Reply to Thread

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wheel Gun" data-source="post: 2874461" data-attributes="member: 19286">Well, this kind of makes my case.  In private, market-driven health insurance, insurers have complete control over their offered drug formulary and can control those costs.  Now, there will always be members upset that their drug is not on the list, but by and large payers have some chance at containing costs.  (BTW, as someone in that business, some outfits do a terrible job at that.)  However, single-payer government plans create somewhat of a moral hazard here.  Suddenly, there is one panel in charge of the formulary and pharmas can focus all their attention on selling to one buyer.  This even includes helping advocacy groups to sue to get frighteningly expensive drugs added to the forumulary.  Governments rarely win this battle and costs climb and climb.  As you pointed out, pharmas are very effective at selling products to big plans with deep pockets and many of these drugs would never be tolerated by private insurers that are trying to hold down costs for members.  (One exception:  public/private drug rebate programs have done a decent job in tackling this problem in many areas.)If you want to see how well a single-payer system would contain costs, look to the history of costs with Medicare.  That's what this would look like.Good discussion, CY.  You brought up some good points.  Thanks!</blockquote>