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Part5 2 of "socialized medicine sucks"... I just bought 90 pills 1mg of melatonin (here it is prescription only).. it will take a week for them to "make" it and cost me $150 dollars to buy it. Would cost me about $10 over the counter int he usa.
@VoxDei The issue with melatonin is one you will only see in Israel with that drug.. You have similar issues with other drugs in other socialized systems, but not really with melatonin.
In the UK for example I wouldnt be able to get the drugs I need for sleep but in the case of hte UK it would be the Zelepalon not the melatonin (I take both)
@freemo If you want to compare healthcare costs between a normal system and the US system, cherrypicking like that is not the way. It has the highest healthcare costs in the world, but ranks low in satisfaction and health outcomes. The US system is demonstrably worse.
No country has a perfect system by any means, but the US has a uniquely terrible one among developed countries.
@bjarne The point was not to compare costs of the two types of systems... The point is to highlight the lack of accessibility to certain medications. The cost in israel is actually a positive thing because they still give non-citizens a way to pay their way through to an imported solution. Most other countries dont even let you do that much and you wont have access to critical drugs no matter what you are willing to pay.
I have covered this in more depth recently in a post where I highlight several examples of failures in socialized systems which ive personally expiernced as a person who has lived under at least a dozen different socialized healthcare systems at this point.
To summarize i generally agree the main fault with the USA system is cost, the problem with socialized systems are generally wait time and accessibility to certain drugs and procedures.
@freemo oh yeah, just got recently gummies in Canada, around same 10 bucks and don't even know how many, but judging by how they shake in plastic jar, should be enough for month, but also monopoly in play here because here in Canada healthcare is very socialized
@AncientGood Vast majority of the time in both socialized and not socialized system melatonin is dirt cheap. The issue is what drugs you wont have access to (and if you can get at any price) is different from system to system. In the UK for example I'd be fine and melatonin would be very cheap, but Id have no access to Zelapalon (the other drug i need to regulate my sleep disorder).
@freemo Look at the overall cost. How much did the appointment to get the prescription cost you? I just had to pay $25 for a medication that used to cost $5 and that was on top of a $25 dr visit co-pay and the $350 per month I have to pay for my health insurance (My employer pays the other $350 per month). It essentially cost me $400 for a generic, been-on-the-market-forever low-cost medication.
It sounds like the Israeli system treats melatonin as a compounded drug, which most US insurance won't cover either.
My husband had to have a compounded medicated lotion for diabetic neuropathy. $80 US per tube and it took a week to compound. It wasn't covered by Medicare nor his veteran's benefits. Conservatives in the US consider both these programs as "socialist medicine" and have been floating trial balloons about sunset-ing these programs. With all the chronic health problems he has, we'd be bankrupt in months.
@Dimestorehalo The cost for the appointment was $133, The prescriptions cost me$172 here.
In use a doctors appointment ifor me is $50 (sometimes $25) and my prescriptions under $30.
That said there is a lot of caveats that mean I wouldnt be comparing the costs here without considering the caveats,which are real issues but the cost isnt the whole picture.
No melatonin is actually pre-packaged at 2mg. My doctor prescribed 1mg however and thus required compounding in this case. If i had the 2mg one I would have gotten it immediately and it would have cost me about $40.
@freemo "free" markets are a pppproblem... i hope you get the stuff you need.
Ironically, this shows a bit about opportunity and "everybody can do it" as we talked about. You could make that stuff, with a little bit of effort.
The monopoly you talked about? Yep, keeps taking your money because it can.
The equal opportunity? Yep, not there in practice.
Again, i wish you well in your procurement - if there is a YARR in it, i would still find it ethical.
@admitsWrongIfProven Free markets work just fine, as long as you understand its limits (they dont work for healthcare, as we discussed, and they also dont work at addressing poverty)... but as long as they are applied appropriately then they work just fine at creating balance.. But a free market also implies no monopolies.
But yea I actually could make melatonin just fine... but I cant because its socialized medicine and they own the cartel, and they made damn sure the safest drug you could ever hope to sell over the counter is prescription.
@freemo Ah, it seems you missed the quotes. The quotes make the meaning.
If a market was indeed free, it would be like that libertarian city taken over by bears ^^
What we see are markets guided for those that hold sway. Hey, the monopoly thing is a good point. Not the only one, but a good one.
@admitsWrongIfProven Well yes its all in the definition of free... I generally interprit free markets to mean "Markets free from interference, governed by supply and demand, not manipulated"
@freemo Yeah, that's the ones where the bears come. And without a fire brigade. But they are exceptionally rare.
@freemo Ah, a second thought on this:
You know this thing how any metric used to gouvern anything is manipulated?
Ask for quick response times, you get useless but quick responses?
Supply and demand are ideas that are turned into a metric... see where i am going with this?
@admitsWrongIfProven Yea but the conclusion isnt "we shouldnt have metrics" the conclusion should be "we need to be careful about how we apply metrics and dont do so in a dogmatic way"
@freemo £9.65 I think current prescription charge in the UK, and that would cover as many boxes of the stuff as the doctor thought you needed. I can't speak to how long it'd take though, I don't know if the dispensaries will keep that stuff in stock.
I'm only using the UK as an example again because it's the one I know. If the Israeli(?) system has issues I'm not sure they are necessarily generalised issues with socialised healthcare? UK system has plenty of its own problems, but I don't know how generalised they are either.