War on Obamacare

[The Thriller]

Hopefully we use this as an election issue come fall. Skyrocketing premiums and declining coverage due to republican leadership don’t make for a successful midterm. But hey, at least they passed tax cuts to the rich to keep the donors happy, right?

The Trump administration said Thursday night that it will not defend the Affordable Care Act against the latest legal challenge to its constitutionality — a dramatic break from the executive branch’s tradition of arguing to uphold existing statutes and a land mine for health insurance changes the ACA brought about.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...f56e86-6a9c-11e8-9e38-24e693b38637_story.html

 

[Rubashov]

Medicare is great.

 

[The Thriller]

Medicare is great.

If Trump and the Republicans have their way, Medicare will be gone in the next few years.

 

[The Thriller]

This is a real issue and it affects us all whether we are republican or Democrat, young or old, rich or poor. The deregulation we see for big pharm permits them to rip off the american consumer. Which, is annoying enough if we are talking about some commodity like cotton or popcorn. But becomes a matter of life or death when talking about pharmaceutical drugs.

Why should big pharmaceutical get away with 97,000 percent price hikes? It’s not like you can boycott taking your prescriptions.

Why shouldn’t Medicare be able to negotiate the prices? To me it seems unfair and just ends up costing the government (taxpayers) more in the end since they collectively cannot negotiate for lower costing drugs through their government.

The American health care system is going to see big changes in the near future. Which direction do you think it’s going to go?

Since Mallinckrodt purchased the drug from Questcor in 2014, the price of Acthar has gone from $32,000 a vial to nearly $39,000. In 2000, before Questcor purchased it, it was $40. Questcor shocked the medical community when, on August 27, 2007, it raised the price overnight from $1,600 to $23,000 a vial.
Last year, Mallinckrodt paid $100 million without admitting liability to settle a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission and five states stemming from Questcor's purchase of a competitor drug that the FTC said "threatened its monopoly."

And

Why would Medicare pay nearly $2 billion over five years when there was a far cheaper alternative?
Stephen Schondelmeyer says you can thank lawmakers for that: Medicare is not allowed to negotiate drug prices or tell doctors what drugs to prescribe.
"Our Congress has told the Medicare program, you cannot control drug prices," says Schondelmeyer, a professor of pharmaceutical economics at the University of Minnesota. He directs the College of Pharmacy's PRIME Institute, which studies economic and policy issues related to pharmaceuticals. "We don't have any government process for evaluating, regulating and managing drug prices."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/health/acthar-mallinckrodt-medicare-claims-doctor-payments/index.html

 

[The Thriller]

Thank god we don’t have a single payer system. Otherwise, our health care system would really suck and patients would end up getting gouged...



I really hope that in spring of 2021, Democrats blow up the filibuster and pass much needed health care reform. It’s time to join the rest of the industrialized world and provide universal health care and finally bring some much needed regulation.