BlogWood: MT Archives

State to protect citizens from low prices

The State of Florida has decided to spend $750,000 on an ad campaign warning Floridians not to purchase prescription drugs from Canada. According to the SP Times:

Canadian pharmacies can sell some of the drugs most commonly used by Americans at 30 percent to 50 percent less, as a national health care plan covers its 33-million citizens and the government negotiates bulk medication prices.

So, in this country, not only do we not have a national health plan, our government is so concerned with protecting the profits of drug companies that it doesn’t even want its citizens to get a good deal on medicine?

Canada’s plan should be held up as a model for us. The only practical way for most people to be insured in the US is to be lucky enough to be employed by a company that offers insurance benefits. Health insurance is overly expensive, patients are treated badly, often you can not see the doctor you want to, and HMOs are paying their executives overly generous salaries while raping us for huge profits. Why don’t we try something different, something that is already proven to work?

As for those drug company profits, the drug companies say they have to make back the money they spend on R&D, but their R&D is so heavily subsidized by the Feds that they are, as a group, among the largest recipients of corporate welfare. The U.S. gives them money to help develop new drugs, or the U.S. simply turns years of government research over to them, thus doing the R&D for them. The companies are then allowed to patent “their” discoveries and sell the new meds for exorbitant prices. We know the prices are exorbitant, because in countries like Canada, the same drugs are much much cheaper.

If you don’t think the system is broken, ponder this: the sicker you are, and the sicker you remain, the more money your doctor makes. There is no financial incentive for a doctor to cure you. In fact, there is every incentive for a doctor to keep finding little ailments that require prescription meds (doctors are paid by drug companies to push their products) and followup visits.