Some of the commie stuff I read about pharma is nuts. Pharma is 15% of the healthcare dollar. The rest is hospitals, doctors, services, etc. The US gov't needs to get off it's ass and get on the backs of these socialist countries not paying their share of the drug bill. It amounts to an unfair subsidy to them and its being put on the backs of US citizens. Otherwise, the commies in the USA are going to try get the gov't into the pharma business. If people think things are bad now, just wait 'til that happens. We'll go from expensive drugs to no drugs at all. We'll have drugs for AIDS or drugs for hispanics or blacks or whichever political group the politicians want votes from. Or, the gov't can just put us all on drugs and we won't need to vote since we'll be too stoned to make decisions. The suggestion that gov't should take over developement of drugs is moronic.
Not only are pharms a small % of healthcare, so are docs. Yet, everyone refers to their hospital bills as "doctors' bills."
What costs is that infrastructure and its maintenance--that fragile thing called a hospital. All that junk and its upkeep and its technicians.