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Originally Posted by JohnnyD
You are absolutely right that malpractice suits and the cost of insurance are a huge issue for doctors. Another part is the ridiculous price of pharmaceuticals.
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Cost of pharmaceuticals is a 2 edge sword that most don't want to see.
On one hand people look at the price and say "you have to be kidding me" not
realizing the cost effectiveness of keeping them out of the hospital and increasing their quality of life and reducing mortality.
They are expensive and people don't want to pay $5 or $10 a day but are willing to pay $7.50 a day for a pack of cigs or who knows how much for booze or illegal drugs that are killing them.
These drugs are very costly to discover, research, do clinical trials and get FDA approval. Pharm will not be willing to develop new life saving drugs if we go with a government controlled health care program.
Pfizer has already discontinued their cardiovascular research as they see the handwriting on the wall. So the new and best pharmaceuticals in the world will certainly become few and far between.
That leaves generics of existing drugs as a mainstay, which many will be manufactured by companies that do nothing to improve health care or provde the quality drugs made by the large Pharms.
The FDA used to issue The Green Sheet which showed drug recalls each month.
In almost every case the FDA inspections initiated the recalls for the generic companies where as the Pharmaceutical Companies would initiate recalls on their own before inspection. There aren't enough FDA Inspectors in the world to inspect every batch of generic drugs coming off the line.
Government controlled health care will take the best medicine in the world and at the very least make it mediocre.