Agreed on all counts.
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Bernie 2020!?!? 
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Heâd have had the nomination this year if the DNC hadnât stacked the deck against him. And heâd quite likely have won. I would have likely voted for him myself. Even though I disagree with many of his ideas at least heâs a man of integrity and virtue trying to do what he feels is the right thing. I respected that about him and did not about either nominee. When I was a kid thatâs what I thought a president was supposed to be.
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Very simply put:
âNationalâ healthcare is a system supported by and paid by the government. The government owns and runs hospitals and clinics, and medical personnel are government employees. This is the basic system in the UK; here in the US our national health care systems are the Military, the VA and the Indian Health Services.
âSingle Payerâ systems are where the government pays for healthcare, but the individual goes to private doctors and hospitals who accept payment. That is the basic system in Canada; in the US that is Medicare and Medicaid.
âUniversalâ healthcare where people have private insurance, but the government heavily regulates it. Under this system, everyone must have insurance, but the government dictates the premium rates and regulates what providers and pharmacies can charge. Premiums are set on a sliding-scale basis and all insurers must offer basic, broad coverage. This is what Japan has, and what the Affordable Care Act was an attempt to do. Because the ACA is failing in a lot of areas, many are advocating a single payer system, which is the one program in the US that is working reasonably well.
Same thing happened to my employerâs coverage for part-time and seasonal employees. Our minimal plan was at least affordable; under PPACA, anything available under the exchanges was 3-4 times higher cost. Many had to drop coverage completely â the penalties were less unaffordable than the coverage. And many of the exchange options have dried up and left the state.
Because I work in retail, thereâs a good chance this will happen to ALL employees other than salaried store managers and âweâll accept a minimal amount of overtime payment because of the responsibilitiesâ assistant store managers. This is because of a new law that requires anyone with an annual salary under $47,500 be non-exempt from OT, and a law the retail industry is fighting for that changes the definition of âfull-timeâ employee from 30 hrs/wk to 40 hrs/wk. (A 40-hr schedule ends up with about 1/2 hr OT a week, so all current full-time employees are capped at 38 hrs/wk to avoid OT. Under a 40-hr full-time law, all of us 38-hr employees will become part-time and lose our benefits.)
Most of the time, government bureaucracy is more expensive than âthe greed of the capitalistâ â who will generally reinvest his returns in companies and programs which provide more and better goods and services than if those funds ended up in some bureaucratâs pocket. In most cases a corporation would better handle Yosemite than the government would.
Re: 2008, some of us argue, there is NO SUCH THING as âtoo big to failâ. Let those big banks fail, and you will have better systems come up in their place, which will be smaller but more affordable and fairer to all.
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I no longer donate to ADA only because their writings and efforts appeared to be primarily for T2; however,
I just signed the American Diabetes Associationâs petition to make insulin affordability a national priority. Please join me and sign the petition at http://www.stopdiabetes.com/insulin.
Overpricing is very evident when Humulin, which was 1st marketed by Eli Lilly in 1982, is today listed at $150 per vial when most diabetics would require 3 vials every month (if u stick with their recommendation to throw out 30 days after opening). AND elsewhere in the world, insulin seems to be MUCH less expensive
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The whole point behind national parks is that corporations DONâT get to âhandleâ Yosemite. The biggest reason things donât âworkâ anymore has less to do with the expense of bureaucracy and more to do with funding.
Thirty years ago, California, then Oregon and Washington State passed property tax initiatives that limited the states ability to sustain revenue important to the running of the state. What happened is, suddenly, schools did not have the money they needed to operate. Washington (State) has never addressed this problem and a few years ago, the state legislatures were taken to task by the supreme court (our stateâs). Their judgement was that the state was underfunding education by 1 billion dollars a year and ordered the state to find the money.
So âsomeâ claim that schools donât work, when whatâs really happening is that by cutting funding, you make it impossible for schools to operate. Class sizes get too big, schools are forced by people outside education to measure their success and the teachers are forced to teach for these tests instead of getting to actually teach.
There are many examples of people claiming something doesnât work and then they cut funding in their effort to prove it.
In the case of the Forest Service, funding has been cut so much that they canât perform the very important job of managing the forest to protect forest fires from spreading. So a few years of drought and a fire starts and now they literally have to put out the fire, when forest management could have mitigated much of the hazard.
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Not arguing any other point your made in your post, just wanted to inform that Humulin is available at Walmart for $25/vial. I donât think itâs branded âHumulinâ, but its the same thing â rDNA produced.
do the poorest countries where people dont even have food to eat deserve more help than paying some one else insulin where one can use the $25 insulin at walmart and not worry about increase in costs of insulin and depend on some to pick up the tab ?
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Thank you for posting the link.
I signed the petition and encourage everyone else to do the same!
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And when you can buy the exact same thing at Walmart for $25/ vial today.
ETA haha I didnât see that Dave had mentioned the exact same thing
Iâm quite well aware that Humulin or Novolin (depending on which, WalMart gets the best contract on) is affordable at $25 - elsewhere the average price is around $150 for a product first developed and marketed in the 1950s and then handled by Eli Lilly since 1982. On average, list price is $15 per ml vs $30 per ml for the newer insulins. (Ref: GoodRx.com)
Could you elaborate?
Humulin is based on recombinant DNA technology, which didnât exist in the 1950s if my memory serves. Further, the internet tells me Humulin was developed by Genentech and approved by the FDA in 1982. This comports with my recall of these facts.
Not sure where youâre getting your information.
Itâs a powerful point though⌠when we can clearly see that itâs a $25 productâ and yet the âaverage price is $150â
If thatâs not price gouging I donât know what is. And if thereâs that much price gouging going on with this very dated technology just imagine how much is happening with the newer stuffâŚ
Further a powerful point because we can see that the âaverage priceâ is $150 but the worldâs largest retailer of absolutely everything sells it for $25â thatâs also pretty damning evidence that we, collectively, as consumers in this marketplace behave pretty irrationally when itâs comes to prices.
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Cannot locate the site which mentioned Humulin and Marketed (sometime in early 1950s) in same sentence. Another company was mentioned other than Genentec and Lilly. Very well could have been a (misleading) reference to 1950s research. Regardless, 1982 is still 34 years ago.
A good summary of history of the approval Lillyâs Humulin can be found here. The approval was a landmark for a number of reasons. Most importantly, it heralded the use of recombinant DNA for insulin production. Once you have engineered the culture you can make insulin for a fairly low cost and production can easily scale.
Lilly certainly got the large-scale production part right.
The âfairly low costâ: not so muchâŚ
The reality is as long as we keep buying it at whatever outrageous price they put on it, theyâll be happy to keep raising the price. If someday enough of us said âenough of this bsâ and started buying $25 insulin instead⌠the prices of the analogs would immediately plummet⌠I imagine theyâd settle out at about $50 since by most reports theyâre twice as good as R and N⌠but thatâs just a guess
Welcome to reality. The Republicans ARE going to repeal and delay. They just announced they are going to repeal and they are definitely going to try to wait two years before anything takes effect so it will not effect them in the mid-term elections. Obamacare would be unaffordable for our DD. She is under itour plan as a college student. And you CANNOT repeal WITHOUT REPLACEMENT and still keep her under our plan until she is 26. So as of next year she will most likely be uncovered or God knows what we will have to pay to cover her. There is no motive for insurers to stay in the exchanges if it is being repealed. They will start dropping out of the exchanges. In droves. Republicans have had seven years to figure out what they want to replace Obamacare with. There is no plan. We need to get together as a county and support FREE national health care. This starts at a political level. This needs to become a movement. Funny at my age to have to go back to the tactics of my early 20s but itâs time to get out the pickets, get on the street and protest. Fortunately, Trump tower is very close to Grand Central Station. Looks like Iâm about to take up residence on the sidewalk in front of it for the next four years, LOL.
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