Free Market
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@Dashrender said:
Why would they be cheaper there in Europe than in the US? I mean besides we are corrupt?
That's the only reason. There is no system for raising the prices like there is in the US. In the US there is an unlimited ability to make things expensive due to the lack of open market. In most of the world drugs are sold openly (outside of a few extreme examples) like any normal market product. The question isn't what makes them cheap everywhere else, it is what makes them expensive in the US?
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@Dashrender said:
Why wouldn't the drug companies just say no instead of agreeing to a lower price?
Because someone else will make them and make all of the money from them. -
@scottalanmiller said:
Here is a thought experiment...
What if a single rich person could hire every doctor that there is - this doesn't just give them access to all existing legal healthcare but the right to control the creation of more (only doctors can make more doctors legally.) The market is not free, someone new is not allowed to just become a doctor by knowing doctor stuff, you have to have other doctors and political groups approve you. It's a gated thing. So, in theory, access to healthcare can be controlled by a single person without the ability to have competitors.
In a free market, that situation cannot arise. Someone could always invest the time, effort or money to compete. But in the current framework, it is completely possible although totally impractical, to literally buy up all healthcare and with non-competes literally shut down the healthcare systems totally if one so desired.
We may be closer to that reality than people realize. Around here The Cleveland Clinic owns and runs 90% of the healthcare facilities and has the same amount of doctors under contract. My wife was in their main facility before she passed, and it is larger than most mid-sized cities. Just a small idea of the size, the window in her room looked out over the helicopter landing pads, all 4 of them. To get to her room from the parking lot, you walked 3/4 mile.
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Rochester is like that, UofR owns nearly all of the hospitals in the area.
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This Phallac Martin Shkreli's attorney raises his rates by 5000%.
Hell yeah.... !
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@DustinB3403 said:
This Phallac Martin Shkreli's attorney raises his rates by 5000%.
Hell yeah.... !
I don't believe I'm saying this, but nice move lawyer, nice move.
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Another important thing to remember when pharma is given free reign to do whatever they want - the incentive, and it is enormous, is to make people sick or keep people sick and make them need to buy as many drugs as possible. This isn't a little amount of money, it is one of the world's biggest industries and affects every doctor, nurse, pharmacists, hospital, pharmaceutical, pharmacy, doctor's office and every person who works in a support role for those industries. The number of people who are paid based on this need and economic force makes it one of the biggest employers out there - every single employee of which is financially incentivized to make you and keep you sick.
Not that everyone gives into the temptation. But anyone who tries to make you healthy does so against their own self interest and the interests of every person they work with, for and around, most of the people that they likely know and all of their families.
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@scottalanmiller For sure. The OBGYN I used to help out with the office computers for was a big advocate for avoiding C-sections. They almost always cause more complications down the road that also need to be managed properly. She actually dropped the contract with one of the local hospitals when the board decided they wanted a 100% C-section rate, just so they could fully book the birthing ward.
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It's amazing how often business people, and not medical staff, direct medical procedures. I know of a local kid that his own father, being the doctor, was going to let expire because his manager didn't want the necessary appendectomy done. His mother, not a doctor, secretly took the boy to a different hospital when the father was at work and they did an emergency surgery and saved him. Even his own father and attending doctor cared more about a crappy job than the life of his own kid. Imagine how little they cared about random patients!
It was recently (last ten years or less) discovered that a standard knee surgery that is done had no valid purpose and even caused slight damage versus doing no surgery at all but was considered benign "enough" that it was worth putting patients at risk to do this made up surgery that it had become completely standard and was done all over the country as "standard." Now they know that it was fake but it was to the point where many doctors doing it were not even aware it was a fake surgery as it was so standard - just none of them knew why they did it or why it should be done yet they kept doing it because none of them thought that knowing what they were doing was relevant!!
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's amazing how often business people, and not medical staff, direct medical procedures. I know of a local kid that his own father, being the doctor, was going to let expire because his manager didn't want the necessary appendectomy done. His mother, not a doctor, secretly took the boy to a different hospital when the father was at work and they did an emergency surgery and saved him. Even his own father and attending doctor cared more about a crappy job than the life of his own kid. Imagine how little they cared about random patients!
It was recently (last ten years or less) discovered that a standard knee surgery that is done had no valid purpose and even caused slight damage versus doing no surgery at all but was considered benign "enough" that it was worth putting patients at risk to do this made up surgery that it had become completely standard and was done all over the country as "standard." Now they know that it was fake but it was to the point where many doctors doing it were not even aware it was a fake surgery as it was so standard - just none of them knew why they did it or why it should be done yet they kept doing it because none of them thought that knowing what they were doing was relevant!!
Do you have a link to the situation you're talking about?
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@Dashrender no, they would not have put it in the paper!
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By local kid, I literally meant my home town and someone that my family actually knew. Not someone I learned about through news channels or something.
Just as it didn't make the news when the local hospital refused to treat me for appendicitis and let me appendix rupture. Medical things like doctors refusing treatment are neither newsworthy nor something that can go into the news.
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My best friend interviewed with that company. They wanted him to build their server and network infrastructure from scratch. He turned down the job to work somewhere else.
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@quicky2g said:
My best friend interviewed with that company. They wanted him to build their server and network infrastructure from scratch. He turned down the job to work somewhere else.
Which company?
