Things will never change as long as we are a for profit based healthcare system. We R&D the drugs, invest a ton of money in the drugs, sell them extremely cheap to other countries, then bilk our own citizens at a huge profit. I can't even use my own medicare, that is rated as one of the best, has no donut hole, and I pay more than 100 bucks into per month. They make me pay 20% of the total cost of major drugs like colistin and pulmozyme/tobi etc. Just pulmozyme alone would cost me around 700 dollars a month...FOR ONE DRUG.
There is no thing as a free ride, I wouldn't want one. I just want healthcare that charges me a reasonable fee per month (like what i'm doing now), and very reasonable copays (5-20 bucks per drug), and I get the care/treatments my doc demands. All of which are impossible with a for profit based system that answers to share holders to keep the companies profitability as high as possible. Can't pay the copays/premiums, and don't work? Then you have to donate your time in whatever capacity you can community service wise.
I get so pissed when I hear people who were either born very fortunate, don't have someone with a catastrophic illness in their life, or buy into the crap talk radio spews. We *CAN* have a health care system that is both responsible, half government funded, and quality care. Oh no we can't pay for it? We spend over 12 billion in Iraq alone per MONTH, and in the five years of us there, have spent over 1.2 TRILLION dollars.
Also, instead of sending countless dollars to foreign countries for their citizens, how about we take care of our own problems first? The free market won't fix/better the healthcare system, it's been that way forever, and it's still broken. My god we put men on the moon, split the atom, and have robots roaming mars...And we can't provide quality healthcare at a fair price for our own citizens? It's issues like this that highlight the flaws in capitalism. Of all things we have to deal with, healthcare should not be based on profit.
I'm an independent, and not on fire for any candidate...But show me a republican who puts the environment, and dramatically restructuring our healthcare system to something all of us could benefit from and i'd vote for them NOW. That won't happen, so I have two candidates on the dem side who have large flaws as well, atleast those two are attempting to change something, and not more of the same.
Kill all the lobbyists and corporate lawyers...That would be a great start.
