"Keep the guvmint out of my medicare!": Insurance Lobby Organizes Elderly Hecklers

Woah - I will have to see my doctor today!

 

hehe steve where it's manufactured is not where it's dev'd.. us is notorious for that.. we dev here then farm it out to be made cheaply.. anyways look up accredo

 

You what, you out source to Switzerland! Honestly, Switzerland... Switzerland


What about it? http://www.accredo.org.uk/


Seriously, I'm not sure where your going with the Accredo bit, it provides prescription medicine its hardly unique, Walmart does it doesn't it.

 

here I don't want to get insulting.. so I'll just link what a simple google search gave me.. I can scan the actual bosetan instructions that come with the 5k bottle if you'd like.. or do you want me to make up a story http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Accre...ribute+its+First+Non-Injectable...-a080555125

that's when it was ready to go.. dec 2001- and no they aren't from the uk XD I don't see why you want to argue over this, what are you trying to prove? my gf was one of the first to take the drug- only reason I'm posting this is because you seem intent on spreading disinformation for whatever reason

 

You are so misinformed that I don't know where to start.

First off, because the NHS is the main health care employer, it can set the standard that health care professionals have to adhere to in order to be able to work --and it does. Big time. Until Clinical Psychologists were included in the Health Professions Council this year, I could have come from Holland and set up shop privately anywhere. To work in the NHS however, I had to go through a set of gruelling Statement of Equivalence examinations and placements, set by the British Psychological Society to attain Chartered status.

Most professionals that work in private health care also work in the NHS. In the UK, employment by the NHS is a seal of approval: you know your private doctor is no "Doctor Nick" if he also works in the NHS. Even so, a second opinion is a statutory patient right under the NHS. It has to be offered to you. For free.

Second, it is breathtaking arrogance to assume that the US pharmaceutical industry is the only game in town. Of the top 50 companies, only 20 are US based. Take a particular note of R&D spending: Pfizer (US) comes top, but GlaxoSmithKline (UK) is second, followed by Germany's Bayer. Of the ten most sold drugs worldwide, only one is owned by a US company.

US is considerer the leader in medical research, including pharmaceutical development, but US drug prices are also among the highest in the world. In 2000, US based firms developed 29 of the 75 top-selling drugs; firms from the second-largest market, Japan, developed eight, and the United Kingdom contributed 10. France, which imposes price controls, developed three.

Nevertheless health outcomes in Japan, the UK and France are all significantly better than those of the US. It seems that although the US invents a lot of fancy drugs, its own people cannot afford them. I already mentioned an example in which a US company sold pacemakers for $5000,-- each to the European market, but for $35000,-- each to the US market.

And if with "ph" you mean Pulmonary Hypertension, yeah, us yokels in the UK wouldn't know what to do with that. It's not as if we have got a specialist service for that, or one specifically for children at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Or a National Clinical Audit Support Programme to ensure a service standard across the whole of the UK (so that there are no Dr. Mutombo's anywhere telling people they have three months to live).

It's not as if its most effective treatment, Prostacyclin was developed during the 1960s by a UK research team headed by John Vane. Or that the second most used treatment, Iloprost was developed by Bayer Schering AG in Germany. Or that your much lauded Tracleer is an invention by Actelion Pharmaceuticals, Switzerland. That's right: you have the relationship back to front. Actelion invented the drug; Accredo is simply a distributor.

Get a grip already. In the UK your girlfriend would be just fine. And from where I'm sitting, she appears to be benefitting from drugs researched and developed in UK and Europe, not the US.

 

I never said it was developed in the UK i never said that it wasn't first approved for use in the US and i never claimed that the NHS isn't slow in adopting new drugs at times.
What i was getting at is quite simple, just because you spend less money doesn't mean the drugs won't be developed. The R&D will happen as long as there is some one to buy it and since the NHS uses it shows that there is market out side of the US and thus there probably would be under a socialist US system. I'm afraid the FUD is on your part.

 

I didn't mean you guys have a yokel system running there.. it sounds really good to be honest.. and actually steve I owe you an apology =] I was wrong.. acelion did dev it and they are swiss

the swiss actually have one of the best healthcare systems though- it's not nhs based either from what I understand of it.. oh man, I gotta talk with those guys at standford- I remember talking with them back in 2001 when it was just passed by the fda- I ASSumed it was a us based drug

@nexxo.. here we have hospitals that are private only- alot like what sweden has.. if I was on nhs I couldn't go to those.. they have really good doctors who studied at standford in the private hospital.. they understood what was going on- they feel like they are cutting edge.. hate to have to let that go under a nhs

 

The Swiss have a system similar to most of Europe: a government-subsidised standard health insurance for all, with the option of having private health insurance on top of that. In the UK we have the free NHS but people can take out private health care insurance or pay for private health care out of their own pocket.

It used to be either/or until recently: either you go to the NHS for treatment of a particular health problem or to a private hospital (although you can take one problem to the NHS and a different one private), but now you can go to the NHS and "top up" with private health care treatments on the same health problem.

So in the UK you could go to a private hospital, no problem, if you have the private insurance or can afford to pay for it from your own pocket. But realistically, you won't get much better treatment there. The NHS hospitals may look run-down a bit and you may wait for a few hours in a crowded waiting room, but the actual treatment is top class.

 

yeah that's cool.. well I don't know how far we can bend over here anymore

who knows wth going to happen with our healthcare- your screwed one way or the other XD

&edit- oh yeah dr mutombo wasn't a racist reference if you took it that way nexxo.. just that asshole really pissed me off- I wish doctors who didn't know stuff just be honest and admit they don't

 

every god damn one of you arguing against national healthcare is a big dumb babby

 

%#@* you, I'm going on facebook where everyone is my friend!!!!

 

I think that is something we have in common. The NHS is considered almost unsustainable in its present form --the problem here being that when people get something for free they stop valuing it and stop using it sensibly. There is an abdication of personal responsibility for one's health.

So the government is flirting with the idea of the NHS becoming just a health care purchaser (not provider and purchaser) with the private sector competing for the contracts. I suspect that it would get pretty close to the healthcare system as Obama envisages it. Another solution considered is to charge a nominal fee for GP visits.

Ironically, attacks on the NHS from the US have done the NHS a world of good --UK citizens are suddenly realising that actually they get a really good deal here.

I didn't take it that way. Being an asshole is an equal opportunity thing.

I always thought of you as a MySpace kinda guy...

/me runs...

 

I was, but there was an incident...

 

Involving a watermelon with a hole cut in it? Don't tell me you put it in the microwave first!

 

no, that actually makes you pretty popular on myspace.

/this thread is officially rolling down hill and out of control.

 

I suppose that's an appropriate outcome, given the topic.

-monkey

 

True, maybe an infusion of new info is in order so I can get the watermelon image out of my mind's eye

Reminder: I'm not so much opposed to social medicine (for you if you choose) as much as lack of faith that the US can run/manage/afford given that we now have a $9T deficit over the next 10 years.

New examples:
Financial Mismanagement
Scary Activity from our existing social medical programs

And yet more hot left on left crime and intimidation (it ain't just the narrative of some wacked out - zombie insurance drones)

 

Regarding the VA blunder, all I can say is that mistakes happen, and they're not limited to government programs. In April of this year, UC San Diego mistakenly sent out acceptance letters to 29,000 applicants. The same thing happened at Northwestern University in 2008, and at the University of Georgia in 2006. Although those examples relate to education rather than health care, it does show that mistakes can happen with any large organization, not just government-run entities. As thehippoz has shown, his girlfriend was mistakenly diagnosed with 3 months to a year to live.

There was an interesting bit on NPR this morning with James Morone, co-author of The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office. Monroe talked about the fight Lyndon Johnson went through to pass the legislation that created Medicare, and how it relates to the current health care reform debate. In Monroe's opinion, one of the best things Johnson did was suppress the costs of the Medicare program. Arguably Medicare is one of the most beloved social programs we have - and arguably it could be managed more efficiently. Monroe suggests that if people had known about the future cost estimates, fear and uncertainty would have set in due to the large numbers involved, and the legislation never would have passed. As Johnson put it, a $300 million program yesterday becomes $900 million when projected 5 or 6 years down the road.

Monroe went on to draw parallels between the way in which the right tried to defeat Medicare and the debate going on today. Ronald Reagan, then the California gubernatorial candidate, used the fear of Socialism to oppose Medicare:

Sounds very familiar.

-monkey

 

While I totally get your point, with the exception of Northwestern, I find it funny that the other two are state run schools. Especially since I recently worked for a state school and saw from the inside how the system is so upside down.

Yes, mistakes are made, no doubt. But there is a big difference between tens of thousands being disappointed by not actually being accepted and tens of thousands being told they have a ALS. Again, I realize that you acknowledge that you are not comparing oranges and oranges. Making mistakes on the scale that the fed and some states does is a frightening thing. I have listened to that entire Reagan record and it is astonishing how applicable it is today's debate.

 

New reports about the bill revealing some serious concerns regarding patient privacy...

It is frightening that this could have already passed and the press is still mulling through the bill finding ever more gems like this. We are told to accept this bill even though it keeps changing. The so-called "death panel" amendment has been removed already. As a piece of legislation, it's a joke.