Quote:
Originally Posted by Minte
Should the government take over the companies that design,engineer and manufacture the equipment used in healthcare. The pharmaceutical companies that spend decades and billions of dollars to create the medicines for the world. How about the schools that train doctors and healthcare personnel.
Healthcare is business. It's that pursuit of profit that drives the technology and research the population benefits from. Take away those profits and the healthcare industry will suffer badly.
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If the government really wanted to make it fair they would allow people to act on their own and import drugs from other countries that sell them for significantly lower prices. If I run a business building a product I will go out on the free market and find the best parts vendor I can. If that means buying the parts I use in my product from Canada, or China or whomever, so be it. Citizens should be given that same free market ability. I can either pay $300 for the medicine from my local pharmacy or I can order it online and get the exact same thing for $90.
The reason this hasn't happened yet is because most of the people out there have some kind of health insurance that covers the cost of prescriptions so they don't really care how much they cost as long as they only have to pay a small co-pay. They also don't care how much the hospital bill is and how much they were overcharged for some things because their insurance is paying for it.
If the government doesn't want to regulate how much the pharmaceutical companies increase their profit margins on the drugs they sell, fine. But they should afford me the same courtesy and free market availability that they do any business in this country. They can't allow these companies to charge 300% more here for the same drugs and force me to pay that by not letting me use the free market to find a better price.
Also, much of the research these companies do is funded by the government. The government funded labs develop these drugs and then sell them to pharm companies. Yes, the pharm companies do develop their own stuff, but it is not as much as most people would think.