[hilbert42]

"Other countries can get them anywhere for cheap."

Those of us outside the US understand the US health care system is more profit orientated than many other countries but we cannot understand the huge price differentials, they're often huge in comparison with many others. Surely figures that high are nothing other than price-gouging. (Even if demand is low and the stuff has to be imported the additional costs can't be that costly. Surely not?)

So why doesn't consumer and or monopoly law kick in to stop it (as it does in many other places)?

[just6979]

Because the US has absolute garbage enforcement of consumer safety and anti-monopoly laws, and those laws aren't exactly strong or clear to begin with.

Health-care industry lobbyists spend huge sums to convince lawmakers that they're not price-gouging and _any_ kind of price control is somehow illegal and/or will destroy the economy. This allows them to keep prices high, colluding with health insurances to make deals that incentivize buy insurance (direct-to-patient prices for many medical things are much higher than the prices that the insurance companies pay). Prices high enoguh to make it worth spending so much on lobbying.

It's completely backwards and very anti-consumer/anti-patient, but money has such an outsized influence on our politics, it's ridiculously difficult to get changes made that actually benefit the average citizen.

[hilbert42]

Yeah, I sort of thought that. But the US is such a competitive place one would have thought competition would have kept prices down. What seems to be happening is the nature of health care allows it to be a 'closed shop' so they do what they like.

FYI, I'm in Australia where we have Medicare which is a universal health care scheme† supported by government taxes. It's not perfect and could always do with more money but people here love it. Tampering with it in a negative way would be electoral suicide for a government at election time.

That said, a visit to a GP is only partly paid for by the scheme (about 2/3)—that is unless the Dr 'bulk-bills' all accounts to the scheme and many don't. Bulk-billing allows a patient to walk out of a surgery without paying anything.

That long preamble lets me lead on to something you may not be aware of although many of your countrymen would be. Some years ago the government made changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme—which is the drug store equivalent of Medicare where drugs are heavily subsidized—because many Americans who were visiting here used to stock up on prescription medicines and take them home because the price differential between here and the US is so great. Incidentally, COVID vaccinations are also free as they're covered by the scheme.

Previously, anyone could take a scrip to any pharmacy and have it filled without ID, now one has to have one's Medicard card with one or have its number on file and the Dr's script has to match that ID.

The pondering issue for us is why doesn't the US population rise up on mass for a better deal?

_

† Some years ago I heard an American (I think it was Michael Moore) say that Roosevelt had intended to set up a similar universal health scheme but he died before he could implement it. Is there any truth in that?