re: Here is who RFKJr is fighting against

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It's ridiculously stupid but health insurance did not have a trillion dollar profit margin.

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Revenue, not profit margin

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I still knew that they were evil and had extremely little sympathy for the UnitedHealth CEO that was killed,

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Who is they? The owners? Because that is you and me, pal. Look into your 401K portfolio. And if it’s not you, then who is evil?

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Introduction of generic branded drugs has inflated cost of other pharmaceuticals

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Generic drugs and branded drugs are different things. However, assuming you mean just generic, please help me understand this comment.

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Fraud and mistakes aren’t driving up healthcare costs in any significant fashion.

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That’s just naive, my friend.

Whenever my mom has a UTI, she gets loopy. We take her to the ER and they order an MRI. Every. Single. Time. They order it before doing the cheaper UTI test “just to rule it out.” We’re telling them she gets like this when she has a UTI, but do they listen to us and run the cheaper test first? Nope.

Why does the hospital do it? Because my folks walk in with their Tricare coverage, and they see $$$$; they know Tricare will pay for whatever test they order even if it’s unnecessary.

And MRIs ain’t cheap.

You might also want to ask yourself why a Tylenol costs 30x as much at the hospital than it does off the shelf at CVS before asserting that providers don’t drive up the cost of healthcare.

It’s not insurance setting those prices. The hospital does. Insurance actually negotiates that cost down when writing the network contract with the hospital.

Don’t believe me? Fine. Look at your claim for your next doctor’s visit. Look at the column for what the doctor actually wants to charge for your visit. Then look at how much your plan reduces that cost. It’s mind boggling how much doctors actually want to charge for services.

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Yep , that’s a good number

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$1T net? no

“Companies are investing millions in R&D with no guarantee “.

They spend billions on R&D but 7 out of 10 drug companies spend billions more on marketing Ex- 2021,J&J spent 12 billion on R&D,22 billion on sales and marketing.
Bayer spent 8 billion on R&D,18 billion on sales and marketing.

That’s a tired old argument drug companies come up with ,gives credence to the old adage that if you repeat a lie enough times it becomes the truth.
Another issue not well publicized is that universities develop quite a few drugs,37% of cancer drugs.
NIH gives them grants,if they are successful they enter into a licensing agreement with a drug company which pays them royalties.

In other words taxpayers finance development of these drugs then Americans get hosed paying for drugs the taxpayers paid to have developed
Americans pay 2-4 times what citizens in other countries pay.

Molnuprivar was developed by Emory University to treat Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis(Wikipedia says it was developed to treat influenza,not true)
Anyway it was marketed by Merck,, Biden administration spent $2.2 billion for 3.1 million courses and distributed under EUA to pharmacies all over the country.
Studies done after the fact on 112,460 pts (21,056 received molnuprivar ,92,404 recv’d placebos.There were no significant difference in outcomes berween the 2 groups.

Lot of people made a lot of money so I guess it was all good.

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Fraud and mistakes aren’t driving up healthcare costs in any significant fashion.

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Malpractice insurance needed by Doctors/Hospital etc to protect them from lawsuits definitely drive up healthcare cost. The reason the doctor need the insurance is to protect them when they make mistakes or from the all to common lawsuit from the OAI (overzealous attorney industry)