Is this 'round-tripping' thing just a fancy term for why my parents' medication costs more than a car payment? Just trying to connect the dots from their balance sheet to my wallet.
Not at all. It only explains why a pharmaceutical company has an overseas office.
Your parents medication cost more than a car payment because there's no motivation in the US system to reduce prices for most drugs. Quite the opposite for insurers who provide ACA--they're actually incentivized to increase the cost of care so that the 20% they are allowed to spend on marketing, executive compensation, etc can grow as well.
I can't tell if this is trying to say the ACA should have set it to 0% so there is no incentive, if there is supposed to be something special about 20% which makes executives greedy but at 100% they'd have no interest in trying to make a bigger bonus, or if I'm missing something else completely. I feel like it has to be the latter, I just can't figure out what.
We should make insurance companies not allowed to negotiate special pricing for drugs and hospital expenses, and make everyone pay the same regardless if it goes through insurance, which insurer, or out-of-pocket.
Then the cost intensive flips. Insurer wants cheap healthcare and drugs so that they won't have to pay as much. This was part of what the original "affordable care act" tried to do, but was ultimately removed from the version that was passed.
It's also how insurance works by default almost everywhere except in the US.
Not really, that’s mostly down to how your country does a terrible job a negotiating drug prices compared to other countries with socialised healthcare. On the upside if you’re rich you get the best care in the world.
Your parents medication costs more than a car payment because developing medication is expensive. Developing medication is expensive partly because it's just innately expensive, but mostly because going through the bureaucracy of getting it approved is really expensive. You want cheaper medicine? Then make that faster and cheaper. But there are tradeoffs.
The us spends more money on healthcare per capita than any European nation (including those with tax funded healthcare). Yet the very same drugs are cheap over here. The very same drugs Europe produce, put in airplanes and fly over to the US for the US market.
Are Europe just better at R&D then? Does Europe have more lax medication regulations? That is what your argument would suggest. But i somehow doubt that.
Looking at the share prices of the top medical industry companies in the US, from insurance to medicine production to private hospitals, it would seem there is plenty of margin going elsewhere for some reason.
Are we also ignoring that a lot of medical R&D is funded by grants and government investment? Its odd how the pharmaceutical companies are sooooo strained for money from the (partially already paid for) R&D that they have to take out a 600% margin on the product to cover it for decades after the drug has been on the market.
But it's clearly the famously harsh American bureaucracy that cripples the US market compared to Europe and Asia (the very same bureaucracy that created a self inflicted opioid crisis by being overly swayed by pharmaceutical lobbying)
The perverse incentives of insurance companies and an equal if not greater factor than regulator burden.
Insurance companies are not incentivized to lower costs, because it allows them to charge more. Pharmacy Benefit Managers eliminate the price bargaining power of even the largest pharmacy chains. Healthcare is complex, expensive, and required for life, which make it inherently susceptible to market distortions.
Absolute bullshit, drug prices are set according to how much they can squeeze out of it. It’s borderline dishonest to pretend the prices correspond to R&D expenditure
readthenotes1|6 months ago
Your parents medication cost more than a car payment because there's no motivation in the US system to reduce prices for most drugs. Quite the opposite for insurers who provide ACA--they're actually incentivized to increase the cost of care so that the 20% they are allowed to spend on marketing, executive compensation, etc can grow as well.
zamadatix|6 months ago
aDyslecticCrow|6 months ago
Then the cost intensive flips. Insurer wants cheap healthcare and drugs so that they won't have to pay as much. This was part of what the original "affordable care act" tried to do, but was ultimately removed from the version that was passed.
It's also how insurance works by default almost everywhere except in the US.
padjo|6 months ago
terminalshort|6 months ago
aDyslecticCrow|6 months ago
Are Europe just better at R&D then? Does Europe have more lax medication regulations? That is what your argument would suggest. But i somehow doubt that.
Looking at the share prices of the top medical industry companies in the US, from insurance to medicine production to private hospitals, it would seem there is plenty of margin going elsewhere for some reason.
Are we also ignoring that a lot of medical R&D is funded by grants and government investment? Its odd how the pharmaceutical companies are sooooo strained for money from the (partially already paid for) R&D that they have to take out a 600% margin on the product to cover it for decades after the drug has been on the market.
But it's clearly the famously harsh American bureaucracy that cripples the US market compared to Europe and Asia (the very same bureaucracy that created a self inflicted opioid crisis by being overly swayed by pharmaceutical lobbying)
anonymous_user9|6 months ago
Insurance companies are not incentivized to lower costs, because it allows them to charge more. Pharmacy Benefit Managers eliminate the price bargaining power of even the largest pharmacy chains. Healthcare is complex, expensive, and required for life, which make it inherently susceptible to market distortions.
khalic|6 months ago
dokyun|6 months ago