The New York Times highlights a new practice in pharmaceutical copays where instead of a fixed amount, the victims, er, insured are required to pay a percentage of total cost for certain drugs. For many people this can amount to thousands of dollars.
With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.
The system means that the burden of expensive health care can now affect insured people, too.
No one knows how many patients are affected, but hundreds of drugs are priced this new way. They are used to treat diseases that may be fairly common, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, hepatitis C and some cancers. There are no cheaper equivalents for these drugs, so patients are forced to pay the price or do without.
This is criminal. Single payer, now!
Hat tip to John Cole who observes:
I am suspicious about single payer, but as I have often stated, I think it is an inevitability- big businesses want it, the number of uninsured in this country is untenable, our national standards for care have been declining (and you can choose your own statistic- infant mortality and so on), so my personal opinions really don’t matter much. I think the only questions regarding single-payer in the US are when, and how bad will the special interests loot the treasury in the process (will it be another boondoggle like Bush’s welfare plan for big pharm?).
Regardless, when I read crap like this, my attitude is how can it be any worse than the current system?
He’s right to be suspicious about single payer – it can be done very wrongly – but it’s going to happen.