That’s a picture of the prescription that I picked up earlier this month, the same one that I’ve been taking for about 4 years now. It’s a one month supply; 360 little pink pills crammed into one translucent orange bottle. And it’s generic, too. A Czech-made knockoff of the brand name produced by Novartis. So what does a 30 day supply of a generic drug cost? $561.09, according to my local Walgreens.
I don’t pay $561.09, of course. I have a good job, and with it comes insurance. I pay a $10 copay and that’s it. Your insurance saved you: $551.09, the Walgreens label touts each time I refill. Did it? I think that’s probably a misleading statement. My employer probably saved me $551.09, my insurance company would probably just as soon kill me as look at me if they weren’t legally obligated otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think insurance companies are evil. They’re just profit driven. And being profit driven, they act in very predictable ways. For an insurance company, the basic model is to collect as many premiums as possible, and pay out as few claims as possible. If I was a shareholder, that’s what I’d want them to do. That way my stock value remains high. Greed is Good, as Gordon Gekko would say.
Compare that to the dirty word(s) coming out of the health care debate: The Public Option. So what is that? It means Medicare, but for everybody. Health care either subsidized or completely provided by the government. Should the government be in health care, more than they already are? It would probably lead to higher taxes, certainly in the short term. But a government run model isn’t profit driven, so the goal is to cover as much as possible for as many people as possible. This is a pretty stark contrast from the private insurance model.
Which is better? Which is right? There’s no easy answer here. So why not let them compete? Competition is a pretty American concept, I think. When public schools are failing, we allow people to choose a private school instead (sometimes we even pay for it). I don’t like the unreliability of the Postal Service tracking system, so I choose UPS. I didn’t like the higher cost (and stricter admissions standards) of private higher education, so I chose a public university. Why not create a viable public option for all consumers, regardless of age or income? If I want to keep my company subsidized private insurance, I can do that. My company can decide to drop private coverage entirely, move us all to a public plan, and use the savings to raise my pay. Or they can pocket the savings, and I can choose to find a less money-grubbing employer. You get the idea. Choice is good.
Speaking of money-grubbing, my medical insurance company is against a public option. They sponsor a “pro-reform” site that does little more than ask consumers to basically support the status quo. They even might be going so far as encouraging their own employees to attend anti-reform activities. Can you think of any reason why they feel this way? They would certainly stand to lose subscribers, or be forced to cut profits and operate efficiently enough to keep those subscribers. So they are acting in the way that most supports profits, as they are expected to and as their shareholders would demand.
Stephen Hemsley is the CEO of UHG, and his annual compensation as of last year was 1.3 million dollars. Maybe that’s why insurance companies think it’s reasonable to set a generic 30-day drug cost at $561.09, or an annual cost of $6733.08. Stephen can pay that annual cost in just under 11 hours of work. To be fair, UnitedHealth is my medical insurance – but not my prescription coverage. That is provided for me by ExpressScripts. George Paz runs ExpressScripts, and his total compensation last year was 12.77 million dollars. So for George, it takes him just over an hour of work to cover the annual “retail” cost of my generic drug prescription. If I were George, I’d probably think that was pretty reasonable too, and I’d have little incentive to fight a drug company to reduce that cost. Is it any wonder that insurance and drug companies don’t want reform? The status quo is profitable, very profitable. In the second quarter of this year alone the health lobby spent 133 million dollars to ask congress to ignore you and keep the gravy train flowing. That was the highest amount any sector spent on lobbying last quarter, beating out the 109 million that the insurance sector spent to snag second place. Whose best interest and bottom line do you think they’re looking out for while spending all of that cash?
So what do you think? Do some research (here is the house bill) and come to your own conclusions, don’t just take my word for it. If you agree that we need reform, but you think there is a better way, I’m all ears. I will likely be chained to some sort of health care system for the rest of my life, and my generation will be shouldered with the cost of any decisions (or indecision) made by the generations in power now, so there really isn’t a topic that could be more important to me (or that I could be more eager to discuss).
Better yet, don’t tell me. Tell your representative or senator. And please be civil about it; don’t be one of those ass clowns who shows up at a town hall expressly to scream and prevent real dialogue from taking place. That helps nobody. Well, with the possible exception of health insurance companies, I suppose.