Phil & Mary
Of course, hard-core conservatives would rather the man die than get treatment for which he couldn’t pay since that would mean their health care or tax money would subsidize it. Exaggeration? I once heard on a conservative talk show some years ago two guys spouting exactly that. Be able to pay your own way or die. How much you want to also bet they were Christians?
Hospital seeks $42,000 — from a homeless man
Phil Hughes, a homeless man she had befriended[, …] showed up one day and offered to paint her house number on the curb for cash.
[Mary Olsen] gave him $5 and a lunch of turkey and mashed potatoes. During the next few years, she hired him for painting, yard work and other odd jobs.
Hughes has no family in the area, so when he developed a high fever and blood infection a year and a half ago and sought treatment at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, Olsen told him to give her name and address as an emergency contact.
“I didn’t want him to die and not know about it,” she said.
The $42,000 bill addressed to Hughes that later arrived at Olsen’s home covered the three or four days he spent in the hospital.
[A] collection agency began hounding her with phone calls looking for Hughes. The collectors especially liked to call early Saturday mornings.
She told them Hughes did not live there, was homeless and could not afford to pay. Her pleas made no difference: The calls continued daily for a couple of weeks.
“Phil is so obviously an indigent person that no one would expect he would have enough money for lunch,” she said, “let alone a hospital bill.”
I especially liked the hospital’s, “who me?” response.
#67 – Mr. Fusion,
I think the pay rates for doctors have not been going up as quickly as the other medical costs in this country. I have a cousin that is a good doctor with an established practice. He doesn’t make a ridiculous salary. Sure there are exceptions.
However, I think if we’re going to talk about salaries, I’d start with the executives in the health insurance companies. Last I heard, the CEO of United Healthcare earns 100 megabucks a year. Someone here once quoted higher. And, other execs there make high eight figure salaries. This is obscene.
Let’s just get rid of the profit motive, especially for not giving care in the cases of the insurance companies. All else will be secondary, significant, but secondary.
#71 – MM,
These guys are doing a tad more than staying in business. In fact, they’re doing a tad more than making a nice profit. They’re raking in the bucks hand over fist. And, they’re refusing to supply drugs or even allow generic manufacturers to do so, for third world countries that can’t afford their exorbitant rates.
>>.People not yet dying of AIDS need condoms now and we don’t
>>give ‘em enough of those
Take that up with Dumbya and the Pope.
>>after and only after, the drug has been on the market for
>>many years and the company has recouped the costs
>>many times over.
Well, that’s patent law for ya. If you don’t like it, you can take it up with the USPTO. As to recouping the costs “many times over”, the purpose of running a company is not to break even. It’s to make money. And yeah, drug companies make money, doctors make money, clergymen make money, everybody who is successful at what they do for a living makes money. Drug companies make a healthy profit. Could they get by with less? Probably, although their boards of directors would likely kick them to the curb. “Experienced” physicians make a median salary ranging from $250,000 to $1,350,000 per year AFTER expenses (entry-level salaries are all in the low to mid six figures). Could they get by on a little less? Sure.
Seems to me that we’ve made a lot of progress from the posts of “the drug only ‘costs’ them $0.10 in raw materials, and they charge $5.00 for it”.
#71, MM
Wrong again, which I attribute to your reading comprehension problem.
My #68, 68% of new drugs currently coming into the market are copy drugs of existing formulas.
I did NOT say generic. These copy drugs are similar to existing drugs BUT are sufficiently different enough to earn their own patent and not conflict with existing drug patents. These are NOT generic drugs and should not be confused, although with your reading comprehension problem, … .
I pointed out two examples, SSRIs (ie Prozac type drugs) and type II NSAIDs (Celebrex type drugs). For the first, for example Effexor is very similar in formula, effect, and efficacy to Prozac yet is sufficiently different that it is patented as its own drug. The only reason to prescribe Effexor over Prozac is because the physician has been convinced by the drug company that this patented drug is better than the now generic Prozac.
BTW, your link in #73, http://tinyurl.com/39×8km has nothing to do with drug companies. Also, please do not put TINY URL in brackets, it destroys the linking feature.
Donating drugs is fine. Unfortunately, too often these drugs are not what are needed or are out of date. Many times recipient nations have had to destroy drug shipments for these reasons.