Let me tell you a little story about the American medical system, circa today

This is a non-ironic post, but this is good and is Obamacare's design. Give me a few sentences to explain before you get angry...

A good chunk of Obamacare was to get price transparency out into the public. People are beginning to realize how bad our drug prices are. Under Obamacare, a High-deductible plan will require the consumer to pay the full price of drugs until the deductible is covered.

This means for the first few months each year, everyone gets to see the true price of drugs. Later, when the deductibles are covered, insurance takes over the cost. But the sticker-shock is part of the design, we can't have a free market unless people actually see and understand the prices of the goods and services that they get.

America can't fix the healthcare system until people realize what our healthcare actually costs. Seeing the actual cost of drugs is step #1. Now that people are seeing what drugs cost, now we can move on to step #2, and try to figure out what to do about it.

Go back 10 years, and nobody would have known about these prices. Today, we actually can start discussing the pricing of health services.

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Now obviously, the price of American Drugs sucks. But at least we know this fact today. This is a far better situation than a few years ago.

So much of this story doesn't make sense, and of course she shuts discussion down by saying those that are questioning her are "mansplaining."

Stories like this seriously make me consider moving back to Canada.

> my insurance, which I pay (wait for it) $1182 a month

> ...

> This was our total bill today. ($498.73)

>

> It took more than seven hours to get the basic medicine

Just to put into context how absurd these costs are, she could conceivably have spent less money and time by flying from NY to Toronto and paying for a doctor visit out of pocket there instead of relying on her insurance in this case...

I find the whole urgent care diagnosis a bit suspect. I don't see how they could instantly identify a specific bacterium, especially one that needs such a narrow-use, rare antibiotic as the lone treatment option, let alone how all 3 got identical conclusions in one UC visit with no lab work.

Australia. Triple bypass surgery. $0.00

She should feel proud about all the medical research she just helped fund through those inflated prices. Because as long as some percentage of it goes into research, any price is justified.

/s

Edit: You downvote, but "high prices are OK because they enable medical research" is an argument that inevitably pops up in these threads.