This article seems to single out an odd outlier. Sure there are super expensive drugs like these but on average major components of health care is not drugs but hospital and doctor's fees. My 1 hour visit to emergency room costs $2500 in which single injection was administered that was under $100. Rest of the charges were simply for "services" provided by hospital. I once calculated average hourly charge for doctors using other examples I was aware of and it came out to around $1000 for every hour per doctor spends with you plus $100 for each nurse for each hour they have to attend you. Price component for drugs on average is negligible in most ordinary treatments.
The problem with US health care is invisible for-profit conglomerates that controls and owns major health care facilities across the country. There ridiculous charges works because consumers don't care because they don't pay out of pocket majority of expense in lot of cases. So all these conglomerates have to do is to make sure laws allow them to charge 3X-4X fees like above to have amazing margins.
One way to solve this issue in US is to promote non-profits to operate health care facilities. This can be done by government subsidies and grants in the same way they are provided to universities and research community. There are 200 major cities in US. If we want to build 2 great non-profit hospitals in each cities, it would cost 2 X 200 X 0.5 = $200 billion even at the higher end. If we spread this out to 5 years, it's less than $50 billion per year - drop in the bucket for current health care bugets. These hospitals can then charge 2X-3X lower amounts to drive the price down. Without introducing non-profit competition to for-profit organization we are in same situation where operating systems are controlled by one commercial company and there are no open source alternatives resulting in redicluously high prices and stagnated innovation.
The problem with US health care is invisible for-profit conglomerates that controls and owns major health care facilities across the country. There ridiculous charges works because consumers don't care because they don't pay out of pocket majority of expense in lot of cases. So all these conglomerates have to do is to make sure laws allow them to charge 3X-4X fees like above to have amazing margins.
One way to solve this issue in US is to promote non-profits to operate health care facilities. This can be done by government subsidies and grants in the same way they are provided to universities and research community. There are 200 major cities in US. If we want to build 2 great non-profit hospitals in each cities, it would cost 2 X 200 X 0.5 = $200 billion even at the higher end. If we spread this out to 5 years, it's less than $50 billion per year - drop in the bucket for current health care bugets. These hospitals can then charge 2X-3X lower amounts to drive the price down. Without introducing non-profit competition to for-profit organization we are in same situation where operating systems are controlled by one commercial company and there are no open source alternatives resulting in redicluously high prices and stagnated innovation.