Republican voters shouldn't have to pay for this crap if we don't vote for this BS. This is one of the many BS things Senile Joe wants to force upon normal people. And this is only one of the many dumb shit moves Joe Biden will pull if he gets his senile brain into the White House.
The only problem I see with this idea is that almost every Democrat voter doesn't have any money. They are as poor as a pile of dog shit.
This is an argument that literally has no merit. But I'll address it because it's funny. Let's generalize your statement here. Without loss of generality I think we can say what you mean is American voters should not have to subsidize healthcare for people from other countries. Well, I hate to break it to you but we are the reason medicine is cheap all around the world. Other countries have stronger laws protecting patients from predatory pricing and regulatory capture. The result is companies who create drugs are forced to price them fairly relative to R&D costs. Where do they make up their extra capital? You guessed it! Off the backs of the American public. Since we have no consumer protection in medicine Glaxo et al. are free to charge us an arbitrary amount of money for drugs. The actual market price of these drugs is closer to the price charged in other countries when factoring in manufacturing cost and depreciated R&D, but since there is no regulation they simply milk America for profit. The cabal of doctors, pharmaceuticals, and regulators in their pockets run a system where a single medical event even if you have insurance will bankrupt you. It's incredible knowing that if I get hit by a car and am crippled tomorrow all of my work towards retiring eventually goes straight to hell. Let's use an argument you're probably fond of: why are immigrants outbreeding Americans? Have you looked at how much it costs an American to have a child? 10s of thousands for even a healthy birth! God help you if your child has any even minor abnormality or your wife's hips aren't wide enough for natural birth. Any solution is better than our current system. We are a third world country dressed up as a first world country when it comes to healthcare. Yes, we have some of the best doctors. Yes, these doctors can and should charge a fair amount for their top tier services. But why is it that my medication is hundreds of dollars without insurance? Why is it cheaper for me to literally fly to Mexico and buy a years worth of my medication, than do it legally? Why do I have to pay through the nose for bloodwork that, as far as humanity is concerned, is a solved problem? Oh, right! Regulatory capture. If there's no competition price discovery can't exist! Checkmate market theorists! Regulatory capture. Corrupt politicians - in particular Republicans who are by-and-large the ones in the pocket of big pharma. Obamacare was a failed initiative. For $400/mo per person I can get subpar care with an absurdly high deductible and no out of pocket limit. How again does insurance work if the calculus is to never use it even in an emergency? You are absolutely insane to think spiting 367 million Americans in order to "get back at" 11 million illegals is intelligent and it demonstrates your complete lack of understanding of risk/reward. Head over to a long term care facility and ask them what they think of our current system. Perhaps you need to get off of infowars and back into reality.
You seem like a very thoughtful and logical person in your posts and I enjoy reading them, in part because I agree with most of them. But this is a subject in which I think we don't agree. Pardon me if I got it wrong, but your arguments here seemed to contradict themselves in this particular post. From what you posted, it seemed that you stated the following: 1) "There is no regulation in America"(the very existence of the FDA contradicts this). 2)"Companies milk American consumers and the regulatory capture allows this to happen"(which I agree with, but since the FDA is the biggest source of Regulatory Capture which protects Big Pharma from the competition, this wouldn't make any sense). 3) "The regulation of prices in other countries does not allow these companies to charge more for their products, so they compensate this by charging the American consumer more."(This could be and probably is, in part, true, but to demand from the American government to do the same as other governments wouldn't solve the issue. In fact, it could make it worse, by bankrupting companies and intensifying, even more, the aforementioned Regulatory Capture). I mentioned before on this website that I am a physician here in Brazil and I see how the problem of the cost of healthcare(which I agree it is a problem) could and should be approached from a different perspective. I would eventually be happy to discuss with practical examples what this perspective is, if there is any interest, but first I would like to confirm that I got what you were trying to say right. And I say all of this in the most respectful way possible.
Admittedly I was being hyperbolic but somewhere in there is a kernel of truth. For (1) I think you've got your organizations crossed up. The FDA is a regulatory body for medicine, but only in it's production and distribution. I have no problems with the FDA itself (minus a few questionable political motives for which drugs get passed through). Being more specific the actual cost of insurance and medicine is not regulated. Now this would be inconsistent with my general person opinion I tend to lean Libertarian, but I have not found a solution to this. The problem is vastly more complicated than deregulation alone would fix. Several pharmaceutical companies have been charged over the years with price fixing schemes. There's no reason to believe they wouldn't intensify in a deregulated environment. (2) I agree that the statement is marginally contradictory. Regulatory capture extends beyond the FDA though. For example, several high profile Republican senators (McConnell is one) take a lot of money from pharmaceutical companies. These people are standing in the way of improvements to drug prices which could occur with expiring patents. This brings up a tangential point that patents make sense for drugs to me. A company with a revolutionary drug should be able to patent it to guarantee a profit for a set period of time. My concern isn't with these new drugs as much as it is with common prescription drugs such as diabetes, blood pressure, and cholesterol medicines whose patents have expired and yet some classes of these drugs are still not "generified". For (3) you are correct. I'm open to options and I don't have any solution to it. There are several good ideas I think such as public subsidy that could be useful. For example, I would likely support a "drug development" tax provided it was small enough, that ideally would make a trade with a company like Glaxo. This trade could be something like "the public will fund the development of this drug but you must make the formula public domain". The sum would need to be large enough but for cancer drugs and the like this could help a lot. I understand drugs are very expensive to produce and I'm not keen to bankrupt the guys making them. I do, however, want to be able to not having to dance through several hoops to get medicine I need and doing something like this could take the cost of care down considerably for people with aliments that require newer drugs.
I'm quite aware that the FDA does not regulate the cost DIRECTLY, but it does so INDIRECTLY, by requiring a series of useless procedures that make the cost of developing the drug skyrocket and this has the effect of protecting the companies that have the capital to go through this process from the competition since smaller possible companies would have great difficulty in bearing that cost. This is basically George Stigler's definition of regulatory capture. Not only that, it prevents Americans from having access to drugs that are commonly used in other parts of the world very safely. One great example is Dipirone, which is a great alternative to Acetaminophen(Tylenol), widely available and extremely cheap and effective. Another example is Sugammadex, a very effective drug to reverse neuromuscular blockade from certain neuromuscular blocking drugs used in Anesthesia, which was authorized here in Brazil in 2009 and in the U.S. only in the end of 2015. Dextroketamine, which is much more potent and with much fewer side-effects than racemic ketamine, which is the only one available in the U.S., is another example of a drug available to Brazilians, but not Americans. The first time I found out about these examples, I simply couldn't believe it. Because these are cheap and useful drugs that are simply not available in the country were all the books I studied throughout college more than ten years ago and to this day, were written. This is just one more reason for you to have a problem with the FDA and why deregulation is the solution. If the government simply doesn't have the power to block a drug, there is no use bribing politicians, it is meaningless. I understand where you are coming from, but you still have to realize that there are a myriad of things that make drugs more expensive than they need to be before thinking of taxing people which only creates an ineffective market that is the perfect recipe for corruption and waste of resources. For example, another "drug" that is extremely expensive and at the same time extremely useful and demanded: Blood components. In Brazil and many other countries, it is forbidden to sell blood or blood components. When I was living in Vienna, a few years back, I donated plasma twice a week in a Pfizer facility which was set up exclusively for that. There was never a shortage of people donating because they actually payed €20.00 per donation and even had a "bonus schedule" for regularity. One could get up to €200.00 or more monthly because of these bonuses. I know it isn't much for many people here, it certainly didn't make any difference in my life, but to a poor person, even in Vienna(and there are poor people there), this could be helpful too. Win-win. Now imagine if this was not forbidden or even regulated anywhere in the world or at least in big countries like the U.S and Brazil. You said that "any system is better than what you have there". Trust me, it is not like that. I wholeheartedly agree that you have problems there, but the origins of the problems are in the things you have similar to countries like mine(you have the FDA, I have ANVISA(Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária)). You will not make things better by turning your country's healthcare system more like mine(as is the case in Europe and Canada). IMHO, the solution is to go the other way and turn to what your country was founded on: Small government, deregulation, free market, freedom. I'm sorry for the very long post(even by my standards) and I hope you don't consider any of this as arrogance, as if I presume to know more about your country than yourself. I simply admire the unique basis for the foundation of the U.S. and I know from my personal experience here and in Europe how essential this unique basis is for the success the U.S. has had in these 200+ years. Other issues and examples related to why healthcare costs are high and could be much less(two short 5 minute videos):
It's interesting hearing this from a doctor. I'm glad you decided to post. Before I talk about the other things thanks for replying thoughtfully and I'm quite a fan of milton friedman myself. That's a fair point, but how do you intend to counter price fixing and gouging? Ostensibly deregulation means more facilities could open up but there's an aspect of science that the public could actually benefit from. Especially for medicine I find it ethically questionable those things could be lost to "secrets". I work in software, I don't work medicine. There's been so many examples of what we call "vaporware" where an innovating technique, or software, that would be useful to be studied and dissected is lost forever because the legal ramifications of releasing any sort of analysis on it would crush you. I wrestle with this myself and I'm not sure how you could simultaneously deregulate all of medical science while still maintaining a "public good". I'm interested in hearing your ideas. I'm on the fence on this ethically. I understand your point and I agree there's really nothing wrong with this as long as the circumstances are correct. We wade into muddy waters a theoretical deregulated market could not handle. Imagine a scenario where many of these facilities are set up. We have two possible scenarios: 1. People donate willingly and are paid for their time. The products are used to save lives. This is a net good and optimistic view of this type of market. 2. Times are hard and people are forced to donate unwillingly (effectively, you have to eat). In this market is becomes exploitative and supposing there is significant class strata the people who can afford to use those products are orthogonal to the people giving them. I believe you are viewing at as (1) but it is treading the line of (2). Ethically I don't know about it and I don't have a solution that I could frame in a Libertarian way that wouldn't end up being a kobayashi maru. In this case of blood products that are renewable I have less ethical concerns. But let's turn to organ donation. I fully agree people's bodies are their property, and indeed then they could sell components of their bodies. But this wades into ethical waters that get murky and dangerous quickly. I see the Stossel vid and I quite like his stuff. It touches on many of the points I made above. My fear isn't the "idealistic free market destroying the world". In fact, I wish it was the case. There's a concept in Game Theory that is related called a coordination game. It only works when each party makes mutually consistent decisions. This theoretical game models point (1), however given point (2) where one party can use leverage to convince another party it falls apart in practice.