More Lies We’re Told About Health Care in the US

One of the things you’ll hear frequently when discussing health care  with Americans has to do with “the reason why prescription drugs are SO expensive in the USA.” Those of you reading from outside this country may be surprised to hear that the average person on the street in the US probably believes (and I’ve personally heard people say this time and time again!) … that the actual explanation of why medication which costs .39 cents in your country per dose yet “costs” 3.00 per dose in the USA… is because out of the goodness of the hearts of the altruistic United States, “Patients here pay for the research and development of new drugs–Europeans and Canadians etc., force drugmakers to offer lower prices so the American patient bears all the cost of the research.”

Of course the intelligent people who read this blog probably were already clear that this so-called explanation is utter BS.  Or, as they might say in Britain, total bollocks.  Here’s one study (printed in the reputable PubMed Central and also the British Medical Journal) which shows the above popular misconception for what it is… a lie promulgated by the people who stand to profit by the curent state of affairs. For my non-American buddies who may somehow not know this: the truth really is on the ground here that people, (and not just poverty stricken elderly people or people who have never had a job) often have to make choices such as whether to buy food or refill a prescription. I have been there many times myself. So the next time people trot out that misconception..call a spade a spade. If there were truth to this, drugs would cost the same or nearly the same in all industrialized countries. They don’t. Oh and not only that, drugmakers in other countries are still pulling in handsome profits, even with their lower (much lower) prices.

On a perhaps happier note, Ms. Sanity also just became aware that as I write this, there is under consideration a bill in the US Senate which would make it legal for Americans to “re-import” drugs from Canada by purchasing from Canadian pharmacies over the internet. If this actually happens, this could be a good thing for some Americans, (though our Canadian brethren might not be too happy about it…)

Not surprisingly, the conservative alarmists are, well, alarmed. They’re claiming with straight faces, even, that allowing Americans to “re-import” these drugs, is unsafe.

Yeah, right, spare me. You’ll notice that there aren’t throngs of Canadians and British folk dropping dead left and right from the medication they’re taking…..

Allowing re-importation (which thousands of Americans are doing or trying to do right now anyway) is all well and good, but shouldn’t we freaking fix our own broken so-called system, rather than sponging off of countries such as Canada and the UK who have been taking better care of their citizens healthwise for decades?

Well, at the very least, US citizens should stop telling themselves (and each other) the lie that we pay such exorbitant and usurious prices for medication because we are politely covering the R & D costs for the entire world.

We pay these prices because we want to keep the big US Pharmaceutical companies really, really, really well-to-do.  I shudder to think what those in management at, say Pfizer, are paid for a year of work. (Yes, they save lives, and so on and so forth, but they also end them, thanks to the crazy prices people are asked to pay for the medication here.)

I don’t have the stomach to look up their salaries right now, though I’m sure the information is available. If one of you trusty readers wants to do so and report back, by all means…feel free.

July 20, 2009  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Insane

One Response

  1. PCH - August 4, 2009

    Perhaps they’re jealous of the fact that other countries don’t kill quite so many of their citizens and don’t want the word to get out?

Leave a Reply