this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
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I did a quick search, and it seems that the full price of generic version of this inhaler in Germany costs between 30 and 40 euros. With a prescription is either 5 euros or free depending on why it was prescribed.
The problem of the US healthcare is much deeper than just the insurance companies. Every single layer of the system is rotten.
While this is true, the core of the rot is in the insurance companies. Institutions warp to shape themselves around the locus of power - and the power here is held by the insurance companies, through whom almost all healthcare payment passes through the greedy, grasping hands of.
This is a marvelous sentence.
After a hospital stay I went through the line by line charges of a relative that had been at the hospital for two days.
$500 for an x-ray, $90 on three separate occasions for an OTC dose of Tylenol.
Everyone is padding things out for more money, but I have a feeling the nurses that actually attended to him didn't see a cent of it.
Of course the nurses didn't see a cent of that. They're hourly and get what they're paid and should be greatful!!!1!
I'm willing to bet that hospital was owned by an Insurance company.
So you have drug companies changing hundreds to thousands of dollars for certain treatments that have a marginal cost of a few dollars.
You have hospital administrations that tack on thousands for noting that a particular staff member was part of a visit, no matter how trivial.
Insurance companies are denying coverage for necessary medical treatment, and constantly second guessing the opinions of the health care providers.
The insidious thing is the way the system is, they all independently end up with rationalizations. If insurance companies give providers and drug companies a blank check, then they will only price even worse. On the flip side, the "list price" is a lie to give insurance companies room to "negotiate" and so uninsured get screwed. Hospitals have to cover cost for care that will never be paid for, so everyone that would pay ends up paying more.
Health care is just not an area where privatization works that well. You might have some more elective facets be in the realm of privatization, but basic wellness just isn't a good fit.
The rot is in a system that allows this. What you people need is much more regulation, not less.
but muh freedoms!!!!1
It infringes on my constitutional freedom to be ripped off!
It's more complicated than that. Look at the fight over PBMs right now. The drug companies say the PBMs are the problem, and the PBMs say the drug companies are the problem, and both are right. The PBMs are an insurance/pharmacy cartel, and the drug companies are legalized monopolies due to drug patents. All of these are corporations whose sole goal is to maximize profits in a totally amoral fashion, and all of them have PR departments that will claim they have the complete opposite motivation that they actually do have. None of them are ever going to actually try to reduce prescription drug prices, but all of them will claim that they are trying as hard as they can and blame everyone else.
This is the intended result of corporate capitalism. It takes the individual out of the picture entirely and shifts the moral responsibility to an entirely amoral, profit-driven entity. When I look at the reaction to Luigi, maybe that's why people like it - they were never ok with the idea that the individuals can't be blamed. The corporation and blameless capitalism generally was created by unelected monarchs hundreds of years ago. No one asked for it and it's time for it to become something that brings individual responsibility back (preferably without the lawless vigilantes).
the problem is, its not healthcare but wealthcare for the rich who neither need nor deserve anything at all.
looking from far away at it, the us didn't even abandon slavery "yet" (how many decades is that now?). lies however seem to flourish exceptionally good. yes, i'ld say rotten it is. there are lots of examples.
i think this rotting might be more present in the us but now is a worldwide problem, no matter who started it.
Did a check, too. In Russia, it's $10 for locally produced, and $21 for French import.
American healthcare is a scam, even the original $66 figure is way overboard.
But people dying is beyond fucked up. Is there a way I could smuggle those to US over darknet or something?
I wouldn't use the word "rotten" in this case. The capitalist system designed by the burgeoise is working perfectly, the question that remains is: Working for whom? Well, the answer we all already know (except the ancaps)
Germany is also a capitalist country. America's problems are more specific to America than they are to capitalism.
Germany is a whore who sold itself to neoliberalism
Germany is a puppet of USA empire
Cut the gendered slurs. Those are not a good look.
But to give an actual reply to your... expressed views, no. Neoliberalism, deregulation and privatisation is an issue in Germany, but there's still a significant difference between Germany and the United States. And if you had paid any attention at all you'd know that German policy is primarily a policy of national self-interest, and that Germany doesn't follow America blindly. German and American interests just happen to be broadly aligned (happened to be, anyway, considering the new US administration seems more interested in conflict with Germany and Germany's allies).
Beyond that, most capitalist countries other than the United States have some form of universal healthcare system, I've just used Germany as an example because Germany was used as a point of comparison by someone else.
I respectfully disagree with your view
Well that escalated quickly.
thats the point in rotting, "some" bacteria flourish while food rots, yet its rotting for everyone else.
I interpret "rotting" in this context as "deteriorating from its intended purpose", but this is the intended purpose, the cruelty baked in at the foundation.
That sounds like you're describing a system rotting from within.