Had my LTTE published re: single payer health care!

[mnhtnbb]

Last Sunday the Raleigh News Observer ran a BIG front page expose on the markup
charged by local non-profit hospitals for cancer drugs.




Large nonprofit hospitals in North Carolina are dramatically inflating prices on chemotherapy drugs at a time when they are cornering more of the market on cancer care, an investigation by The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer has found.

The newspapers found that hospitals routinely mark up prices on cancer drugs two to 10 times or more over cost. In some cases, the markup is far higher.

The total annual cost of cancer drugs for a single patient can easily top $100,000. Such costs have proved financially devastating to some and, according to national studies, have caused a significant number to put off needed treatments.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/09/22/2361661/nc-nonprofit-hospitals-make-big.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy


Here's my letter (although it was edited to eliminate my opening sentence: " So what?"




Look at single-payer

Your Sept. 23 front-page article “Hospitals make big money on cancer drug markups” is incomplete without comparison to the cost of cancer drug use in Canada, Great Britain, France and other countries where every citizen has access to health care. Until the American people wake up and demand a single-payer health care system that isn’t profit-driven, it’s a waste of time to even bother with writing articles like this.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/09/29/2375630/betty-whitehead-look-at-single.html#storylink=cpy



I was laughing by the time I finished reading the article. Hospitals HAVE to make profits to continue in operation--and they do it by 'marking up' wherever they can get away with it. Non-profits simply plow the profit back into the operation rather than distributing it to owners or shareholders. It's like the kitty-boop video: if profit from one activity is driven down, it will pop up in another place--and keep looking for a place to pop up. The only solution is to remove the profit motivation. I can't believe the journalists were so naive that they didn't know this. I was really astonished to see so few letters regarding the article.

The newspaper held the letters regarding the article until this Sunday to publish a group of them.

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/letters/#navlink=navdrop

[cantbeserious]

1. The Capitalist Driven Profit Motive Is A Cancer That Has Infected Our Society

eom

[jody]

3. Good point. We need laws that block drugs manufactured in cheap offshore locations in favor of drugs

manufactured in the US by firms required to pay a living wage.

[jody]

2. Excellent LTTE. You have unlimited words on DU so please elaborate on how you see a single-payer

health care system solving the problem of marking up drugs.