Saturday, November 12, 2011

To Disabuse You, Maybe

Thursday I bought a whole year’s supply of one of my medications for the equivalent of under $39 ($3.24 per month). That’s without any health care insurance. Back in the States, I pay $15 for a one-month supply. That’s more than four and a half times what I pay here. And that’s my co-payment, supposedly after insurance. And it’s for a generic version, not the brand name I buy here.

You didn’t really think Mr. Obama had reformed the American health care system, did you?

That absolutely cannot be done unless you eliminate this sort of price gouging by pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors. Otherwise, the tinkering you do around the edges of the health care system will be purely cosmetic, never substantive.

It’s a huge scam, and the biggest change is that now everybody must buy into it.

2 comments:

Weekend Fisher said...

They gouge because they can. Health insurance hides the cost.

Not saying it's right, just saying that health insurance is the enabler of gouging, the way it's currently done.

Take care & God bless
Anne / WF

David Garner said...

Weekend Fisher has it roughly correct. It's not gouging so much as artificial demand. Supply and demand should theoretically set prices. Instead, we have a third-party payer system that encourages us to overuse the system, encourages people to have coverage for things they otherwise might not, etc.