[ExI] My prediction

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 



> John, there is a lot more to life expectancy than the quality of healthcare. 

 

>…Per capita Canada pays about $6000 a year on healthcare and Canadians have a life expectancy of 82.9 years, the USA pays nearly $15,000 a year on healthcare and Americans (who are members of the same species as Canadians)…

 

Same species, ja.  But there are important differences.  When citing the life expectancy statistics, we should filter out murders, drug abuse related fatalities, other confounding factors.  Once one does that, we see that medical care does increase life expectancy, some.  I will certainly grant there is waste in the system.  Every time we see multimillion dollar medical malpractice awarded to patients, ask yourself: who pays for that?

 

 

 

>…1) How on earth can charging Americans and only Americans ridiculously high prices for drugs prevent foreign companies ….

 

Again, we know that drug companies charge a lot for their products here and we know why: the market will bear it.  Reason: the current system removes far too many price controls.  Result: high prices.  Solution: open up markets to foreign made medications.  Streamline the drug qualification process, significantly.

 

 

>…2) … Even our quack Secretary Of Health is not crazy enough to approve a drug whose composition and manufacture is kept secret ..... or at least I don't think he's that crazy….

 

So… streamline the drug approval process.  That is very expensive in the USA.  Even then, it only proves the medication is not harmful.  It does not prove the medication works.  So… streamline it.  We can do that now because of better information availability in which we can report the efficacy of various therapies.  

 

>…3) Many of the world's most popular drugs, such as the weight loss drug Ozempic, were developed outside of the USA by foreign companies, and yet those drugs still cost much more in the USA than they do anywhere else….

 

Isn’t that crazy?  Fentanyl and cocaine somehow get here, yet we can’t import foreign Ozempic?  Something seems so wrong.

 

>…The real reason drug prices are so ridiculously high in the USA is because every developed country on this planet, with the exception of the USA, uses their government's bargaining power to negotiate drug prices, and that gives them enormous leverage. But in the USA the law specifically forbids Medicare, the largest drug purchaser, from negotiating drug prices….

 

OK, so elect representatives who run on the platform of changing that.

 

>… Therefore the drug companies are able to say to Americans, and only to Americans, "pay me or die"….

 

Well sure, but Americans have the option of going overseas for medical treatment, or Canada, or Mexico.  Some do, particularly for dentistry.  I am not defending the system in place: I don’t think the federal government should be in the faces of the medical industry at all.

 

> It was called the Affordable Care Act.  It failed John. 

 

>…What are you talking about?!

 

It didn’t make medical care more affordable.  It made it less affordable, for reasons we understood at the time: the very poor could get medical insurance provided by the federal government.  But what happens if the federal government can’t afford to pay for it, because the interest on its debt is devouring too much money?  And what about those who are eligible for that insurance but don’t apply for it?  

 

 

 

>…  In 2014, just before the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) took effect, 48 million Americans were uninsured, by 2016, only 27 million were uninsured….

 

How many are uninsured now?  And now that the “temporary” subsidies, which were extended repeatedly, have actually expired, how many will be unable to afford affordable insurance?  Many.  Then what?

 

>…Obamacare wasn't the wholesale restructuring that our healthcare system so desperately needs, but it was certainly better than nothing…..

 

So why didn’t they do wholesale restructuring in 2009, when they had the chance?  A supermajority in the senate is unlikely to ever happen again, or certainly not in our lifetimes.

 

>…And since 2014 Republicans have said that they have a plan that they will be announcing in just a few weeks that would be much better and much cheaper than Obamacare….

 

John as I have been saying for thirty years now and posting in this medium, if the federal government doesn’t balance its budget, the budget will balance the federal government.  That is what is happening now.  There is no need to announce anything, or is it a plan exactly: we expect the federal government to pay for health care, but what happens when it cannot pay?  Then what?  Surely you have a plan for that, ja?  You DO have a plan, John, please?  Because we can see what is coming: the fed can’t help if it is drowning in its own debt.  States can.

 

>…It's amazing how loyalty to a political ideology can make someone ignore a patently absurd situation, like spending vastly more on healthcare than any other country yet have the 48th longest life expectancy, and continue to insist that we should just keep on doing things exactly as we've always been doing things….

 

I am not advocating for continuing to do as we have been doing, nor do I predict we will.  On the contrary, as interest costs continue to accumulate on the national debt, it is easy to see the federal government will do less and less in health care, not because it doesn’t want to, but because it cannot.  All that borrowing has consequences.  We are the ones left holding the bag.

 

spike

 

spike

 

 

 

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