re: Why can every other first world country have healthcare for all?

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I almost made a really snarky comment about this (not aimed toward you), but instead wanted to recognize the tech you've brought to this thread.

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I'll take this post to comment further that the Wal Mart $4- list can treat almost anything.
What it can't, we have the Target list (it's either 4,6, or 8 dollars but I'm too lazy to look it up right now) and GoodRx for.
GoodRx will actually let me, in the room with the patient, search a drug, select the dosage, branded/unbranded, number of pills, and the zip code and give me a coupon that I can print or text/email (from an anonymous number/address, not my personal ones) to the patient before they leave.

The current medical system has thousands of ways to be improved. But I seriously have never come across someone that couldn't get the care they needed based on cost. Functional drugs can be had cheap. In the cases that only the big ones work, companies can often be petitioned to get it covered through an assistance program. If that doesn't work, there's already a federally-subsidized program run by most/all states (going back to the insulin, you could get it for $8 or $11 for 3 months if you qualified).




The two things that actually do annoy me that I can't currently find a working drug for for patients for less than $100/m:
1) insulin (specifically basal insulin but I have made a few posts about the alternative solution which, while I don't necessarily avoid, would usually ask the patient whether they want $25/m for "good" or $100/m for "better")
2) there are no fricking inhaled corticosteroid inhalers for under $100 per month and it pisses me off. There are basically inhalers for asthma and inhalers for COPD with some overlap. When someone smokes $200 of cigarettes a month and won't pay $150 per month for an inhaler, I don't feel bad for them. At all. Maybe I'm a bad person or doctor for that, but I don't. But when a parent won't/can't spend $150/m on an inhaler that their kid needs because they have crappy insurance, it's the one set of drugs I actually have a hard time finding a cheap alternative for and have never really found a good patient assistance program. And it makes me sad. I include this rant in case someone out there knows what I'm missing. I doubt it. But, hey, I'm a hopeful guy.


Essentially other than that, I don't have a significant problem finding drugs that can work well and really help people in the $4-30/month range, which I tend to seem 'reasonable'
That part of the 'cost' is often a drug getting written, it being really expensive, and the patient not taking it or complaining about the cost without asking the doctor about an alternative that may be cheaper. Or better yet, checking their insurance formulary (which they have access to and the physician, for whatever reason, does not).