Krugman: "Ignorance is Bliss" (or what Big Pharma is trying to do to the SB)

[amborin]

"...That is, your ignorance is the drug makers’ (and the medical equipment makers’) bliss.

This is really unbelievable:

The drug and medical-device industries are mobilizing to gut a provision in the stimulus bill that would spend $1.1 billion on research comparing medical treatments, portraying it as the first step to government rationing.

Because freedom is all about laying out vast sums on medical treatments without knowing whether they’re actually doing any good.

Remember this the next time someone talks about “entitlement reform” (which will probably happen in the next three seconds or so.) Health care costs are the main reason long-term fiscal projections look so scary — and here we have corporate interest trying to prevent us, not from trying to spend our health dollar more wisely, but from even trying to find out what we get for the health care dollar.

This is truly vile."

<http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/>

[stray cat]

1. it probably will be a first step toward gov determining your treatment odds

and whether its worth paying for your treatment. However, health care must be rationed at some level - its just hard if the choice is against a loved one.

[mopinko]

2. how about we ration it by

only paying for what works? by telling docs that leave a sponge in a patient "too bad" when he presents the bill for the surgery.

[madrchsod]

4. actually medicare is`t paying for these oversights

along with bedsore treatments and other neglect. i know all to well just how easy the hospitals take no responsibility for their neglect when they know insurance company will pay.

[mopinko]

5. sometimes i think medical errors are just one more way to make money.

i have been in the position of watching a doc get paid the first time, and then get paid to go back and fix their mistakes. just gets 2 whole treatments paid for on the same patient.
i was in the hospital once where they were having trouble starting an iv on me, took 5 tries by 3 different people over the course of 2 hours. they had the stones to charge me for all the needles and lines that they spoiled.
funny how billing errors are always on their side of the balance sheet. but that is another rant.

[alittlelark]

3. Big Pharma makes $$$$$ off sick ppl. No $$ in Healthy ppl

Why should they want healthy ppl?:shrug: