“Articulate why the constitutionally correct answer is for the states and especially for the people to make all the decisions that Obamacare tried to make at the federal level.”
What if you had a child that needed an Article I, Section 8 patented drug that cost $200,000/year to stay alive and your state refused to pay for it?
What if every other state closed its high-cost condition pool?
Dear Parent:
Our records indicate that you live in a home with $350,000 of equity. Your child’s grandparents have $750,000 of equity in their homes.
Your request for patient assistance is denied.
We suggest you sell all the homes and buy your child’s drugs and our stock. We intend to make a real killing.
Greg Greedy,
CEO, Lifesaving Drugs Inc.
What magical development allows for a family to buy a child's drugs with other people's money rather than their own?
Patents on drugs are limited in time just like patents on other inventions. Once the patents run out ANYONE is free to produce the drug and deliver it AT COST.
I'm presently taking a drug which costs $120k per year. The patent just ran out. There are already three generic makers for this drug. The prices are still high, but competition will bring them down to no more than twice the cost to manufacture them or less. I am quite confident of this.
There is a reason why most major drug developments are accomplished by American companies. If you adjust your focus and recognize the tremendous bargain you get for 15-year-old medical treatment you might begin to appreciate the economic system which created it.
Have you heard of any child in the U.S. dying from polio or lack of penicillin recently? Do you begrudge the companies that developed these miracle drugs the profits they anticipated when they made their sacrifices to bring them to market. I don't.
As it happens, several of my close relatives, including one of my children, have serious and expensive long-term medical issues. If insurance did not cover one of those conditions, I would consider it immoral to take money from others (by force, since that is what government commands constitute) to pay for something I could pay for myself with a mortgage. No, even in the sob story case, I’m not a fan of compelling insurance companies to take on a new patient and cover such preexisting conditions at a loss, nor am I a fan of compelling my neighbors to do so.