The real problem with the American healthcare system is that prices are continually rising, making healthcare unaffordable to an ever-increasing fraction of the population. And recent healthcare legislation has addressed none of the causes of high prices.
Read the Full Article by Vijay Boyapati
Afterwards, discuss the article below.
[The article is also available at Mises.org]
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One major driver of high medical costs is prescription laws. For example, the cost of blood pressure medication at Walmart is $40 a year. This would be “affordable” to anyone considering the benefits of blood pressure control. Controlling high cholesterol will run about $80 a year at Walmart. So for $10 a month everyone can control their high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Still “affordable” for everyone. However, because these drugs are under legal restriction, you have to obtain “permission” from a doctor to access them. Purchasing that “permission” will likely cost somewhere in the range of $200 for an uninsured person. Effectively tripling the cost of taking care of these conditions. Plus the doctor’s prescription is only good for one year. I haven’t really seen a justification as to “why”, but obviously it is to the economic advantage of the medical profession to do things this way. Just as it is to the economic advantage of the street corner drug pusher to see that he remains the only source of supply to those drug addicts that he “services”. Of course the doctor is prescribing a “legal drug” while the street corner drug pusher is selling an “illegal drug”, but the basic principle is still the same. That is, one group (doctors) is using the power of government to extract additional income from the rest of us. Of course the doctors will claim “this is for your own benefit” since supposedly we are too stupid to decide these issues for ourselves… The exact same thing is done by all the other “licensed” professions, much to their economic gain! Consider the added costs that are inflicted on the American people by the licensed professions, and it is easy to see that these laws probably increase our costs of living by at least several thousand dollars a year at the very least!
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