For Health Care Reform to Succeed

Topspin said:
we need hc reform, what we are getting is redistribution of wealth instead. If you believe different then you don't know shit about the bill or business.
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Who the hell said anything about the Bill? Go back and read my first post. Please show me where I said anything about that bill please.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Topper the saying is "Figures never lie but liars figure". No one is saying that they should take away big pharma's profits. That's a complete strawman. They are saying that we should be able to collectively use an economy of scale to negotiate price for drugs with Big Pharma. Considering that much of pharmaceutical research is done on the public dime, what the hell is wrong with that?
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well, the most obvious problem is that 100% of pharmaceutical profits is still insufficient to finance the proposed changes.....
 
I don't believe Gov funds half or comes up with half of the developments.
Are you going to want to invest in pharma when big gov wants to limit thier profits. I won't. I don't want but would benefit from gen Y picking up the tab for us boomers. I want Dr pay (a cartel AMA) based on supply and demand. IE. open up universities to more medical students.
 
Topspin said:
zoo said it above,
dems allways run from the wealth shift. People on the Gov plan (dole) will get a much cheaper rate. Consumers like you and I with a corp plan with have to pay the difference.
IE WEALTH TRANSFER
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Zoom didn't say that at all. He said the goverment could use it's collective resources to negotiate better prices. How the hell is that wealth redistribution?
 
In addition, it brings Big Pharma's price gouging to an end, since the single payer can then demand, not ask, for reasonable drug costs. BigPharma makes obscene profits (pushing 25% fin the case of Eli Lilly)

this is his quote, not ask but demand lower prices ie eliminate profit.
My stepson works for Pfizer, so besides it being a GREAT company with huge demand for it's product I have vested interest so to speak.
 
Topspin said:
I don't believe Gov funds half or comes up with half of the developments.
Are you going to want to invest in pharma when big gov wants to limit thier profits. I won't. I don't want but would benefit from gen Y picking up the tab for us boomers. I want Dr pay (a cartel AMA) based on supply and demand. IE. open up universities to more medical students.
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What? That's just insane. Excess capacity is one of the factors driving up cost. We all ready have more physicians per capita then any nation on the planet and those guys demand huges salaries (and I certainly don't begrudge them that). Increasing excess capacity even further would hurt far more then it would help Topper.
 
dude your retarded excess capacity would drive the fucking prices way down.
The average dr makes 250,000 you think the ama believes that would be the case if they doubled the number of med students. Child please
 
Topspin said:
In addition, it brings Big Pharma's price gouging to an end, since the single payer can then demand, not ask, for reasonable drug costs. BigPharma makes obscene profits (pushing 25% fin the case of Eli Lilly)

this is his quote, not ask but demand lower prices ie eliminate profit.
My stepson works for Pfizer, so besides it being a GREAT company with huge demand for it's product I have vested interest so to speak.
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That's a strawman Topper. It may reduce profits but it would not eliminate them. The cost savings would then be passed on to us the consumers.

That's really what this whole issue is about and as I'm seeing, most people want to stick their head in the sand. The problem with our present healt care market based system is that it is hugely expensive and not cost affective. The real questioins that you want to ignore is How do we make it cost affective and yet make it accessible to all?

Let me ask you this Topper, considering the market failure in this nation for health care to provide cost affective services that are accessible to most, if not all people, what makes you think a laizzess-faire capitalist market approach would work?
 
Topspin said:
dude your retarded excess capacity would drive the fucking prices way down.
The average dr makes 250,000 you think the ama believes that would be the case if they doubled the number of med students. Child please
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Dude, it's the other way around. Excess capacity drives costs up. Even if you have more doctors you still have to pay their large salaries, then when you include half empty hospitals and expensive articles of technology that are only used at 1/3 capacity, creating more doctors would drive cost up even if their salaries go down (because you still have more of them). Do the math dude.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Dude, it's the other way around. Excess capacity drives costs up. Even if you have more doctors you still have to pay their large salaries, then when you include half empty hospitals and expensive articles of technology that are only used at 1/3 capacity, creating more doctors would drive cost up even if their salaries go down (because you still have more of them). Do the math dude.
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lol YEA Nike is not doubling output cause they don't want the shoe price to rise. And Opec never cuts production to raise the price. Where did you take economics? Oh you didn't
Increase competion, supply, add a layer for the poor.
you want to reduce/not eliminate Pfizer's profit. Who in the gov gets to say how much profit is OK. Nacy LOFL
THIS IS A TRILLION DOLLAR WEALTH TRANSFER TO THE POOR. PERIOD
 
Mott the Hoople said:
and who said anything about that? Not I. I'm not defending the present plan. How many times do I have to say that?
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???...you want to use economy of scale to negotiate a reduced price......a reduced price has to cut into profit....even if you could negotiate a price reduced by 100% of the profits, it still doesn't pay for the plan......
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Dude, it's the other way around. Excess capacity drives costs up. Even if you have more doctors you still have to pay their large salaries, then when you include half empty hospitals and expensive articles of technology that are only used at 1/3 capacity, creating more doctors would drive cost up even if their salaries go down (because you still have more of them). Do the math dude.
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????.....sorry Mott, but you are missing the boat on this one.....unused supply always brings prices down......
 
zoombwaz said:
Sorry, but you are sadly misinformed. As always. You also have no idea what logic is, let alone what defies it. Your entire post is nothing but unsupported allegations, and as a matter of fact, they are demonstrably false allegations. Changing who paya for health care absolutely does control costs, when the change is from a for-profit payer to the government as single payer, because it eliminates profit and drastically reduces overhead.
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I love it when pinheads become condescending and think that helps them in making a point. Nothing I have stated is an allegation, everything I have stated is pure fact. You only want to use specially selected facts, and those are usually distorted to illustrate your view, and not an objective evaluation of all the facts.

Changing who pays for something, doesn't have a goddamn thing to do with how much something costs. The average health care facility makes about 4% profit, so even if what you said were true, it would mean 4% is the most savings that could be realized by elimination of profit. When you factor in the inefficiency of government that we know exists, it amounts to far more than 4% additional cost. As an example, let's say I want to ship a package to California... I can use the non-profit government funded postal service, or I can use FedEx. Even though some capitalist business will make a small profit, my cost is less using the capitalist company, and not the government option. IF what you were saying were true, the post office would be the cheapest way to ship packages, and it's not.

BUT... I have to give you credit here! At least you are an honest pinhead! At least you aren't going down the path of your flock, trying to mislead us into believing there will still be competition in the health care industry. While Democrats struggle to even get a public option included in the bill, you admit that your ultimate goal is to eliminate all competition and have a single-payer system. Thank you for admitting the truth on that, we knew it was what you wanted to do all along. I guess the immediate elimination of millions of jobs in the health insurance business, is of no consequence here... those people will find other jobs eventually, right?


In addition, it brings Big Pharma's price gouging to an end, since the single payer can then demand, not ask, for reasonable drug costs.
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I think you have a misunderstanding of what freedom is. You don't get to demand what I sell my goods and services for, that is up to me in a free market, and is based on supply and demand. When you DEMAND that pharmaceutical companies deliver a drug at a reasonable price, how do you expect to enforce that? What is to prevent the company from telling you to kiss their ass and fuck off? What is to stop them from closing their doors and not developing a goddamn thing again? Unless you're gonna roll out the National Guard, and use Gestapo tactics to control means of production, you are going to have a difficult time telling corporations what to charge for their service.

BigPharma makes obscene profits (pushing 25% fin the case of Eli Lilly). Please don't embarrass yourself by repeating the moronic claim that the drug companie need to make huge profits to pay for R&D. Those who make that claim prove nothing but their ignorance of accounting. The reason net profit is referred to as "the bottom line" is that it is the last line in a P&L statement. There is nothing below it: no additional revenue (which is at the top of the P&L), and no additional costs (which appear as line items between the revenue and profit) R&D is a cost, and has already been accounted for by the time you get to net profit, and BTW, the R&D costs to Big Pharma are only a third as large as their advertising expenditures. Let me repeat that in case it sailed over your head..
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No need to repeat things on a message board, I can go back and read it again if I don't understand something. You don't seem to be aware of how P&L statements work, so let me explain it, as someone who has done a few. They are submitted quarterly, (that's 4 times a year), and they show expenditures and revenues for the preceding quarter. At the end of what is called the "fiscal year" a company presents an annual report for its stockholders, and this indicates expense and revenue for the preceding year. Now, if it cost my company $500 million to research and develop something, in this case a drug... that $500 million is not simply figured in to the quarterly P&L statement, it is often what is called a "deferred expense" and only a portion is figured into the quarterly statement and spread out over 10 years, maybe 20, depending on the bond used to secure the financing. Using this method, the company can indeed show a profit and pay its employees, and still make a payment on the R&D cost. IF they were (as you claim) forced to absorb the cost of all R&D before calculating profit, hundreds of these business would go under every year.

The amount the drug companies spend on advertising is triple what they spend on R&D. And why is that?
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It's because we live in a capitalist society, unlike the former Soviet Union, where you would prefer we lived.

Because WE paid for the majority of the R&D with our taxes, which fund the NIH which in turn and in most cases either funded the research done at university medical centers, or did the research itself, then contracted a pharmaceutical company to produce the drug. In fact, of the 14 most efficacious drugs developed in the last 25 years, the NIH either performed or funded the R&D on 11 of them. The most prescribed cancer drug in the world was developed directly by NIH, and the production contracted to Bayer, who immediately jacked the price up 1000%. So we are paying twice for the drug, once with out taxes, where we clearly received value for our tax dollars, and a second time at the drug store, where we received nothing but a thoroughly unpleasant, old-fashioned screwing. Up our backsides. with no lubricant, and certainly without a kiss.
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Wal-mart will fill your prescriptions for $4.... did you know that?

On what do you base your claim that the US has the best health care system? Beside your usual mindless jingoism, that is? We rank #1 only in health care cost per capita, and 37th in overall quality of health care delivered, behind not only the rest of the G20 industrialized nations. but 17 developing nations as well.
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The US leads the world in medical advancement, technology, and research. Most of what the rest of the world has, is a direct result of America's exceptional health care system. People literally come to America to receive health care. The world's best doctors come here to practice medicine. If there is a reason for us being rated so low on quality of health care, it is the massive burdensome government mandates and bureaucracies burdening the system.

Finally, where trhe hell did you get the cretinous notion that making something available to everybody guarantees less availability. Do you know what an oxymoron is? Look in the dictionary. Do you know what a moron is? Look in the mirror.
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Well, I get that from a really simple concept I learned when I was three years old, apparently you didn't. If I have 20 apples to share with my 5 best friends, each one will get 4 apples, but if I share them with 20 friends (more people) then they will only get 1 apple each (less). The more available you make ANYTHING, the less available it becomes. This principle works with apples or health care. We have a set number of doctors, hospitals, and health care services, currently providing health care for X number of people... if we increase X, the amount of health care per person will have to decline, we aren't increasing the number of doctors, hospitals or health care services, we are only making them more available to more people.
 
 
Mott the Hoople said:
I suggest then that you do some research on how excess capacity affects cost in health care.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2004/march/health_care_marketpl.php

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/pmc/articles/PMC1070342/pdf/hsresearch00032-0117.pdf

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4149/is_6_33/ai_54035830/

http://www.healthbeatblog.com/2008/10/the-truth-about.html

http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Ac...ice Capacity Evidence and Policy Options.ashx

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2109794
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that's counter intuitive.....if a medical office has a doctor that isn't producing enough billing to pay his salary they would just lay him off......your articles are talking about equipment and hospital beds, not doctors....
 
PostmodernProphet said:
that's counter intuitive.....if a medical office has a doctor that isn't producing enough billing to pay his salary they would just lay him off......your articles are talking about equipment and hospital beds, not doctors....
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:wall: And if a hospital has an trauma surgeon and there's not any traumas in the community that month do they lay him off? It may be counter intuitive but yes, an excessive number of physicians lead to higher cost for that very reason. What good is a hospital without doctors? So they do mean doctors, nurses, technicians, staff as well as equipment and hospitals when they refer to excess capacity.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
:wall: And if a hospital has an trauma surgeon and there's not any traumas in the community that month do they lay him off? It may be counter intuitive but yes, an excessive number of physicians lead to higher cost for that very reason. What good is a hospital without doctors? So they do mean doctors, nurses, technicians, staff as well as equipment and hospitals when they refer to excess capacity.
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You're not going to have to worry about doctors Mott...

Investment Business Journal did a survey and found; four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.

So now you are going to have half as many doctors across America practicing medicine... treating an extra, what? 30 million or so? And somehow, by the Grace of Liberalism, we are going to have more accessible health care and better quality?

Thus far, I have only seen one of you pinheads tell the truth, when you finally admitted that you want to destroy all competition and have the government completely take over health care. I'm glad one of you finally stopped lying about it, and admitted what we knew all along.
 
People should be required to take economics 101 in college.
Double the number of doctors and it won't cost $250 for him to say hello to you the morning after surgery.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
:wall: And if a hospital has an trauma surgeon and there's not any traumas in the community that month do they lay him off? It may be counter intuitive but yes, an excessive number of physicians lead to higher cost for that very reason. What good is a hospital without doctors? So they do mean doctors, nurses, technicians, staff as well as equipment and hospitals when they refer to excess capacity.
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Eliminating excess capacity drives prices up. Ask the oil cartels.

When they want to drive wages down, they change all the immigration laws and start importing lots of foreigners to drive down wages and the standard of living.

These methods are tried and true. Your head is on upside down or something.
 
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