re: #571 Scion9

I concur with your disagreement.

The reason Americans pay more isn’t because we don’t “negotiate” reimbursement rates. A great many European countries, including France don’t negotiate at all. It is more a long the lines of confiscation of goods from pharmaceutical companies. The government pays cost basically and Euro pharmaceutical companies make the lion’s share of their profits off of America’s broken system. If they couldn’t make that profit abroad they wouldn’t be in the business of making drugs.

Things cost so much here, in part because we are subsidizing the cost of Europe’s healthcare system. If we adopted their model and simply took what we wanted from pharma and medtech companies and offered them virtually no reimbursement at all they would collapse because there would literally be no market and no profits to be had.

This is why the European system isn’t even on the table here. If we adopted it, all the other countries that we are paying for would have to start paying their share of the burden, which they can’t and won’t do. We pay twice as much as France in taxes towards healthcare for much, much less in results not because “The System” is bad here and good in France, but because French taxpayers aren’t paying in full for what is being provided from their private sector; American taxpayers, consumers, and ‘excess’ profits from the global marketplaces are.

Assuming that’s true, your solution is to continue America’s role as subsidizer of last resort for the rest of the world’s health care?

Not that I buy your analysis; I’d just like to know how you propose to deal with it if it’s a fact.