On 6/30/2012 12:29 PM, Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Fri, 29 Jun 2012 19:02:26 -0400, Mike Marlow wrote:

What it would require is an accurate analysis of what has triggered
exploding health care costs, figuring out where the money really goes,
and finding solutions to getting the costs under control.

Correct. It won't be any single place since it includes things from
crazy malpractice awards, to the fear that attorneys put into the hearts
of the companies they represent, to profits that insurance companies
gobble up every year, to the cost of "wages" within the medical
community. Lots of areas to look at, and I'm sure this list is just a
small part of it all.

Agreed.

You forgot to mention the drug companies. You know that R&D expense
they're always harping on? Turns out most of it is spent analyzing how
to modify a competitors product just enough that they can bring out their
own version. Very little is spent on developing new drugs.

Except the cost of maintaining a staff of regulatory experts to guide
the drug through the FDA approval process, the cost of the required
testing to demonstrate the drug is effective, safe, and a host of other
things, such as the lethal limit testing, environmental test require for
manufacturing discharges, etc. When you consider that to get a drug
through FDA review and approval, there must be 100 of animal test, and
many people must use the drug and the data collected analyses.

If the drug is a biologic the organism must be created and it must be
characterized. Long chain protein characterization is not easy with
1000's of carbon atoms in the molecule.

Before a drug can become approved, multiple lots of the drug must be
manufactured by the planned procedures that are submitted to FDA review
and the manufacture drug shown it is equivalent to the lab drug. These
lots can not be sold and are destroyed.

Before manufacturing can begin other permits must be obtained, or
reviews made the EPA, OSHA, and a host of other alphabets agencies on
the local, state, and federal level.

This does not include the R&D expense of the many drugs that are found
and never make it to be consider as a possible candidate for the medical
system. For every one drug the is seen as a potential candidate for the
drug industry, 1000 are required to be chemically constructed, and
evaluated.

If these cost could not be deducted from the drug sales, new drugs would
be prohibitively expensive and would not come on the market.

YES there is a lot of patient avoidance research, but where do you think
the generic drugs that are approved comes from? They too have
development cost.