Dear Editor,
The cost of health care in the United States has increased enormously over the past decade, resulting in huge profits for hospitals and drug companies. The profit which the University of Pittsburg Medical Center made recently was $769.7 billion and the compensation of its CEO was $5,975,462. Other well-known hospitals, which are also supposedly charitable organizations, had similar figures. It is estimated that in 2013 the cost of health care will be $2.8 trillion.
Hospitals are able to generate these huge profits because they are charging outrageously inflated amounts for every single item used in any way by a patient (e.g. $24 for one over-the-counter pain killer tablet).
One recent billing by a small hospital in Massachusetts charged $10,500 for just two blood transfusions. The average charge for an appendectomy in the US is $13,000, compared to $5,600 in Canada and $3,200 in France. The US spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders in the world combined. From 1990 until 2010, the cost of medical care in the US increased 500 percent, five times the GDP.
But apart from these charges, we have in addition the costs of drugs in the US which are 50 percent higher than other developed countries. For example, there is a product manufactured in Spain as a solution for increasing the immune system, and the cost for processing by the Spanish firm and to test and ship this product is $300. It was sold to a US hospital for $1,500, and ultimately the patient who used this product to control his lymphoma was charged $7,346 by the hospital for the drug.
In another situation involving a cancer drug, it is estimated that it cost the manufacturer $300 to process, test and ship the product to a hospital, receiving $3,300 in payment, and the hospital charged its patient $13,700 for administration of the drug.
In 2003, George W. Bush pushed Congress to pass a bill which would provide the right to obtain drugs through Medicare. This sounded great, but unlike how Medicare can negotiate to set the charges of hospitals and doctors, Congress, under the persistent pressure of drug company lobbyists, refused to allow Medicare to negotiate with the drug companies to obtain reasonable prices for their drugs.
Other nations, including Canada, have negotiated for lower prices through arrangements with the US drug companies, but Congress held that Medicare must pay the average sales price, plus a six percent add-on, and of course, the drug companies set the sales prices at whatever they chose. As a consequence, cancer drug prices increased from $3 billion in 1997 to $11 billion in 2004, and analysts say annual cost will reach more than $20 billion, and keep in mind that this is only the cost of cancer drugs.
Members of Congress, particularly the right wing Tea Party types, focus entirely on the national debt (which incidentally has been significantly reduced in the past year under the Obama administration, something nobody talks about). They seek to do this by reducing or eliminating entitlement programs which benefit the elderly, the disadvantaged and those in poverty. Yet, they are perfectly willing to allow the drug companies to charge whatever they can get for drugs they sell in the US, twice the prices they receive from nations such as Canada. This, of course, imposes an even heavier burden on the disadvantaged in the nation.
Most of these right wing types profess to be avowed and committed Christians, but recognizing that Jesus Christ, first and foremost, sought to satisfy the needs of and to assist the poor and needy, it is amazing that these pious right wing types are willing to take programs from the poor and needy so that already wealthy companies can make even more profits.
For example, they pushed through a bill in the House providing for increased subsidies to large farming conglomerates while in the same bill at the same time, they cut back on food stamps for the poor which they desperately need merely to survive.
The drug companies and those members of Congress who support them all contend that a large portion of the prices charged for drugs are needed for the research and development of new drugs. Various analysis have shown, however, that this is a fabrication; that R&D is a small percentage of total revenue; that the costs spent by these companies for lobbying in Washington is as much, if not more than the cost of R&D; and that the primary goal is not altruistic but rather to raise profits of these drug companies even more.
Implementation of the Affordable Health Care program will have the effect of curtailing the runaway cost of health care while at the same time providing some 14 million or more Americans with medical coverage for the first time which they otherwise could not obtain.
Under the system which has been in place for so many years, all with the blessing of members of Congress, hospitals, drug companies and doctors were free to charge whatever they could obtain, and those members of Congress who supported these health providers, were recognized through financial support from their benefactors at election time.
The Republicans in the House of Representatives, who are in the majority, have vehemently opposed what they have labelled as Obamacare, seeking to repeal it some 45 times and even shutting down the government for two weeks in protest to the program. One reason for this mindless opposition is the fact that, as they themselves have acknowledged, they cannot abide the idea that President Obama will be attaining this major undertaking after numerous earlier presidents could not do so. Indeed, these same Federal officials oppose every bill the President presents.
But another reason undoubtedly is that once the health care program is in place and functioning, health costs will be contained and these members of Congress will not have the same power to provide benefits to the drug companies, for example, thus no longer receiving from them a certain financial largess for their efforts. And again, in their blind opposition, they could care less about the fact that the runaway costs of health care will be curtailed and many millions of people will, for the first time, have medical coverage.
It will take time to fully implement the health care program, particularly since Republicans have done everything in their power to obstruct the program, including the fact that some 26 states under Republican control have refused to set up exchanges to facilitate the ability of people to obtain coverage and the Federal government will have to do this.
But once the program is up and running and the people begin to recognize the benefits it provides, the right wingers will be sorry that in the years ahead, long after Obama steps down, the program will popularly be known as Obamacare, the label they so callously applied to it in their effort to disparage the program.
Stephen A. Hopkins
