I can see the distinction, but I also see reality. A 30mg Sandostatin shot in Canada costs $2800 some dollars. I have seen my bills range from 22k at Tampa down to 11k in Chicago. I am now taking two shots a month and if I was a cash customer, I would have to come up with 44K a month, but if I was born in Canada it would be $5,600. I cannot make the world perfect. There will always be people who suffer. I will even buy into Markle's argument but for obscene profits we would not have these medicines.......but those arguments simply do not hold up to reality. Americans in mass are leaving America to go to other countries for advanced treatments. They are getting drugs developed in other countries and top notch care which is not available in America. In my disease when the liver starts to fail, people travel to Brussels for four monthly shots which buy them an additional year and a half. It costs 25k for those four monthly shots and American insurance will not cover it.....and the FDA has not approved the treatment. The 60mg shots may buy me enough time to have the treatments approved by the fda and approved by insurance companies, but my cousin saw her husband die of my exact same disease two years ago, and she never knew about the Brussels treatment. He probably would be alive today.....hanging on.....but in our arrogance that we have all the answers, and American health care is the best.....well, he never was given that option.
If we make people a priority, we can do better. I thought the priority in life was how many houses or businesses I could own. Free enterprise is good, but it must be qualified. Sure we can argue about the failures of our system and the failures of our medical system, but we can and must do better. A seventy year old suffering because he cannot pay the drug costs and must take half of his lung medicine is the dark ages......we need to become enlightened, and rather than arguing that health care should be thrown out.....we need to have rational discussions on our priorities, our funding choices, and compromise where Americans come first.
However, as much as this will anger some.....we need to talk about limits, we need to talk about limits on end of life treatment. We need to realize that every problem cannot be solved and nor should it be solved. Death panels are this awful concept, but we need to set health care priorities which are realistic and across the board fair.......that may mean that in the near future my shots will not be covered and I will pass........I am good with that if a 70 year old who has a $300 medication he needs gets treated and my 22k a month is deemed too much.....I will be sad, but it is just this discussion which America must have.....not run away from.
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