Robert, if you had the power of your convictions you would completely reject socialized medicine. There is nothing about making a profit that excludes helping people, the definition of commercial success is recognizing a need and fulfilling it with your product or service. Capitalism has done more to lift millions out of poverty and misery than all the bearded do-gooders and NGO’s in history combined. Innovations in pharmaceuticals have been a huge contributor to the efficacy of modern medicine and a boon to the health and well-being of everyone.
Your critique is we take too many drugs and Big Pharma profits too much from necessary medications and apparently wants everyone addicted to pain killers. How is it possible for the situation you describe to occur? Patent protection for the most common heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure medications including cholesterol-lowering drugs, ACE inhibitors, insulins etc have long since expired.
In a free market there should be dozens of inexpensive generic equivalents available from other manufacturers. The only way Big Pharma can wildly overcharge for common, essential drugs is through government intervention that grants rent seeking corporations monopoly pricing for certain drugs. The cure is robust competition and a lessening of the anticompetitive regulatory web that makes it possible. That’s what Big Pharma is spending billions to avoid.
I’m covered by employer sponsored insurance as are 155 million people in the US, far more than the 76 million covered by Medicaid or the 55 million seniors covered by Medicare, it’s not as unusual as you’re imagining. Yes, there is a cap on lifetime benefits just as there is with every single payer plan in the world that says the budget for health care this year is X amount and because it’s “free” the compassion will be rationed (Charlie Gard was unavailable for comment.)
The US spends more than the rest of the world on a lot of things: electronics, automobiles, Christmas lights, orthodontics, cosmetic surgery, etc because we can afford it and want to. While prescription drug abuse is a problem prescription drugs are only 10 percent of annual US health care costs.
