Redstate

but AN answer to a monstrously complex problem. Newt's ideas about portable, personal medical records, data mining, insurance portability etc. would make a big dent in medical costs. Maybe not so much as real tort reform would make by reducing the amount of defensive medicine practiced in America today, but a big dent nonetheless.

This is one place where government, big employers, and even union trusts can actually do something good. It would be relatively easy for a government to start with its employees and medicare/medicaid recipients in building the electronic medical records systems. It could easily be a simple as a coded ID card and terminals at the provider's office. The same system could also greatly simplify and speed billing and payment. With the data built this way, the plan administrators could implement a data mining program to catch conflicting prescriptions, duplicate treatments or prescriptions, doctor shopping, and the like. There is a "Big Brother" feeling to some of it, but you sacrifice a lot of medical privacy when you rely on someone else to pay your medical bills.

In any event, these are very effective cost containment tools that use much the same tools that are already well developed in the credit card industry and in ecommerce. There just needs to be an interest in applying it to group medical plans.
In Vino Veritas

all the Canadians coming here for medical care? It's obviously the result of the high quality care they receive at home.

all the US folks going up to Canada to buy their drugs? It's obviously the result of the affordable care they receive at home.

the Canadian taxpayers subsidizing the US customer's drugs. Of course, if we had Canada's proce controls, most of those drugs wouldn't exist. But to comprehend that, you'd have to understand economics, something most socialists ( I mean democrats) can't comprehend.

...they're also subject to quantity controls (albeit sometimes implicit) due to the fact that they're often being sold to the Canadian government near marginal cost. So those greedy Americans not only own all the drug patents, they're taking other countries' pills in the name of competition that doesn't even exist!

...or something like that.

"I don't understand why the same newspaper commentators who bemoan the terrible education given to poor people are always so eager to have those poor people get out and vote." - P.J. O'Rourke

Its just that the government covers alot of the cost. So who is really getting screwed is the Canadian government as those Americans buying drugs in Canada are getting a break on the backs of Canadians paying those higher taxes.

... because the American pharmaceutical companies sell to the Canadians at a cheaper price than they charge in the U.S.

The Canadian government decides what price it will allow for a drug. The manufacturer can either choose to sell at that controlled price or not sell any. They usually opt to sell in Canada at the controlled price, even though it's less than the American price.

Because we're one of the few countries where the market sets the price of patented drugs I suspect that we're in fact subsidizing drugs for Canada and any other country who negotiates the collective price. Because the drug company needs to recoup billions in investments - not just for the drug in question but for the 20 that ultimately failed - a lower price in Canada has to be compensated for by a bigger price in the States.

You're welcome hosers.

Consensus doesn't prove anything, in science or anywhere else, except in democracy, maybe. - Reid Bryson, speaking on Global Warming

Because the drug company needs to recoup billions in investments ... a lower price in Canada has to be compensated for by a bigger price in the States.

That's a very common misunderstanding of how the market works.

A manufacturer of a drug will set its U.S. price at what it believes is the profit maximizing price (or else the management deserves to be sued for violation of fiduciary obligation to the share holders). Whether or not that price is enough to recoup investment costs,including research failures, is irrelevant to the question of what price maximizes profits (or minimizes losses).

What price they sell in Canada, or whether they sell in Canada, has absolutely no effect on what's the profit maximizing price in the U.S. An exception would be if American consumers found it convenient to buy at the lower Canadian price, which is why drug companies are fighting so hard for government protection against reimported American drugs.

While disagreeing with one one of your points, I forgot to note that I agree that we subsidize drugs for the rest of the world. If the United States had price controls like other countries, many drugs would never have been discovered, because the companies wouldn't have seen enough potential profit from high prices to justify expensive research.

Being the world leader is a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.

the production of tobacco which we ship to the entire world, so I guess that sort of evens things out.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

...they are tripping over themselves to come use our system!

Founder and contributor to The Minority Report and Senior writer for The Hinzsight Report

It may only be funny to me though?

Founder and contributor to The Minority Report and Senior writer for The Hinzsight Report

I was just not certain that it was not a typo.

It's war -- so when can we start shooting back at the enemy Democrats?