High costs of life saving medicines are somewhat more
acceptable than the cost of health care insurance.
From cancer treatment to HIV,
from diabetes to blood pressure drugs, I think that most of us agree that drugs
and medicines to treat life-threatening conditions are way overpriced.
That
being said, we also don’t find it these high prices terribly odious since they
represent a life or death option and we are willing to pay those high prices
when it comes to saving our lives or that of a loved one.
But
if the cost is so prohibitive and the person needing the medicine has no
insurance you are sure to be screwed…just hurry up and die as Allen Grayson
would say.
So
much crap and misinformation is out there demonizing Obama’s Health Care
Reform, more commonly referred to as “OBAMACARE” and it has been coming from the
extreme political right that at the end Americans are somewhat confused and
ambivalent about any regulation, any law, any program that deals with health
care. And that is precisely the desired result of all this nonsense about
repealing “OBAMACARE”.
We
have to consider what is at stake here; the health insurance companies stand to
lose a lot if healthcare ever becomes like those in other industrialized
nations…commonly depicted as some kind of socialist hell. But they love their
healthcare systems and they would not trade it for ours.
Sure,
there are arguments that under the Canadian, British or Israeli systems of
healthcare you may have to wait for an elective surgery or that you are limited
in picking a doctor, so that you can’t keep the one you have.
But
seriously, do we take those excuses as valid arguments when right here and now,
under the system we have (or many millions don’t have) you really don’t have
much choice as to which doctor to see because that doctor of yours may not be
on the insurer’s list.
And
as far as waiting for some medical procedure to be done I find that option
preferable than not getting any treatment at all if you don’t have insurance.
I
think that the reason for the great resentment against health insurance
companies comes because they put profits above patient care and because of the
gross abuses they have been perpetrating against the American people…like
dropping you when you get sick or not insuring you when you have a pre-existing
condition.
The
contrast with the drug manufacturers is obvious; the reasons too are crystal
clear: the insurance companies are parasites that exist only to extract a
profit and not take a risk or actually perform any useful service. They merely
exist for the bottom line: GREED.
The
pharmas are somewhat different even if they overprice most drugs. Let’s face
it, they had to incur a lot of expenses in research, testing and eventually
bringing that drug to the public. And nobody can say that they didn’t try to
keep a stranglehold on these high prices when in 2001 for example an attempt by
thirty-nine major pharmaceutical companies to prosecute the South African government for passing a law that allowed
easy production and importation of generics. Big Pharma was eventually forced
to back down and drop the case following a tremendous outcry from the
international community including the South African government, the European
Parliament and 300,000 people from over 130 countries who signed a petition against
the action. One of the pharmaceutical companies involved in the case,
GlaxoSmithKline, even granted permission (called a voluntary licence) to major
South African generics producer Aspen, to share the rights to their drugs AZT,
3TC and the combination Combivir without charge. This was a significant case as
it brought access to medicines for poor countries into the public
consciousness.
The
FDA at times is much too sluggish in testing and approving some of these drugs,
so do the
complaints go, but at the end when a drug is effective and patented a drug
manufacturer can exact a profit and do so ethically. Sure, these drugs would
leave you wondering if they are made of gold dust or ground up diamonds and
most of the costs are so exorbitant people without insurance or the financial
means would not be able to afford them.
Let’s
take a look at just some examples of some drugs and their out of the ball park
prices and how generic drugs have offered competition so that brand name drugs
have had to come down in price:
The graph below illustrates the effect of generic competition on
proprietary drug prices between 2000 and 2001. It shows the lowest world price
per patient per year of triple combination therapy made up of stavudine
(d4T)+lamivudine (3TC)+nevirapine (NVP).8
SOURCE:
http://www.avert.org/generic.htm
