Posted by yxibow on September 29, 2008, at 1:49:01
In reply to Re: Are medications a lot more expensive in the US, posted by mav27 on September 28, 2008, at 8:01:31
> A day trip down to mexico will get ya some cheaper meds as well :)
And some possibly dangerous ones depending on the city, I won't make broad prejudicial statements.
Basically in the US every new medication is like $3 a pill at the minimum, at the uncovered level, and some like the 5HT3 blockades are $25 a pill (ondansetron, etc), laboratories [blood draws, etc] (unpaid) are typically $100+ each, unless they are the most common, which makes Clozaril at the last figure $9,000 a year and probably much more.
If you don't get health insurance through work, you have to pay it privately, that is if you can get it without "pre-existing conditions", the nasty bean-counter way of excluding everyone from insurance because of every possible disorder.
I forget how it works but COBRA under dependent college students (?) up to 26(?) is an extension, but I believe there isn't a particular limit to a fee. I'm not sure. Fortunately there is HIPAA which extends COBRA. Of course, the insurance company can charge what they want, typically in the $300+ per month, with deductibles, all sorts of things.
People who have insurance are lucky to get their prescriptions at $20 and $40 levels. [My unnamed insurance] charges most any level of Seroquel a fair over $100 per month.
The health care system is disastrous in this country -- I don't know how we are going to insure 307 million people, the ones who don't already have insurance, stop-gap, all sorts of schemes, but mm... that gets into politics so I shall stop here before I go on my rant that the US long ago should have had public health care coverage.
But while Canada was leaning towards that direction up to its decision to create Medicaire, we were immersed in the cold war and any social services were "communist".
Now it isn't all rosy in Canada -- there is triage, some Canadians have to take out American insurance and have cross-border procedures because they are on a long waiting list for a necessary procedure. Still, prescription medication is covered much better. Some medications are not approved in Canada and vice versa for here.
Its sort of my view that Australia tends to regulate controlled substances more strongly, but that you would know.
Similarly, in the UK, there is triage -- from what I've heard about it, medication on approval lists tends to use the less expensive and older medications when newer ones may have less side effects and of course cost NHS more. There is a bit of stagnation I think, but maybe I'm generalizing; and I'm sure there is triage for a population at least double the size of Canada.
Ultimately any social health care will have triage, just as an emergency room has triage, but some people just may never get a procedure done.
Still speaking of emergency rooms, Federal law bans turning away anybody from any ER who has a genuine emergency or is a woman in labor regardless whether they can pay or not. This of course contributes to hospitals absorbing the cost of health care to individuals who can't afford health insurance and often use hospitals for disorders that could have been avoided by preventative checkups paid by some sort of stopgap system.
Now this doesn't cover the problem with mental health care.
The Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 has loopholes in it and rarely covers to its full extent personal insurance or employee self-funded plans. Although in theory the act was supposed to place on par the doctor visit lifetime cap for mental health at the same level as emergency and other regular medical visits, it fails.
As a result, people who can, have to have private visits.
Hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars are lost every year in industry to time lost to mental (biological) disorders because there is no effective coverage.
The stigma of mental illness and the nature that it is just as medically related as any other serious medical illness such as MS, diabetes, heart conditions, etc, needs to go.
But that's my soapbox.
-- Jay
poster:yxibow
thread:854341
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080926/msgs/854728.html