[RicocheT]

The cost of health care and prescription drugs won't come down until several things are done.

We need tort reform to cap lawsuits against doctors, health providers and drug companies. If the health provider or drug company wasn't grossly negligent, there should be no excessive damage award.

We need the FDA to streamline drug approvals, stop all these TV drug ads to consumers pushing the latest and most costly drugs and stop building a clinic on every corner like gas stations. Not every doc in a box location needs a MRI scanner costing a million bucks.

The government should only provide a minimal safety net sort of health program. If folks want the best and most costly care, buy insurance for it. As long as the steps above are done, the insurance should be affordable. A one size fits all socialized medicine plan is the most inefficient way to deliver health care. The Democrats seem to love the worst way to deliver services.

[slowhandluke]

Tort reform

Yup, get the crooks out. However that's going to take a considerable sea change in the legal world, as lawyers don't see it as crooked, and too many politicians see it as a pool of campaign contributions.

Not every doc in a box location needs a MRI scanner costing a million bucks.

Driving down the supply usually drives up the cost!

We need the FDA to streamline drug approvals,

And balance out the cost of the next thalidomide? The last few years at NASA suggest that we NOT push any government agency for fast results.

stop all these TV drug ads to consumers pushing the latest and most costly drugs

Or face the fact that we are likely to know a lot more medicine than we can afford for the forseeable future, and therefore there will always be medicine affordable only by the rich/powerful. Or the fact that we are in a free-speech country.

The use of personal insurance, with different payouts, such as not paying for drugs still under patent, could greatly reduce costs for those willing to make tradeoffs. However, as long as somebody else pays for the program, why take anything less than perfection?

The cost of any drug my grandfather took (and he didn't die that long ago) is down. It's the new drugs people are complaining about, the ungrateful b*st*rds. The childish idea that Doctors and Drug companies must give us the care we want at the price we want is embedded in the argument, and no politician would dare to scold the public about it.

The idea that newer/better medicine should be cheaper than older/worse is not going to be challenged.

Combatting the I-want-what-I-want-when-I-want-it attitude requires a moral argument, and they are very hard to make in the political sphere as they require some variety of hard choice.

The moral problems are envy and greed. If the rich get one, I want one. If you have something I want, you must give it to me. Wrapped up in socialist rhetoric of sharing, it becomes a justified demand for social virtue. Given a choice of listing to the conservative, and foregoing the latest/greatest medicine, or listening to the socialist and being supported in your demands, what's going to happen?

Ok, I've just talked my self into thinking this is a problem in the moral education system. Which, some churches excepted, isn't terribly systematic around here.