It is unknown to anyone moderately intelligent that one of the biggest problems that the United States has internally is that of public health and the cost of it. On many occasions the need to resolve the serious situation that millions of citizens who have no regular access to medical services has been raised.
Basically, the policy of the Republican Party is to save who can, that is, that the State should not provide people with health services, since, according to them, that is a purely personal responsibility problem. It is true that for many years there is the health program known by Medicare, which benefits people over 65, but even this only takes care of 80 percent of the medical bill. Of course, this program is not free since since people start working, they also begin to contribute to the maintenance of it, without having the right to enjoy it until they exceed the age mentioned above; But, moreover, when they start receiving the benefits of their Social Security, a certain amount of money is deducted from it to continue paying for Medicare.
Through this program, at least seniors have relief with their health care, but what about the millions of people under 65 who do not qualify for Medicare?
Hillary Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, tried, when she was first lady of the country, to make a health reform that could protect that immense number of people who because of their age did not have access to Medicare and for their resources could not pay insurance that covers medical and medication expenses. The poor woman was riddled with criticism, almost accusing her of being a communist for trying to make that kind of reform. Barack Obama got Congress to approve a lukewarm version of a health reform, a program that everyone popularly knows as Obamacare and even being lukewarm and limited, as it is, there have been several attempts by Republicans to eliminate it.
The fact that millions of people do not have health insurance creates chaos in hospital emergency centers, since these uninsured people show up in them when a medical crisis arrives. From the outset, people without access to a doctor's office cannot anticipate a disease until it does not make them crises.
On the other hand, the cost of medicines has gone to the stratosphere. Labs do what they want with the price of them. For an ordinary person to pay for medications, even if it is insured, it is almost impossible, since many of the insurances do not cover them or they do so halfway, having the patient to assume a very high copayment.
A few days ago, the American television network CBS presented in its program 60 minutes, which is transmitted every Sunday, an interesting report about what had raised the cost of a drug to a city in the state of Illinois. The city of Rockford, instead of paying employees insurance for the purchase of medicines, supplies them to them by buying them directly from the laboratories.
Two children, children of some employees, suffered from a very rare disease called infantile spasms. A drug called Acthar is used to treat it. Well, having to buy this medicine to treat the disease of these two children created a major financial crisis in that city. It turns out that the cost of a five-milligram pomito that cost $ 40 rose a thousand times its value and the city ended up paying $ 40,000 for the same medicine pomito.
The Mallinckrodt laboratory, which is the manufacturer of such a drug, justified the rise claiming that they had spent a lot of money on studies. When asked how much they had spent on those studies, they replied that that was a trade secret. By the way, as this medicine is for a very low population of patients, because of the rare disease, they came up with the idea to market it for the cure of rheumatic arthritis that, according to several health experts who were interviewed for the program, there is nothing that indicates that it is an effective cure.
As there are few regulations to protect patients from hungry laboratory ambitions, a drug that in Canada or Mexico costs, say, $ 30 may well cost $ 750 in the US. UU.
I have no idea how the health problem will be solved and the cost of medicines in this country, but something needs to be done. I hope that someday those who govern can face this serious situation and resolve it.
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