The U.S. is a huge market not because of our popul
Post# of 15624
While I believe we should be concentrating on bringing these costs down, our Political leadership which is largely endowed by big Pharma, Insurance, etc doesn't lead to substantial legislative change. As long as no one challenges big Pharma's estimate that it costs billions for each new approved product the high prices they ask for the products is justified.
If we were serious about cutting healthcare costs we'd start by streamlining the FDA approval process, as well as looking at major tort reform that greatly lowered the legal aspects of medical costs. Of course most of Congress is comprised of lawyer's, so I don't expect such reform.
Could you imagine how much our insurance rates would diminish if our healthcare costs were in alignment with our share of the worlds population. That's probably too low to imagine, if we were even triple our percentage of worlds population our costs would be more than halved. I strongly believe that if you could take the attorney's and accountant's out of healthcare, and let Doctor's and patients decide what works for them, costs would come down dramatically. Of course this would put a lot of attorneys and accountants out of business and perhaps long term we'd have more people in medical school than law school and business school.
Gary