plants were closed for weeks while attempting to find the source. Teflon was used because it wasn't a big deal.
Guys, I'm not debating there is a difference, but when one comes down to materials and manufacture of the raw component, - they are pretty much the same thing. Yes a proprietary blend, or antibiotic coatings etc do change things a bit when filling the hoppers... But is the difference worth thousands of dollars per hundred yards?
As for Heroin, that is just morphine plus acetic anhydride, causing potency to be about 3x.
It and all of the opioid derivatives including the synthetics are still poppy based, (even if fully synthesized - it is still based on the opium molecule.) - we have just gotten better at purification and playing with molecules.
Fentanyl is 75x the potency of Heroin, yet is prescribed daily.
As for Heroin, that is just morphine plus acetic anhydride, causing potency to be about 3x.
It and all of the opioid derivatives including the synthetics are still poppy based, (even if fully synthesized - it is still based on the opium molecule.) - we have just gotten better at purification and playing with molecules.
Fentanyl is 75x the potency of Heroin, yet is prescribed daily.
regarding manufacturing: tighter tolerances, clean manufacturing environment, 6sig process controls, drastically more quality checks, these all add up. Also, you're still leaving out R&D costs.
your analogy is akin to saying a bicycle is basically the same thing as a motoGP bike, since they both have two wheels and move forward.
When it's shit that goes inside you and can lead to death via infection if not sterile the answer would be yes.
Could kind of see that in the 60s and 70s, but as technology has gotten so much better and these things can be done with economy of scale with modern technology (like irradiation or a plethora of other sterilization technology on the assembly line) I find it hard to believe the prices are still so high. Moreso, I think that everyone has their hand in the cookie jar and they won't take it out.
It is sterile upon manufacture, extrusion temp are in the range of 275C and stretch temps are 200C.
Past that it is a non-porous monofilament, which would be quite easy to sterilize post production if you can not keep a sterile environment between mfg and pkg... This does not cost an additional 10+ $ an inch.
Past that it is a non-porous monofilament, which would be quite easy to sterilize post production if you can not keep a sterile environment between mfg and pkg... This does not cost an additional 10+ $ an inch.
As one who has undergone a major surgery I am happy to pay for virtual certainty... from my perspective the issue is the number of regulations, safe guards and potential liability, this takes time people and money. It's not just the insurance companies and medical administration, it also involves the legal industry and lack of liability limits.
Not sure what exactly you are saying about this, but having worked directly with the regulatory agencies I can tell you this:
Foreign regulatory agencies have very similar standards to the FDA and even more rigorous in some instances like Japan. We had to comply with the regulations from every country we sold to, which was most of the world, thankfully requirements were pretty standard across countries. Foreign first world countries still have significantly cheaper healthcare costs than the US.
I can proudly say that pretty much everyone I worked with wanted to make safe and quality products, but from the corporate perspective we did the minimum to meet regulatory requirements. If the regulation was reduced, our quality assurance was reduced. If regulations where wholly removed it would then become a cost calculation of how many people could you kill while maximizing profits.
I am not saying regulations should be reduced, I'm saying that regulations and a virtual guarantee of safety cost money, I'm happy to pay as long as I have insurance to spread the burden across the risk group.
The risk group needs to be EVERYBODY.
Can you imagine the *freedom* that the people of this nation would suddenly realize they had if they didn't have to fucking THINK about HDHP/PPO/HMO/deductible bullshit?
You're still missing the point that R&D is one of the major cost drivers.