Health care costs

The US has spent the last 6 months arguing about Obamacare when the real problem with the US healthcare is pretty much summed up with this article.

$11,000 US medical bill sparks global conversation on health care costs | Al Jazeera America:

Obamacare ain't gonna fix the problem. The health care market is broke and just doesn't work efficiently. It was that way before Obamacare and it'll be that way after. We need a bigger change. Take the insurance companies out of the equation, extend medicare to everyone and let the one-payer put some pressure on the people making the outrageous profits, corporate healthcare and big pharma, to keep costs under control.

Also, from Political Irony,... Death by Free Markets

Drug company Gilead purchased a smaller company that had developed a cure for Hepatitis C. They then proceeded to bring this drug to market and are charging $1000 per pill, which means that the cost for a full course of treatment is a minimum of $84,000 just for the drug (which doesn’t include other medical costs including necessary companion drugs). 

Drug researchers have estimated the cost of producing this drug as between $150 to $250 for the entire course of treatment, which means that the markup on this drug is 33,600%. Of course, drug companies claim that this kind of profit is required to overcome the costs of developing and testing a new drug. 

Really? I’ll ignore the fact that Gilead didn’t actually develop the drug themselves. But how much money do they actually need? 

There are more than 3 million people with hepatitis C in the US alone, which means that Gilead stands to make up to $252 billion on this one drug just in the US (worldwide estimates put the number of people with hepatitis C at 170 million). 

Unfortunately, the people who need this drug have little choice. Without treatment, they will likely die. 

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