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If a known medical treatment can circumvent death, it's not terminal. You should know better than that.
It's all about semantics. If no donor. He's dead. It's terminal.
Now I can spin it the other way and say people with end stage kidney disease are terminal as well. Because most will die within 5 years even with dialysis. So even with known medical treatment (dialysis and or kidney transplants). Because many kidney transplants will fail due to rejection acute or chronic. Some on immunosuppressive drugs may contact a deadly bug. Most will die. So are they terminal? Are they near death?
Wouldn't matter whether she was rich or poor, whether she had medical care or not. She would have died, regardless.
One of our best friends has brain cancer. With treatments she's managed a decent existence going on 10 years now and raised her kids. It helps that she is well to do and had/has good HC coverage. All sorts of medical, surgical and ancillary therapies through the years. Help at home. A special car with hand controls that she can drive,
Prior to the advent of more modern medicine, before the '60's, there just wasn't much we could do medically and surgically that was drastically complicated yet commonly needed, useful and expensive. Like a heart valve or bypass procedure. Medicine and surgery in general, so then third parties had little to offer.
The reason we have HC insurance and central social supports like Medicare today is because things like a heart surgery are so necessary and are also very expensive at the same time. Medicare simply helps fill that societal need.
In real terms of value and production there is no way to do a heart transplant cheap. A small used car with a few dents might be a few thousand dollars and perfectly serviceable. But a few thousand would never cover an intensely difficult, highly technical surgical procedure, followed by very complicated and chronic post op medical care.
Of course 3rd party payments tend to increase medical business and might tend to raise the price of many things in medicine. But not all, and not uniformly. As with Medicare there have been great controls on hospital and doctor payments. But not enough with drug costs.
Your view would work well for the rich. Yours is a common sense and free market view that just does not work well in most medical environments. Most prominently because of the aging effect on health needs.
Ken Arrow is your economist and summed it all up quite nicely:
Thanks & respect for your insights, I agree with much of what you've said here. I'd also appreciate your take on the bolded part above.
Do you think it would help to contain prices if the US could negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical industry?
According to this article:
Quote:
Pharmaceutical companies have the largest profit margins in the healthcare industry, hovering just above 20 percent. That's more than five times the margins that hospitals and health insurance plans typically run.
The whole article is interesting & uses the development of Sovaldi (used to treat Hep C) & Nexium (used to treat heartburn) to illustrate comparative costs in other Countries.
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