|
my mom works at a large university hospital as a pharmacist financial councilor, which means that if someone can't afford their drugs because they don't have insurance or their insurance won't cover for it, they get sent to her. Just through the sheer amount of people she's talked to since taking on this position she's come to the conclusion that our healthcare system is broken and government healthcare is probably the best way to go. she knows quite a bit about those drug discount cards and their equivalent foundations for people on medicare that basically function as a way for drug companies to totally soak insurers (especially the largest insurer in the country, the US Government) by pricing the drugs outrageously high so they get lots of money from insurers and if people slip through the cracks and can't afford those outrageously high prices, there are programs funded by the drug companies to help them afford their drugs, which also has the added benefit of making the drug companies look like saints (even though the problem started when they priced the drugs in the first place). IMO capitalism is incompatible with healthcare. All of the free market ideologies that our system of capitalism are based on all traders being on equal ground in terms of information and position, so that the free market sellers will set prices where people determine is the right value for them and if they set it too high, no one will buy, forcing the prices down. The problem with that in healthcare is that the people who have the "product" that needs selling, whether it's a literal product like a drug or some sort of surgery or treatment through a hospital are not on the same position as the people doing the buying because when people need drugs/treatment, they don't have the ability to wait until the price is at a level they feel is worth it because their health is often at an immediate risk. Someone who gets diagnosed with stage 2 cancer doesn't have a whole lot of time to shop around to determine whose cancer treatment is the best and most affordable because if they wait a year, they might end up dead or past the point of no return. This means that drug pricers don't have an incentive to price these life-saving drugs to make them affordable, they can price them at the absolute highest point because they know that people will completely drop every last bit of savings that they have in order to not die. You can try to dress up the system like the United States has by putting certain people into a separate group that has essentially single payer healthcare (Veterans) or a form of government-based coverage (Medicaid/care) but ultimately this system is just going to lead people to bankruptcy because that was the better choice in the "Die/Never Have Money Again" dichotomy. My dad has Huntington's Disease. My family knew this with enough time that they were able to get a really good long term care insurance plan when he was still healthy and now we have home health care people coming in 5 days a week to help him out, and within the next year he'll probably be put into a nursing home, and that insurance will provide us with the funds to do so. It helps that my mom's job offers great health insurance and his disability covers quite a bit as well. Me on the other hand, I got tested when I was 18 and a half and came out positive, and purchased a long-term care insurance plan with roughly the same value as my dad's and after about 10 years of paying the jumps in payments each year have gotten to the point where it's literally not worth paying any more because 30% increases in premiums aren't worth it for something I'm gonna need 25-30 years down the line. This is the reality for most people who test positive. They watch their parent slowly succumb over the course of a decade as sort of a preview to what will happen to them and many of them don't have the money to get the sort of treatment my dad has gotten because they weren't living in the right city or they didn't have the right job or they didn't have family willing to support them. Seeing what this disease is doing to my dad terrifies me; he's now to the point where he can't do anything on his own, can't eat without my mom, can't really talk except for very basic sentences, just watches TV every day as he wastes away and it sucks so much because I know that if I get to that point, all of those things that I pointed out earlier that helped us prepare won't do poo poo for me. I've already basically decided that if I get to the point where my brain starts to rapidly dissolve I'll probably find a way to end my life rather than go through the last 10 years like he has, and like my grandpa did before him. When I first tested positive my mom consoled me with the fact that there's a lot of good work being done to find treatments for HD and other similar diseases, and that it's likely that by the time I get to the point where I might start losing my faculties there will be some form of treatment, and honestly that's held true. There are multiple potential treatments entering late stages of research and it's very likely that by the time I'm 50 or so there may be some treatment that will allow me to live out the rest of my life normally, relative to my dad. That gave me great comfort at first but I've now reached a new sort of realization: whatever this drug is, it will almost certainly be outrageously expensive, even with drug companies and their discount cards. We're talking monthly costs in the 5 digit range, and if it's a 1 time thing I fully expect a $1,000,000 price tag because the drug companies know that the choice is between essentially being in debt forever or a slow painful degenerative death, and the only reason I'm in that position is that I lost a coin flip when I was born. I see advocating for change in the healthcare system as not just the right thing to do, but the only way that people like me will be able to afford any sort of cure or treatment without crippling amounts of debt. KingNastidon posted:Prior auths are annoying for patients and MDs. To the poster above, some of this is just an annoyance factor to ensure that 1) patients are actually committed to getting the therapy and will be adherent/compliant and 2) MDs aren't just pill mills that are haphazardly giving out drugs. This seems silly in your example with smoking and Chantix, but there are obvious examples where these hoops make sense. when is this an issue for things that aren't painkillers/abusable drugs? (P.S. drug advertisers are all scum and I hope they all lose their jobs) tl;dr: drug companies should all be nationalized, health insurers should be dissolved, and private, for-profit healthcare should not be a thing anywhere.
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2020 02:11
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 00:16 |
|