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steelhips's avatar

This is where our Australian system called the PBS (Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme) is the way to go. In fact it's so good several US drug companies have tried to take it to court and are lobbying our politicians to scrap it. It looks at any particular drug, determines the value to the taxpayer to the benefits it will give to the patient. If approved it negotiates with the drug companies over the price. All my meds cost me AU$6.20 as a pensioner, $35 or less for someone employed.

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Grrrr's avatar

There is a profound fucked-up-ed-ness about the US that (I think) must be a holdover from a punitive Puritan ethic; the US, Canada, and Australia are similar in certain significant ways (young nations; pioneers needed to settle sometimes-fierce terrain), but only the US is regressive in this way and with regard to gun control. ..... (And, tho I sometimes had very good insurance, it never covered remedial massage. There is a weird, possibly inherent grudgingness in the US -- YOU can't have and YOU can't have and YOU can have a little and YOU can't have and HEY LOOK it's a "self-made" millionaire, we LOVE you, you MUST be a good person because only GOOD people are blessed with money! Prosperity gospel.)

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