Reform needed on health care, too

Obamacare opponents had an “I told you so” moment last month, when the nation’s largest health insurance provider, UnitedHealthcare, said it plans to exit most of the Affordable Care Act state exchanges where it operates by 2017.

The company’s reasoning is quite simple — it is losing money … a lot of it. UnitedHealthcare said it lost $475 million in the state exchanges last year and could lose another $500 million this year. It’s tough to blame a company for not continuing a money-losing proposition such as this.

Those fighting Obamacare will say this is an example of why the health-care law doesn’t work. Obamacare proponents will say adjustments to the law — and from insurers — was bound to happen.

But what everyone seems to overlook, and may have overlooked from the beginning, is the problem is two-fold: We need to fix not only the cost and availability of health insurance but that of health care as well.

Case in point: The price of Narcan, a drug used to revive people who overdose on heroin, has soared recently. The reason? No one is sure, but health officials find it odd that as the drug is becoming more prevalent, and more states are using it, it is suddenly becoming more expensive to obtain.

New York has spent more than $5 million to purchase the drug, and New York City announced last month it will fund an additional 7,500 kits.

New York isn’t the only state to make Narcan readily available to first responders, as more states are jumping on board as its success is touted.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick changed the state’s regulations to make Narcan more widely available, and soon after he did, the price of the drug doubled in his state — from $15 to more than $30 per dose, according to the state’s attorney general.

It’s curious to see the cost increase so rapidly as the drug gains more footing. Outsiders who don’t know much about the industry — ourselves included — would say it looks like a business is taking advantage of a situation to dramatically increase profits.

Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe there is a reason that producing the life-saving drug on a mass scale forces the cost of doing so to rise substantially.

Or maybe it’s a small sign that the problem with our country’s health-care system isn’t just that insurance is out of whack; maybe health-care providers need to be looked at as well.