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Drug Shortages, Price Gouging, And Our Broken Health Care System
Submitted by Michael Accad via The Mises Institute,
The shaming campaign that followed last week’s news of two generic drug prices somersaulting into the stratosphere after being acquired by private companies is not too surprising. The idea that a drug which cost $13.50 one day can cost $750 the next, seemingly on the whim of greedy Wall Street investors and pharma start-ups, is fodder for the outrage machine.
But what the outrage machine does not realize is the extent to which the generic healthcare supplies are constantly on the brink of shortage.
Every week I get a “drug shortage report” by email from my hospital. It lists the various items in short supply. Some drugs (for the most part generic ones) may even be absent from the shelves. And every week, the email also reminds me that there is a national shortage of normal saline.
Normal saline, for heaven’s sake!
What’s going on? Is our productive capacity in such a shamble that we can’t have the wherewithal to mix sterile salt and water and put it into a bag? Let’s go back to the basics.
Remember that in order for any product to be available in a sustainable way, there must be a supplier willing to make it and a buyer willing to pay for it at the price the supplier expects. Multiple buyers bid the price up, multiple suppliers bid it down.
It seems that for something as commodified as normal saline, making plenty of it should not be too much of a problem. After all, there is no shortage of #2 pencils, even if the profit margin on pencils is minuscule.
Welcome to our glorious world of regulated health economics.
On the buyer side, you have hospital administrators which have been trained to operate under the reality of fixed payments and onerous oversights. Every expense is a cost that cannot be passed on to the ultimate “consumer” of the good. Therefore, the lower the price of supplies, the better.
On the supply side, the regulatory apparatus overseeing the making of medical products is not known for its flexibility. The last thing bureaucrats want is any intimation that they are not tough enough on bugs and safety. Manufacturers must follow rules which have no regard for market realities and for how much the intended customer will be willing to spend for the product. For something like normal saline, profit margins become dangerously thin and may even be negative.
In such an environment, the tendency is for consolidation and bureaucratization. Manufacturers with disappearing profit margins merge. Indeed, we are left with a handful of mega-suppliers of hospital commodities. Purchasers also consolidate into large hospital chains or pool their buying resources into purchasing cooperatives.
These impersonal buyers and sellers, who are further and further removed from the ultimate use of the product, bundle purchases of commodities in large bulks. Normal saline is now bought and sold as a package deal with all sorts of other sundries, like toilet paper, tooth paste, and plastic tubs.
With the bundling of commodities, the system is prone to miscalculate supply and demand predictions. Demand predictions cannot be made with great accuracy because of the more centralized nature of the enterprise. And if a mismatch were to occur, no one would be held accountable. “There’s a shortage!” administrators on either side would say fatalistically.
Now, if we’re teetering on the brink of a shortage with something as widely needed and as easily produced as normal saline, it’s only to be expected that we would face actual shortages of generic drugs for rare diseases.
For the drug maker, the regulatory costs are unchangeable, whether the drug is used by many or by few. At the other end of the transaction, buyers are third-party payers whose interests and willingness to pay do not reflect the needs of the ultimate consumer. Producing generic drugs in such conditions offers no great hope of sustainability.
Under normal circumstances, if the economics of a product are such that it cannot be manufactured in the country except at a loss, an extremely effective safety valve is provided by the importation market. Lower foreign manufacturing costs can ensure an additional source of supply for the good.
Not so in healthcare, not so.
Our wise legislators, encouraged by the pharmaceutical industry and supported by the entrenched regulatory bureaucracy, have decided that importing medications from the outside is a big no-no. “It wouldn’t be safe!” they claim.
Not safe when we can produce plenty, perhaps. But safer than an actual shortage? Ergo, an opportunity for the “price gouger” about whom we should also add a few words.
First of all, to the extent that some patients are able to obtain access to the treatment after the price hike, the price gouger provides at least a modicum of service. In her absence, there may be no drug available at all.
Second, “price gouging” is a loose term that has no real economic meaning. There is no particular price increase that defines it. Nowhere in the press will we find what the “break-even” price might be for making cycloserine or pyrimethamine, to inform us of the magnitude of the expected profit.
As a matter a fact, the break-even price of any product can only be guesstimated, and the only one effectively willing to make that guess is the entrepreneur who engages and risks her assets. We must keep in mind that every entrepreneurial activity, however obnoxious it may seem to us, involves incommensurable risk or uncertainty.
It is not in the realm of the impossible, for example, that a price gouger could find himself losing money, even with a 5,000 percent initial price increase: under such conditions, patients and doctors may figure out alternative modes of treatment with existing drugs or (a happy outcome!), deregulation could allow the importation of these drugs from outside, thus evaporating the expected profit.
Third, to the extent that she wakes us up from our stupor, the price-gouger serves as a very effective signaling mechanism, telling us of a gaping unmet need she has managed to find a temporary solution for — however unpleasant and expensive her pill may be to swallow. She thus necessarily invites competitors to follow suit, or prompt us to re-examine the particular economic and regulatory environment that has fostered the shortage in question.
In a certain sense, then, the character assassination directed at the price gouger is akin to shooting the messenger pointing to the brokenness of our healthcare system. Perhaps it is to that system that the shaming should be directed.
And we may wish to do that fast. Normal saline could be the next vital supply to dry up.
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Ha ha. I work in medicine. The "price gouging" I see is in the expiration dates of materials and medicine. How the fuck does a sealed bottle of sterile water "expire"? Antibiotics, epi, saline, naltrexone . . .never in my career have I seen any evidence that supports published expiration dates. I'm conviced they are arbitrary. The best way to get people to buy more of your shit is regs that require you to shitcan it for no good reason.
Heavens to Betsy, my mates were drinking 1950's vintage Carling Black Label in 'Nam. Said even aged, it was still shit.
By and large as applied to most products, it's marketing. Notice a lot don't say "expiration date", but "best used by".
You think it's just drugs? Our government limits and confiscates vaccines which can be bought directly for $25, and then forces physicians to buy them from the government for $50. And then on top of that, passes Obamacare and doesn't reimburse the docs for the increase.
It's all a scam. Inside and out.
I don't think most of you have any idea how deep this has already gone. Doctors were removed from all important decision making years ago. They "boiled the frog" to get them out of the system. Its amazing how their "divide and conquer" policy withing the hospital bylaws changes worked. Total playbook followed and succeeded. All decisions are now made at the Federal level and implemented through mandates. You will not have access to Doc's without prior "approval" within 5 years.
Leave it to a homosexual negro owned by jew banksters to implement the best health care system money can buy.
Hope and change mutherfuckers!
The ACA took a system that was falling apart, and while claiming to fix it, put explosives in the middle and set them off. This system is now disintegrating at a remarkable pace. That it has been allowed to go on this long is among the most blatant examples of how our government/media/corporate masters now all work together, with none of them having any interest in helping average citizens. This law is disaster, plain and simple. Given that this is Obama's signature, his presidency may indeed go down as the singular worst in history. We are falling apart as fast as the Soviets did at the end. When is our "Berlin Wall comes down" moment coming? Pray soon!
If you like your pusher, you can keep your pusher.
"expiraton" date and "best before" are two different things.
Expiration date is for those things that might be harmful to take if enough time passes. Like milk.
The rest use best before, which is often arbitrary but noticiable, especially in foodstuffs.
Many things dont actually expire or degrade, but are still required by "food safety" (et al) laws to display a date. any date.
The savvy consumer knows which products these are.
But but but the corporations (in concert with lobbyists and .gov regulations) are doing it for your own personal protection & safety!
Just wait till it's Faaarrrreee! ;-)
Expiration dates on medications from Harvard Medical School.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/drug-expiration-dates-do-t...
Can anybody tell me how long I can keep coke before it expires?
I had weed in tupperware sitting in a drawer.
5 years later -- same high.
Cans or bottles......?
I think he meant the "miracle drug" Sigmund was so fond of.
Of course, he was nutz ;-)
It depends on the product. With nitrates the degradation can be rapid and is fairly well known. With other products it may assume exposure to air/oxygen and degradation rates of maybe 1-2%/year. Then there is the factor of liability lawyers and overzealous regulators. If you were a manufacturer on which side would you err? If you work in medicine you should know this.
The article's arguments are about developing a necessary drug and then marketing it. It makes no mention of some other company developing a necessary drug, where the company is sold and then the drug price is hiked by 1000% to cover the cost of the drug development, the cost of acquisition and the cost of future research (dubious, at best) plus the expected profit.
I'm a republican turned libertarian, I understand how prices can inflate in extreme circumstances, gasoline, for instance, during Hurricane Katrina, you must desperately need a product that is in scarce supply, but to raise a price, then artificially decrease the supply due to a monopolization in absolutely wrong. And that shit kid, with his smug looking face, would be one that I'd happily beat into a curb.
There's always Tijuana! Back in 1988, I bought a bottle of 800 mg (orange) ibuprofen to 'take the edge off' my athletic ills. 20 years later I found the same bottle that still had a couple of pills still in it.
They worked justr fine!
I have 2001 eurethramycin bought from TJ, 500 mg, Have two of them on a weekly basis since 2010. Since then the only time I've missed work was because of serious (death defying) hangovers (which seem to beome more frequent).
One of thousands of unknown unknowns that are gonna rip the average american up off his/her couch, shake him/her like a rag doll, and thrown him/her into a fire pit. It's gonna be ugly..
Price gouging, insurance gouging, medicaid fraud, an FDA that is run by the jackals who will release any drug that you will later see on an ambulance chaser commercials purported to cause the need for a colostomy bag, viginal prolapse and murderous psychotic episodes and of couse the big red flag that this entire western medical system was set up on Rockefeller's paradigm.
I don't see a problem here.
I have new doctor who has PHD in normal western medicine and a PHD in naturopathy... she actually cures things and cheaply. I highly recommend branching out or just not getting sick.
Good advice. but the thing to realise is that people want to be sick. It is one of the few remaining things in Western culture that instills a sense of meaning and purpose. Being 'sick' is a very common talking point.and it is totally poliutically incorrect to ever question a sickness so it cannot be challenged.
There is so much attention to be gained through being sick. I worked in a hospital for 4 years. The patients loved people fawning over them. These were elective surgeries too.
Exactly, I look at these old women who are histerical about death and terrorizing their family with their every ailment both real and imagined and it's just sad and completely lacking in dignity. Seeing these old people so frantic to the last minute and catching ambulances every two weeks makes me wonder how the heck we got like this.
We are all going to die it is not that big of a deal, most likely the other side is way better than than this dump and if not you wont know the difference. I have taken care of dying relatives and some will go with bravery and dignity and others will guilt and manipulate until the very last minute. I feel for people in the medical field both because of who you have to work for and who have to deal with.
I can often guess who actually likes being ill, disabled and handicapped just by their body language. You can even get money for it on top of all the psych bennies. It is an industry.
I've done some things that many might consider heroic.
I've done some things that many would condider idiotic.
I have the actual scars and shit that go along with both choices.
Death is not a fear of mine, I've lived long enough to see that there is a cycle and I had a brief moment to affect the world, and I did.
I may have that opportunity, again, somewhere in the future, but if I don't, I'm not going to regret it.
My fear is living too long. Being disdained by the youth as a useless eater, and cast off into the wilderness to die. That is my desicated corpse at the side of the road vision.
are you really blaming health care's problems on government regulation?
Insinuating that health care, too, needs more exposure to free market discipline?
Its like listening to a Leninist argue with a Trotskyist about how the Soviet Union got communism wrong. Free market fundamentalism, we sometimes call it.
So, are you a medical Leninist then? Do you understand, A. All parts of medicine? B. Free markets? C. The role of government/s in medicine?
Tell you what, champ. You go out and show how to do it right. You set up your own practice, pharmaceutical company, labs, device manufacturers, etc. and show how it should be done, preferably with no profit, right?
Odds are you will do at least as well as Cuba, right?
The medical system mainly treats mental problems. Pain is one thing, suffering is another. The former is unavoidable, the latter is a mental experience. You chose to suffer.
Find a way not to suffer and you will have no need for the snakeoil.
Ofcourse, the medical system is broken. It is exactly the same as a petty drug dealer. I lived next to a petty drug dealer for 2 years. The calibre of the clientele reveals all you need to know.
Suck it up. Stop wanting to be a victim for the attention.
Disclaimer: I accept there are emergencies, congenital diseases, etc. But even with some of those problems you can adapt and stop the mental suffering.
If the medical system is "broken" who broke it and when was in not broken?
By definition, no system of trade can be broken if it is a freely traded system. Only government can induce artificial forces to break things.
At the end of the day, no system of trade that relies on fiat can avoid being broken.
Pointing fingers at sub-markets and trying to analyze what went wrong is a waste of effort.
I have this nerve thing going on.
Back in the 80's I once peeled a pickup truck's cab with my head. (complicated story, Guy was drinking, ran his pickup under a log truck at the drawbridge in White City, Florida (drawbridge doesn't exist anymore) Got to the site and the truck was tucked up under a shitload of logs, I'm the smallest guy on the scene, deputies shuck my ass into the truck. I'm feeling arund in the dark, trying to find the patient that I can hear moaning and growling and cussing the shit out of life (in a southern accent, which, at that time, I'm still adjusting to.) Deputies, residents manage to pull the truck form under the logs, I can feel the relief of pressure from my back. We're move'd about twenty feet away from the log truck. I hear a deputy, "I smell smoke." I stood up like the fucking Hulk, I have no idea why the cab peeled back from me. But I layed that shit down across the back bed with one hand. Then I crouched down in the now opened space of the cab and saw a man with half a face, teeth gliimming in the flashlights, and a big wad of his face flapping back and forth.
So I think my nerve damage is peeling back that steel. That's why I can't type shit properly anymore.
In US it's not about caring for health, it's about caring for profits.
If you think anyone in a bureacracy or government department actually gives a shit about you, you are delusional.
A patient cured is a loss to the revenue stream - better to come up with an expensive 'maintenance' regime.
Care about yourself - eat well, excercise hard, get enough sleep. Best health insurance plan there is.
We'll all be worm food sooner or later.
Not broken, the Liar said he fixed it and Pelosi said we never need to read bills, just sign!
Remember all those quants that worked for High frequency traders and banks? Well guess where they are now? There are big armies of them working at health insurance and drug companies, enough said? Most people have a hard time swallowing that fact, but it's true. At any given day, just scroll through some want ads...gazillions of those types of jobs are open.
Look at VW, and how long they were able to create a "virtual world" of cars that did not pollute, same thing going here, a lot of virtual values that are not true and they play it up for profit and we pay and pay. What's the trick here, software.
Quote Mike Osinski who wrote the software that all the banks used for the mortgage scam "you can do something about anything with software"..and in the words of Bill Gates, "software is nothing but a bunch of algorithms working together'. So there you have it. Watch the quant documentary as it's very good and was done 5 years ago, very smart folks tell you the story if you want to hear. Just take what we know was in finance and realize it's all over in the insurance and drug area now. Quants can easily change industries, it's all math.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.hk/2012/09/quants-alchemists-of-wall-street-video.html
I told all about this phenomenon about 2 years ago. It is what it is...Code Hosing up the you know what and models built to make money. We can all die and they don't care.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/10/data-scientistsquants-in-health.html
In Mises land there is no such thing as greed, price gouging or profiteering...its all good..peasants..shut the hell up, pay up or die.
Your comment implies that government is needed to control the excesses of corporate greed. One problem with your hypothesis. The corporations wrote the law! Government is not protecting us. It is the tool the insurance companies are using to enforce their rape upon us.
Other than that, carry on...
The FDA is a criminal organization. That goes for both the food side and the drug side. The composition of advisory committees is a case in point.
=========
You should try working at a small insurance company. In the small ones, you get exposed to more of the working parts. A former co-worker, a fellow nurse case manager, resigned to go work in hospice where she could feel that she was using her license and efforts to do good.
Normal saline supplies have "dried up" before, I remember shortages back in 2003-2004.
An example of how sick or Pharma industry is:
Cyclosporine, whose patent expired in 1968 was “resurrected” by Allergan. How? Simple, repackage 0.05% opthamlic solution into tiny polyethylene twist-off mini-bottles each containing about ½ gram, patients are advised to twist the stopper off, instill one drop in each eye and discard the rest. Patient cost = (Sams Club is the cheapest at $752/month. It does work, I know because I use it.
But it seems odd to me that a med whose patent expired decades ago can reap $523 million in sales during 2010. What is more incredulous is that I can legally import 24 mls of cyclosporine opthamlic 0.05% for $108 (including shipping) (this would last me 8 months). So Allergan by so wisely proving that the liquid can be placed in tiny plastic bottles reaps hundreds of millions each year.
And guess what, I use the bottle, one drop in each eye, then carefully place it into a closed container to keep (supposedly pathogenic) dust off it. The short: One month of Restasis lasts me 8 months! And btw, I haven’t had a single infection and have not yet lost my eyes.
But you must realize, this is not about YOU. It is about those on Medicare and Medicaid. I’m sure that both get a “discount,” perhaps they pay half, but that’s still triple what a common, patent expired med should cost. That’s where the Pharma-king makes the money. How ludicrous that the patent should be extended simply by packaging the inexpensive med in tiny bottles, but there you have it.
And, oh, by the way, guess who will pay for all those prescriptions? Hint: Find a mirror. It’s all about extracting maximum profit from the system. But a time will come—the system must be paid. America has a very strange brand of corruption.
This article is one of the few that gets it right or very close. When you look at any system or industry it works by the rules that are given to it. In Pharma there are many huge constraints and frankly it is almost an adversarial war with all other parts of medicine. In fact much of medicine is in competition with the other parts. In the past, the physicans held the upper hand. Now it is insurers and hospitals. Government rules all parts subject to idiotic interventions.
Pharmaceuticals cannot get directly to customers/patients. They must go through physicians. They must get paid by someone other than the physicians who prescribe the meds and by other than the actual patient who uses it. They cannot even get to those two without going through numerous government gate keepers, rules and filings. The people who approve the meds are neither the people that use them nor prescribe them. So, you figure out how well that is going to work out.
I will tell you. It is big win or loss and not much in between. You lose and become commodity priced which often leads to shortages or low quality. I dare anyone to assay the crap that comes in to this country from low cost foreign bidders.
Given that the market is 85% generic (USA) by volume everyone is trying to make a living on the remaining 15%. The big win is if you find something that you can force the insurers to pay for. Then you "gouge".
Let me tell you some things happening that you do not see.
First, your physicians get ratings from the insurers. It they either do not follow the insurance formulary or their average med (and even treatment) costs are above average they can get a bad rating which may either reduce their reimbursements or increase the patient copays to see them. Insurers may steer new patients away. So, the incentive is just to give you the cheapest and oldest stuff. They may get corporate goals to increase generic use to 90, 92, 95% and get performance ratings. It can also be an incentive to not even mention or offer you things that are out there and let you choose, even if your company bought you a better plan to give you those choices.
Second, ACO's are forming around therapeutic areas like diabetes, asthma, etc. If the group can beat the goals and reduce treatment costs they may get kickbacks. I am not sure exactly how this will work out but it could actually make physicians more reluctant to see sicker more complicated patients. Why? Because you/they can blow every cost control, average and reimbursement out of the water. This could lead to incentives to discharge difficult patients over time for self preservation. It is the opposite of the purpose of healthcare. Remember, the insurance side the ultimate model is to charge a premium and actually provide little to no service. It can be profitable not to treat in certain cases.
Third, if you have not noticed, the patient is paying very large amounts of the up front costs. This is not all bad in theory. However, when you pay about $500/mo for an individual and also have a $5-6k dedcutible you are effectively self insuring. Most Americans cannot afford the first twelve large of their own healthcare. If you could, you'd save it yourself and within a short period of time you'd be self insured. The other subtle part is that it takes insurers off the hook for actually paying for things that are covered, whether meds or services. When you do a $75 copay for a "covered" med you may effectively be actually paying most or all the behind the scenes bid price.
Fourth: I believe that only the poor and Medicare are maintaining their usage of healthcare because it is all "free" to them. I suspect the data will show drastically declining use of healthcare as people realize they really are not covered except for catastrophic at ten times what the price used to be. In government-speak this is saving money. What has functionally happened is that the first policy you buy is for someone else deemed "unfortunate". The second one is yours. That is why the price is doubling and tripling. This is direct redistribution and I believe insurers may make out like bandits. They are required to spend a certain percentage of revenues on actual healthcare so they will have to find a way to spend the excess. My guess is that campaign donations will be considered a medical expenditure.
My very serious advice is that you go to all your physicians no matter how much you like them and ask something along the lines of, "Do you have any financial incentives or disincentives to doing anything other than recommending the best course of options for me?". If they stutter, hedge or get mad and walk away. You do the same. If you love them you look them seriously in the eye and tell them you want their best medical recommendations before anything else. They will take into consideration your finances (what they know of them) or priorities you give them.
I also suggest you find independent physicians not part of large chains or corporate groups, even if the word "University" is in their group. I guarantee every one of them has a ton of financial sticks and carrots in treating you. Go to Main Street Family Medicine which has maybe two or three offices, at most. They are most likely to be old school. You will also notice that they are often led by an older physcian and if they are independent they are holding onto their guns and not caving. The pressure is great to sell out and join the medical Borg.
Be empathetic, too. Physicians and their staffs do huge amounts of uncompensated work. They don't get paid to do all those referrals, approvals, and ten insurance steps to get you the med or treatment they knew you needed all along. They also started the ICD-10 new coding today which may be stressful, too. They may have just put in Obamacare mandated EMR system at a hundred grand, too. Be nice to them even if you feel crappy. They will appreciate it and focus back on you.
Thank you for taking the time to type out your excellent remarks.
Is the Saline shortage possibly caused by large government orders in the recent past, FEMA,Homeland etc. It has happened with other items.
Gonna go vape some home grown Kush and call it a night...
Something stinks. I suspect there is more bullshit down the rabbit hole.
There is something incredible about this story.
Shortage of saline???? uh.... is that a joke?
One of the only usefull lessons I got from my high school chemistry teacher is how to mix your own contact lens solution: distilled water + salt. That was it. She mixed jugs of it in the school lab and never spent a red cent on the stuff.
I am supposed to believe that Americans are running out of salt water..... okee dokey.
Perhaps the email is spreading a lie and perhaps you are getting suckered into it.
<<...the email also reminds me that there is a national shortage of normal saline. Normal saline, for heaven’s sake! What’s going on? >>
I get emails reminding me that a long lost cousin died and I inherited 10 million dollars, for Pete's sake! Can I give his lawyer my bank account?
After 40 years in practice I see signs of collapse everywhere. I can't figure out if it if government incompetence (always a good bet), government plotting (currently happening with narcotics) or collusion (big Pharma and Big government). The primary care docs are dying off, all are forced into big corporate practices or quitting.
Today was the day for CD10 to be introduced. I personally went from a dozen common diagnostic codes to over 300...and the data collected cannot possible be useful. I know this because one of the criteria used for diagnosis is no longer considered important yet is a required part of every code for this disease. ICD10 in my area is outdated by about 10 years and has no rationale except to complicate the coding process.
If you have a good doctor better treat it right.
I just learned another referring physician quit today.
Between suicides, gun shot deaths (we lost more docs than cops in the past 10 years) and early deaths they might not be around for long.
As with any business, private practice assures one of bills to be paid but not of income.
I'm not bitching, I'm too far along for that to do any good. I worry a lot about the kind of healthcare that will be available in the near future. I worry more about healthcare after a financial collapse. When the long line of supply that gives me medications and supplies that I need to treat patients is disrupted I will be as useful as a car mechanic in an oil war crisis.
Docs are being squeezed out by Healthcare groups. Now you pay for a doctor visit, but only see a PA. They're the gatekeeper. Can't just ask the Doc for something for shoulder pain anymore. Now you have to have a wellness exam, to determine the proper codes to send you to a pain management specialist to prescribe 5 pills. Then they bill you and credit you, then bill again, then reimburse. What a cluster fuck. "Gee, how come it costs so much?".
The healthcare payment system is soooooooo messed up. As an old registered nurse, I can assure you that it was a mess before managed care. It was a bigger mess after managed care. It was a mess before for-profit hospitals. It definitely became a bigger mess with for-profit hospitals.
The standards of care don't seem to be helping at all. Some of the providers seem to have a hard time listening and integrating the idea that an algorithm just might not apply.
For example: a year or two ago I was itching and was congested after working outside most of the day. Ended up taking two benadryl and finally going to sleep. Woke up during the night lying flat on my face and uncomfortable because I somehow had gotten my cell phone under my right breast. When I woke up again in the morning, a painful mass had cropped up at the point of injury. Had to be fluid. I needed an ultrasound-guided needle aspiration. My doctor's office got me in with a surgeon who got me in at the breast center where I was put through their pathway. I finally had a ultrasound guided needle aspiration but it was in the form of a vacuum aspiration for cytology. Apparently breast centers cannot move beyond the mindset that women only have breasts as handy sites for cancer. That circus ended up costing $7,000+. A couple of months later, the breast center sent me a form letter reminding me that I needed a followup appt for mammography. Then they set an appointment and notified me of the time and date. I called and told them to cancel the appointment. Finally, a clerk called me to remind me of my appointment (that I had cancelled.) I won't be back.
The surgeon wanted to schedule me for an excision of the ruptured duct because of possible scarring. That would create more scarring. I won't be back.
Tractor supply has syringes and needles. If I have any more such problems, I'll take care of it myself. At least I can tailor the interventions to the needs.
Maybe a collapse of the system is what it will take to scrape the barnacles and infuse some common sense into healthcare.
Stop going to the doctor 100x + per year. DUH! I swear to God that's the crux of the biscuit. You all want to live forever. If you have to die....just live with it. "Oh, but I can't be in pain. I can't be depressed. I need anti-biotics! But what about my knees, neck, back. My cholesterol. My blood pressure, my sphincter, my prostate, my breasts, my ovaries. Surely I'll need more tests and minor to major operations". Get over it and grab some self control. Demand is high......Prices go up.....WHAT A REVELATION> Put in a subsidy and then what happens......can ya say it.......c'mon I know ya can!
The price gouging has been going on for years now, ever since everything was outsourced to china. Not to mention obamacare and the power given the insurance companies. We sold one prescription for $23,000 and made less than $2 per the insurance company, then were told it has to be sold by specialty pharmacy. The specialty? It has to be refrigerated. Show me a busisness that can afford to make $2 on that type of investment and stay in busisness. Not going to happen.
The problem with today's healthcare is government-protected Monopoly Medicine.
It's unaffordable because there is no competition between the various types of medicine.
Our state governments gave accident or Allopathic medicine a government-protected monopoly to
diagnose, treat and cure ALL medical afflictions including degenerative diseases that represents 90% of medical care.
Did you know that Big Pharm drugs are mostly petroleum-based synthetic chemicals that poison the liver and present a huge burdon on the body to eliminate?
The body doesn't recognize these foreign substances.
Much of the world is using cheap Chinese, Naturopathic, Homeopathic or Ayurvedic medicine and they aren’t dropping like flies like Americans want to believe.
Monopoly Allopathic Medicine has duped Americans into believing that disease strikes randomly like lightning from germs or genetics and that we have little control over our health.
Louis Pasteur, the founder of the Germ Theory of Disease, finally admitted on his death bed that germs don’t cause disease but the terrain is the chief cause.
The terrain is the state of cleanliness or toxicity in the body that enables our immune system to reverse or prevent disease.
Allopathic Monopoly Medicine completely ignores toxicity, detoxification, nutrition and natural immunity as all the alternative medicines emphasize.
With government-protected Monopoly Medicine, it's all about managing disease not curing it, maximizing profits and getting patients on daily "maintenance" drugs, using costly surgery and interventions with toxic vaccines.
A massive disruption is coming in health care. In fact investors who have Big Pharma stock should sell ASAP because when the dollar devalues, corrupt agencies
like the FDA and state medical boards that protect the "Standard of Care" favoring Big Pharma and Monopoly Medicine will not be able to continue protecting these corrupt industries from competition.
Like the corrupt Fed, these are the last days of government-protected monopolies and if they had to compete with cheaper, safer and far more effective
natural medicine like Homeopathy, Naturopathy or Chinese Medicine they would likely be starved for patients.
The last time the dangerous Allopaths competed in the marketplace in 1900 they could only attract 14% of patients.
The public was afraid of them and fortunately there was back then a free market in medicine so the public chose affordable, safe and vastly more effective natural medicine.
In the 1918 Flu Pandemic, the Allopaths lost 30% of their patients. The Alternative Medical providers lost 1%.
Allopaths were known as the Quicks (later Quacks) for the quicksilver or mercury they poisoned their patients with.
They're still poisoning patients with toxic mercury in vaccines along with aluminum, MSG and formaldehyde embalming fluid.
And that's besides the toxic infectious agent that starts a brushfire in the brain for life causing Autism and Schitzophrenia. Senior CDC scientists have known this for 80 years.
They're also poisoning and killing patients with chemotherapy for cancer that's a derivative of WW1 mustard gas.
Because we allowed the European Black Nobility - Organized Crime through their Jesuit, Zionist and Masonic agents to take over our money and medicine
about 100 years ago, we allowed the quacks of the day, a government-protected monopoly and drove out the true healers.
The sheeple to this day still believe the myth that Ambulance Allopathic Medicine earned it's
government-protected monopoly status because it's the only "proven and scientific" medicine.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It's a vicious, cruel lie that 90% of Americans not only believe, but
even defend because they have been chemically dumbed-down with vaccines, fluoridated water and GMO food to name a few.
Forget about government-protected monopolies containing costs and becoming affordable, our hidden rulers are getting a huge belly laugh on their way to
the bank as they have handicapped the public with poisons in the food, air, water and medicine.
Visit naturalnews.com and mercola.com and educate and treat yourself with cheap, safe and effective
natural medicine that cleans up your immune system terrain and turns on powerful prevention.
Empower yourself and dispel the myth, power and fraud of Monopoly Quack Medicine.
Allopathic Ambulance Medicine specializes in stabilizing traumatic accidents and that’s what they should be restricted to doing.
PBS doctor Andrew Weil MD says that Allopathic Medicine has no business treating degenerative
diseases just as natural medicine has no business treating accident victims.
We’ve all been duped by our organized-crime hidden rulers into believing false paradigms about medicine and money.
It’s time we woke up and started controlling our economic future and health. We will all find that the body is enormously powerful in keeping us healthy
without the poisoning agendas and interventions of corrupt men.
See this video describing this handicapping agenda by neurosurgeon Dr Russell Blaylock MD for a real eye-opener.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB3xcN_eoPo
True story.. I have a relative who had a 10 pound cancerous Ovarian mass removed.. Her company put her on disability, nearly equally her regular income.. Paid for one round of Chemo which put her in remission.. So far, so good..
Then when she decided to come back to work, part-time, against her doctor's recommendation that she stay on disability until this past March, her departmental director efffectively tasked with a new position and improper training, resulting in her being terminated from her position in April and losing her medical benefits..
She couldn't afford COBRA.. and in June, her cancer came back in the form of fluid buildup in her chest cavity.. (pleural effusions), requiring her to endure having a needle stuck in her every week to remove it.. All provided on charity by the local hospital, because she had no insurance. They put her on a second round of a different Chemo, despite no health insurance..
Finally, she gets to the point of applying for Social Security disability and SSI, in order to gain access to Medicaid.. But the hospitals financial advocate warns her that.. (wait for this....)
"IF your social security benefits total more than $753/month (basically full disability), she will MAKE TOO MUCH to qualify for Medicaid.. "
This means she would have to purchase health insurance based upon that disability income..
Tell me this isn't BS!!! She's fighting for her very life, with no income.. and receiving disability may make her ineligible for Medicaid!!!
Pisses me off..
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Lots of Jews in the medical and psychiatry fields. Anywhere you have lots of Jews, you have lots of scams!