Ray

Bayer HealthCare
GlaxoSmithKline plc
Pfizer Inc.
Lily
and so on ...


A unintentional funny

The drug can work up to 36 hours, allowing the patient to be more spontaneous (as opposed to competitors Viagra and Levitra, which work for approximately four hours). In the increasingly soft market for erectile dysfunction drugs (due to an aging target market and decreased novelty), Cialis is the only player on the market with firm sales growth.

gsnichol

I saw an article on, I think, our local news along these lines. A self-employed gardener with no health insurance had an accident with a chainsaw and his left arm. The bill was in the region of $35,000. He sought help from a specialist heathcare lawyer and the bill was reduced to $6,000. The reason? He'd been billed for repair to tendons in the arm that we don't even have, and for those we do have, he'd been billed multiple times for the same work.

USBound

I've seen these programs too.. and my wife used to be a medical insurance fraud investigator...

Muswell Hill

You are right, you do ultimately pay for it one way. Right now i would guess you are a young and in good health. I work in cardiac surgery and many poor people are routinely bankrupted at age 40 because they need a quadruple bypass and have no insurance. I have seen grown men weep hysterically at the thought not of having surgery, but of how do they pay the bill.
In many aspects of cardiac surgery, the UK is many years ahead of the USA down to FDA regulation of newer devices, which hit european hospitals many years before the US. So is the procedure of 'hip resculpturing' which was used for years instead of a hip prosthesis in the UK.

i will agree, if you are healthy here, the medical system is great. If you have a chronic illness it is terrible.

And no, i could not tell you are a programmer, should I?

TouristTrap

That can't be!

Old William

Try working in the medical industry on either side of the pond and see what your views are then. Even the best insured and wealthiest patients often get the shittiest HEALTH care....oh they sure get lovely plasma TV's, huge meals (of crap), waited on hand and foot and big expensive rooms filled with big expensive gadgets.....but the actual health care? Crap.

Welcome to a world where intrusive (and often dangerous) procedures are carried out on well insured people who don't need them just so they (or their insurance company) can be billed for them.

Check out TENET for example...the USA's largest medical facilities company. They have been under investigation from the FBI for decades for buying 1000's of patients - including children - from smaller companies and then performing instrusive surgeries and other practices that have no bearing on the actual problem the patient suffers purely to maximise profits.

US Medical Industry? Nothing more than a bloated, greedy, profitering and downright corrupt collection of corporations who consider the patients as nothing other than profit centers.

gsnichol

That's the person - the bill was so complicated it took a professional to disentangle it. The insurance companies must be so used to paying out what was requested that the hospitals just bill what they like, and slip up when it's coming out of someone's pocket. I was also surprised that someone who works with chainsaws has no insurance - just goes to show how expensive it is when you pay it all yourself, and the risks people take to avoid financial ruin.

Muswell Hill

ED drugs are an example of supplier induced demand. The market is really very small for these drugs, but they make 10's of billions. I sometimes wonder why we have no newer more effective drugs for malaria, sleeping sickness etc. Oh, actually i do...these effect the worlds poorest who can't contribute to profits....anybody seen "the constant gardener"?

For a good read I suggest "The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It" by marcia Angell.

Bob

I'm sure it's been pointed out...but here, no insurance, you go bankrupt, and die, or your very poor to begin with and get treatment.

UK has cheaper private...it's crap when it doesn't work, but it's crap over in the US too, and paying through the nose doesn't make it a better system.

Elvira

""when people lose their jobs, they also lose their health insurance. The combination creates a blow that families cannot recover from without bankruptcy."
............Lack of medical insurance did not appear to be a significant factor, although more than 40 million Americans have no medical insurance at all.

More often the problem is "under-insurance" -- families have some insurance, but not enough to handle a major illness, or the financial fallout caused by one.

Those filing for bankruptcy were a cross-section of middle-class America, dentists, computer programmers, school teachers, account ants.

In addition, Americans are paying for the amazing progress in medicine, which has given them the illusion that almost anything is possible,......"

http://commondreams.org/headlines/042700-03.htm

Bob

Quite a lot of companies are offering it these days, all my mates in professional jobs have it offered, even in junior roles....and getting it personally is a hell of a lot cheaper than trying that in the US.

Bob

I think out place goes through around $250 a month of the stuff, there's only about 50 people here, and only about half of them drink the stuff....

Bob

in that case, it's no different here than in the UK....some great places, some truely crap places, but they don't give you any discount for being crap.

USBound

In 25 years living in the UK I only ever got a prompt response from a doctor once and that was when I sprained my ankle.... most requests for an appointment were fended off in favor of seeing "the nurse practitioner" or a pharmacist directly... this was despite numerous actual complaints.

In the US I could call now and be in the doctors office within 90mins.

from my point of view there is no comparison.

Elvira