Quote:
Originally Posted by JPhillips
There are some real risks involved in government negotiating drug prices, but I think something along the lines of, we pay your best price among industrialized nations, or something along those lines would work reasonably well.
As I've said before, there are only two ways to reduce costs, limit access or lower payments to providers.
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At the risk of being excessively snarky, there is a 3rd way - improving efficiency, greatly reducing the administrative bloat, and focusing on limiting costs instead of doing every possible test "just to be safe." Kasich pointed to some success he had in Ohio doing just that, and the hilarious levels of redundant people and tests I've dealt with in the last month attests to how much overlapping waste there is there.
(I was hit in the eye with a lacrosse ball, neither MassHealth or Fallon had a list of in network eye specialists, so for each follow up appointment I had to phone 4 different offices, 3 of whom I've never met, to get approval to see an "out of network" specialist. After I spent 3 hours at the initial ER and they recommended I go to Mass Eye & Ear to be cautious I had to practically threaten to walk out before they agreed to let my friend drive me and not waste resources on an ambulance. And each separate place insisted on doing their own battery of ultrasounds, X-rays etc initially even though I had a folder with all of that stuff taken within the last 24 hours, and they insisted on continuing to do tests "to be safe" even after it was obvious that my bones would heal and vision would come back 95% on its own and surgery was neither necessary nor helpful.)