Kickas.org Forums Ankylosing Spondylitis General Discussion #1 AS Web Support Group What to do about healthcare? Can it be fixed?

I concur. The big hang up seems to be how to do that. Both sides are so extreme that one side does nothing for years then bitches about what is being done, while the other side offers a wholesale nationalization of the whole system scaring the daylights out of significant portion of citizens (e.g. elderly, those with satisfactory existing coverage, some doctors, those in favor of limited government). This divide alone is enough to make people ill.



The price or the cost? Lower the price and the insurers, drug manufacturers, device makers, make it up in volume, therefore resulting in a minimally modified overall cost? We shouldn't be paying be paying multiple times for same drugs that other countries buy at "wholesale" prices. There will be, at some point in time, some economic implication of us not subsidizing the drug companies (for example) though. Our costs might drop (in relation to what they once were), but it may raise the prices in other countries to put them on par with a newly revised U.S. system. Another scenario is that development (R&D) slows down. Maybe not immediately, maybe not within three years, but at some time in the future. The drug companies no longer see fit to budget the same amounts for R&D now that their cash cow market (U.S.) is no longer subsidizing their fat profits, yet they want to try and maintain their profit margins to keep shareholders satisfied. Is it right? No. I doubt that they care though. I'm sure there are many other scenarios too, but these are two that oft have crossed my mind.