I am sorry to hear about your health situation. I think you are drawing exactly the wrong conclusions about the conclusions for the health care system.
First of all, I agree that the UK, Canada, Australia are all unnecessarily stingy health care system. The reason for that (as far as I can tell) is because their political system tend to unduly favor conservatives who in turn try to keep Health Service funds low (compared to the other health systems in the First World - all of them except the US, government run) Do you know how, for instance, what the situation in Germany is like for orphan drugs? (I don't, I should look it up). Anyway, orphan drugs is actually an example of market failure and a good case could be made that the government should have a nationalized pharmaceutical company to manufacturing them and the R&D expense of developing should come out of the government R&D budgets - which, IIRC, is where most of the expense of orphan drugs comes from. It also occurs to me, that jacking up the price on a drug for which there is no market allows the drug companies to get bigger tax breaks when they give it away. Even so, medical resources are expensive, involving both material and labor inputs that can be exceedingly scarce. If it were in principle possible to allocate all the money needed to avoid tough, "who lives, who dies", rationing dilemmas, it would still takes year to put such a system into place (assuming it is possible). My brother-in-law died in his early 30's because he had decided to pay for a crappy insurance policy and it delayed him from getting to doctor in a timely way (it wasn't cancer but DVT, a doctor's visit days before his death literally might have saved his life). As many as 200,000 people in the US die from it each year. That's my health care story. --- Admiral Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I like your in-depth analysis: "The healthcare guys." > > Do they carry around a big bag of healthcare to dole out skimpily to > the > poor and needy? > > Lemme tell you a REAL healthcare story. > > I have whatcha call one of those orphan diseases. It's incurable, > it's > progressive, but it's treatable, to slow down my imminent demise. > > My pharmacy bill ran over $300k last year, because most of the drugs > I take > are only taken by the few of us who have this disease (you DO > remember the > economy of scale, don't you?). It will likely cost that much > annually for > the rest of my life. > > If I had no insurance, the companies would give it to me. > > If I had lousy insurance, there are foundations which will help with > the > costs. > > However, in the UK, that paragon of the National Health Service, > they've > just decided not to carry five of the six medications for my disease. > If > that one that's left doesn't treat you, then you're sunk. > > Canada? One of my pals died there last year because the health board > > fiddled around too long to get her proper treatment. > > Australia? One of my pals died there because not only would the > government > not buy the drug from overseas because of the cost, they wouldn't let > him > buy any with his own money and import it. > > Yeah, it's not great here, but like Churchill said, it's better than > the > alternatives. > > Ellen H. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Tom Piwowar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <COMPUTERGUYS-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM> > Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 8:35 PM > Subject: Re: [CGUYS] Why not the US? > > > > The healthcare guys are doing it too. > > They make the cost so high that people will inevitably die. And > they skim > > lots of money off the top to support their own lavish lifestyles. > > > > > ************************************************************************* > ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy > ** > ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ > ** > ************************************************************************* > Checkout One Laptop Per Child project laptop.org ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
