Medicynic

In our third-world like health care non-system bribes and kickbacks are a normal way of doing business.  We’ve previously commented on generous gifts and salaries given providers to use a drug company’s product, this week it’s pharmacists.

The U.S. government sued Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. Tuesday, claiming it gave kickbacks to pharmacies to switch kidney transplant patients from competitors’ drugs to its own.

And

The government said Novartis offered one pharmacist in Los Angeles a “bonus” rebate amounting to several hundred thousand dollars to induce the pharmacist to “shoulder the burden” of switching 700 to 1,000 transplant patients to Myfortic.

Medicynical Note:  Unbelievable but true.

What’s doubly distressing is that this is not unique or unprecedented behavior by these companies which formerly called themselves “ethical.  When money is involved apparently another form of ethics emerge, i.e. greed—and it’s not good…. for patients or health care or costs.

Tricare is as dysfunctional as the rest of our non-system of health care.  It’s costly, redundant and driven by the notion that the military types deserve something special in return for their service.  The problem is that life long health care is an expensive gift that simply doesn’t stop giving (or rather taking).  This is a problem: 

Despite dire warnings from three defense secretaries about the uncontrollable cost, Congress has repeatedly rebuffed Pentagon efforts to establish higher out-of-pocket fees and enrollment costs for military family and retiree health care as an initial step in addressing a harsh fiscal reality. The cost of military health care has almost tripled since 2001, from $19 billion to $53 billion in 2012, and stands at 10 percent of the entire defense budget.

Read the rest of the article to understand what’s happened.

Medicynical Note:  The truth is all citizens need affordable access to health care.  Our haphazard piecemeal  approach has resulted in a totally dysfunctional, historically expensive non system that leaves 50 million people without coverage. 

The crisis in health care is self inflicted and solvable (every other industrialized country has a national health plan).  Our excessive costs result from the inordinate influence the health industrial complex has over our legislators controlling any real attempt to assure quality and economy in health care. 

It is ironic that the rather conservative military types strongly oppose a national health care solution, but want just that for themselves. 

The Supreme Court is about to review the practice of the “ethical” pharmaceutical industry paying generic manufacturers to keep their product from competing with the branded drug. 

After a long period of exclusivity and monopoly the drug industry wants more.  Rather than price their drugs reasonably the companies push to stifle competition.  The new American way?

The case, Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, No. 12-416, centers on whether the maker of a brand-name drug can pay a generic-drug company to keep the generic version off the market. Based on antitrust law, the obvious answer would seem to be no, the view voiced by the government and most recently upheld by a federal appeals court.

Medicynical note:  Yet another reason we lead the world in drug and health care costs.  There are a number of drugs available as generics overseas that continue to be sold as branded items here.  Where is the outrage?

I never ceased to be amazed how dysfunctional and  bad our joke of a health care system is.  This is the tip of the iceberg…..

A few nights a year Tennessee holds a lottery for applications  for help with health care expenses.

State residents who have high medical bills but would not normally qualify for Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, can call a state phone line and request an application. But the window is tight — the line shuts down after 2,500 calls, typically within an hour — and the demand is so high that it is difficult to get through.

There are other hurdles, too. Applicants have to be elderly, blind, disabled or the “caretaker relative” of a child who qualifies for Medicaid, known here as TennCare. Their medical debt has to be high enough that if they paid it, their income would fall below a certain threshold. Not many people end up qualifying, but that does not stop thousands from trying.

Medicynical Note:  America is unique in so many ways, some however are just plain embarrassing.  

It should be noted that America (the U.S.) is the only industrialized country in the world without a system to provide health care to all it’s citizens.