Funding Medicare, Paying the Drug Companies

I keep meaning to get around to blogging on the Medicare prescription drug crisis, but that dad gummed war and other stuff keeps getting in the way.

So, in the interim, here's Adam Kline's take over at Jesus' General, as well as another of his devastatingly effective adaptations of old posters:

"The main reason for the growing demand for medical care and prescription drugs is pretty clear: America is getting older and most serious diseases affect older Americans. A further reason, not always consciously recognized right away, is how the pharmaceutical industry is getting better at developing new drugs to treat various conditions. . . . . We can’t have new and better treatments for difficult conditions without expecting to pay more in the long run.

"At the same time, however, not all of the increased costs are justified by defensible market factors. Pharmaceutical companies run lots of ads claiming that drug prices today pay for the research for the next generation of drugs, but that’s tough to swallow when the marketing and advertising budgets for these companies are higher than their R&D budgets. I think most people would be willing to pay more to fund further research if these companies spent more on research than on trying to sell us stuff. . . .

"Thus we have pharmaceutical companies flush with money which they can 'donate' to politicians who coincidentally write laws which favor those same companies, protecting or increasing their profits. All that money has to come from somewhere, though, and it’s not just out of the pockets of patients who can’t really afford to keep paying so much. Companies which offer health insurance are paying, too — and they growing frustrated over this. As their costs increase, so does their willingness to consider alternative ways of delivering health care. We may be getting to the point where there is major corporate support for some form of 'socialized' medicine.

All of this should come together to create very serious political conflicts: will lawmakers respond to the demands of voters and more than a few corporations, or will they respond to the campaign 'donations' of major pharmaceutical companies? Thus far trends have favored the latter, but that may change — and the weight of corporations tired of shouldering the increasing costs of health insurance may have more than a little to do with this. It would be unfortunate, though, if the only way to achieve justice for the people is if it’s in the economic interests of large companies. Should that be the case, it won’t be so much a victory for the people as it will be a sign of the extent to which that the people have been bought and paid for by corporate America."

More here.