I question the reality of liability being the real reason that medical
costs are so high in the Untied States. To the best of my memory, the
Sr Bush (when looking to severely limit lawsuits on medical providers)
used (raw) numbers to show just how horrible the costs of the liability
insurance and lawsuits were to the medical industry. However, when you
took the numbers he gave for "liability costs" and put them with the
gross expenditures for medical services in the USA, the liability costs
were only 5% of the gross expenditures. Effectively this means that
even if ALL liability suits and costs were eliminated, your medical bill
would only decrease by 5%.

I don't have time to look up cites for this right now...however, it
looks like the liability issue (on an overall basis) is more of a
red-herring issue to keep the populace from looking at the real cause of
high medical costs.

I'll give an example that happened around here last summer...foot x-rays
performed at a clinic attached to the local hospital were billed to
another clinic to handle which were billed to a third location to "read"
which were billed from the same hospital where the x-rays took place. A
big circle with each transfer taking a cut of the pie and jacking the
cost. The same thing often happens (or at least used to) with those
military "cost plus" contracts....run the costs up by circular billing
because in the end, you just get to add a percentage to the higher cost
and can't be questioned..."we only take this tiny fair profit...why are
you complaining???"

Koz

Paul K. Dickman wrote:

Ed Huntress wrote in message ...


While I was waiting for the veterinary tech to mix up the last batch of
amoxicillin for our cat, I asked her how the procedure differed from the


way


it's done for humans. "Different flavor," she said, "but it's otherwise the
same. But the flavor we're giving your cat is bubblegum." g

Ed Huntress



I imagine there are two differences between veterinary drugs and human
drugs.

The first is liability insurance, you could make Secretariat drop over dead,
and it would still be pocket change compared to giving Bill Gates a
hangnail.

The second is FDA approval. According to the PhRMA, it takes 10-15 years and
$800,000,000 on average to bring a drug to market. I imagine they are very
happy to have a secondary market to recoup those costs on, should a drug not
get approval.

Paul K. Dickman