Health Uninsurance Rising in America

[crazytimes]

Are we allowed to import drugs from Canada? I read their drugs are much cheaper. Let's add competition...force these drug companies to lower the cost of their drugs.

I will agree that many drugs are worth the high cost...but I DO think that the price SHOULD go down over time.

I am going to University of Nebraska Lincoln and I am SO impressed with their health services. They offer very reasonable insurance plans for students and their prescriptions are much cheaper! It's also free to see the doctor or nurse - not even a co-pay! I am covered under my parents insurance, but still I think that's great for students. I think they do receive tax money since it is a public school, but we also pay fees to fund the health center.

I totally agree on the capping the amount from laqsuits. There was an article in this month's Chicago magazine about it and this one family got $30 million! Granted, they DID lose a baby, so they ARE entitled to compensation. But $30 million? It just seems excessive. Anyways, what good is all that money? It doesn't bring back the child.

[mrbowler]

Originally Posted by mayor

Actually, the trial attornies will milk it until they can build it to crisis level, which the liberals are screaming, but in truth we are nowhere near. At that point, the mind-numbed masses will look to Daddy Government to come in and solve their problems, aka: Hilary-care.. socialized medicine.

Hey, guess who you'll get to sue if something goes wrong then? That's right. No one. Tough beans.

Mayor

So Mayor you are saying that the problems don't exist, and it's a conspiracy?

[mayor]

Problems DO exist, but the government is NOT the solution. Government is NEVER the solution. This is the key difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives believe in the individual and the free market system. Liberals believe in Government.

Mayor

[luvmetender]

Originally Posted by crazytimes

I totally agree on the capping the amount from laqsuits. There was an article in this month's Chicago magazine about it and this one family got $30 million! Granted, they DID lose a baby, so they ARE entitled to compensation. But $30 million? It just seems excessive. Anyways, what good is all that money? It doesn't bring back the child.

It's not about that. It's about punishing the party that was guilty so that they will "feel" it. Do you have any details about that case? Were they extremely negligent?

[mrbowler]

Originally Posted by crazytimes

Are we allowed to import drugs from Canada? I read their drugs are much cheaper. Let's add competition...force these drug companies to lower the cost of their drugs.

This is a dispute that is currently going on in regards to importing of drugs from Canada. The current administration is against allowing citizen's the option(choice) to purchase drugs from other countries because of safety concerns. While many seniors and others argue that they should be allowed the choice because they can't afford the price of medicine/drugs in the United States. I personally have decided that instead of paying $ 260 for a 120 dose of Nasaqort Nasal Spray in the United States that I would purchase from a Outfit in New York that takes my order-here is how it works...You fax your prescription from a U.S. Doctor to the outfit, and then they forward to a Canadian Pharmacy that then checks your Prescription..fills your order and then they ship it back into the United States. Cost was $25 plus shipping $10

So a person has to decide:

United States $260 or Canada $35

Every drug is different in the amount of savings..I've noticed in my case that Antiobiodics aren't worth going thru Canada because of shipping cost.

[mrbowler]

Originally Posted by mayor

Problems DO exist, but the government is NOT the solution. Government is NEVER the solution. This is the key difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives believe in the individual and the free market system. Liberals believe in Government.

Mayor

The problem is that Corporations are slowly getting rid of Health Insurance or not providing at all. So doesn't that leave either the Individual or the Government footing the bill? IMO it's just another way of corporate america the opportunity to be more globally competitive at the expense of either the individual or the government.

[luvmetender]

Originally Posted by mrbowler

The current administration is against allowing citizen's the option(choice) to purchase drugs from other countries because of safety concerns.

Yeah, right I'm sure that's the real reason.

[mrbowler]

Thought this was a good article. I did the best I could to fit on scanner

[luvmetender]

thanks, mrbowler

[mrbowler]

Originally Posted by luvmetender

It's not about that. It's about punishing the party that was guilty so that they will "feel" it. Do you have any details about that case? Were they extremely negligent?

Yes Luv

Here is a good read also

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Tort reform could hurt women

Finley's research shows elderly also would be harmed by cap on non-economic damages

By CHRISTINE VIDAL
Contributing Editor

Tort reform legislation that would cap the non-economic damages that can be recovered in a health-care liability suit would have a significant adverse impact on women and the elderly, according to research conducted by a UB law professor.

"The proponents of damages caps have given little or no thought to what their effects might be on the ability of injured individuals to find lawyers and gain access to the civil justice system, or on whether certain groups of people will be more or less adversely affected," said Lucinda Finley, Frank G. Raichle Professor of Trial and Appellate Advocacy at UB and an nationally recognized expert on tort reform who has testified several times before Congress on the women's health aspects of product liability reform legislation.

Moreover, while proponents of damages caps claim that limiting awards is the only way to stem sharply rising insurance policy costs, there is no evidence that caps on non-economic damages will have any significant effect on insurance rates, she said. In fact, in states that have capped non-economic damages, insurance costs have not gone down, either overall or in comparison to states without tort reform.

Congress has defined non-economic damages as "damages for physical and emotional pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, mental anguish, disfigurement, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of society and companionship, loss of consortium (other than loss of domestic service), hedonic damages, injury to reputation and all other non-pecuniary losses of any kind of nature."

This spring, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Help Efficient, Accessible, Low-Cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act of 2003," which caps the total amount of non-economic damages that can be recovered in any health-care liability suit at $250,000, regardless of the number of plaintiffs or defendants, but the bill recently was defeated in the U.S. Senate.

Finley studied how juries from several states allocate their damage awards between economic loss damages and non-economic loss damages, and then compared cases by gender. She presented her findings at the ninth annual Clifford Symposium on Tort Law and Social Policy held in April at De Paul University School of Law in Chicago.

"While overall, men tend to recover greater total damages, juries consistently award women more in non-economic loss damages than men, and the non-economic portion of women's total damage award is significantly greater than the percentage of men's tort recoveries attributable to non-economic damages," she said.

"Any cap on non-economic loss damages will deprive women of a much greater proportion and amount of what a jury awarded than men. Non-economic loss damage caps amount to a form of discrimination against women, and contribute to unequal access to justice and fair compensation for women."

Economic loss damages, particularly damages to compensate for past or future wage loss, are the most fundamental type of damages and have been relatively immune from attack by proponents of tort reform.

However, this type of damages provides the most benefit to higher wage earners, Finley said, and thus women and minorities and the poor will receive lesser amounts of economic-loss compensation than more economically well-off white men.

Wage compensation is only one factor that contributes to the disparity.

Several types of injuries are disproportionately suffered by women, such as sexual assault; reproductive harm, including pregnancy loss or infertility, and gynecological medical malpractice. The resulting emotional distress and grief, altered sense of self and social adjustment, impaired relationships or impaired physical capacities such as reproduction are not involved directly in market-based wage-earning activity.

"Many of these more precious, indeed priceless, aspects of human life are virtually worthless in the market," she said, "and these are compensated through non-economic damages. For example, in cases where women are sexually assaulted, including by health-care providers, more than 90 percent of the average tort award was for non-economic loss. A cap would amount to a ceiling."

The elderly also would be unfairly penalized by limits on non-economic damages since retirees suffer no wage loss from life-altering injuries.

Caps on non-economic damages also would make it more difficult for victims to find legal representation for certain types of cases, Finley's research showed.

Lawyers are less willing to bring suits acknowledged to be meritorious unless they cross a certain threshold of economic loss damages, she said, no matter how devastating the injury and how compelling the proof of negligence or medical error.

For example, Finley said, in California, which has capped non-economic loss damages in medical malpractice since 1976, parents whose babies or children die as a result of obstetrical or medical malpractice have difficulty finding lawyers willing to take their cases since the majority of the compensation will be in non-economic loss damages.

On the other hand, babies and children who survive the medical error can find lawyers willing to pursue these high economic-damage cases, she added.

"This will lead lawyers to be unwilling to pursue such claims, leaving injured people uncompensated and the underlying harmful conduct undeterred," Finley said.

[mayor]

Originally Posted by luvmetender

Yeah, right I'm sure that's the real reason.

Look out, there is a demon behind everything this administration does.

However, in this case I can't say with certainty that you are entirely wrong. The pharmaceutical industry is BIG BIG business and I believe, extremely corrupt. I think there are reasonable cures for cancer and other major diseases, but the job of the pharmaceutical industry is to sell drugs, whether they help or not.

We were watching TV last night and Mary asked, "Why do we need advertisements for prescription drugs? Do doctors not know what to prescribe for people?" The bottom line is they want people asking for drugs by name. Pharmaceutical reps visit doctor offices, hand off samples, and tell them about the latest anti-biotic or whatever they should be prescribing. How many doctors actually do research into this stuff? They are too busy to see all the patients they have as it is.

It's scary stuff...

Mayor

[chippers21]

Something IS wrong with a system that charges nearly $800 for a series of allergy tests (the doctors were ho-hum when we expressed this concern - because they said- "Well your insurance covers it so don't worry about it" Hmmm. So we should all go have these tests even if they are not necessary, simply because our insurance covers them?) that she could get in Chile (her former country) for $15!!!!


But, by the way. When you indicate we need a plan where the GOVERNMENT pays for health-care, what that really comes down to is you and I paying for other people's health-care as the government takes our money and redistributes it. (Where do you think the Government gets the money to pay for Anything????)

[mrbowler]

Originally Posted by mayor

However, in this case I can't say with certainty that you are entirely wrong. The pharmaceutical industry is BIG BIG business and I believe, extremely corrupt. I think there are reasonable cures for cancer and other major diseases, but the job of the pharmaceutical industry is to sell drugs, whether they help or not.

Mayor

Do you mean corrupt in the sense that they have no incentive to find cures..If so I totally agree with you. I wouldn't necessarily say that the pricing structure is corrupt it's just that the american consumer indirectly subsidizes the other nations. I've thought about this before, and I wonder if it would be possible to set some standard in which companies would need to find a certain percentage of cures in comparision to the amount of life support medicines(extend life)-they would need to figure out what would happen if a company merged or was bought out by another firm, but it doesn't seem out of line to require a small hurdle. As a incentive the government could offer Extended Patent Life for medicines for cures or some kind of tax incentives-oh well just a thought.

[luvmetender]

Yes, and the most reasonable cure for cancer is not to smoke. Are you saying it is up to the pharmaceutical firm to find a cure for cancer for people who willingly smoke?

[mrbowler]

Originally Posted by chippers21

But, by the way. When you indicate we need a plan where the GOVERNMENT pays for health-care, what that really comes down to is you and I paying for other people's health-care as the government takes our money and redistributes it. (Where do you think the Government gets the money to pay for Anything????)

Chippers who said this? I do believe that if more people aren't covered with Health Insurance thru a employer that it will shift the cost to either the Individual or the Government. If this happens to enough people over time you will get a government run health care system by default.