SOTU address and my focus on Medicare

I made a post yesterday after the Bush SOTU address.The post somehow got lost and never made it to the published state. Oh well, can't remember too much of what I typed. Anyway, I felt Bush did an excellent job on the speech. I was impressed by the aid to Africa for Aids relief, the commitment to a hydrogen powered car, the mentor program for children of prisoners, and the attempt to help addicts.

I am not sure the medicare reforms and the drug coverage will handle the massive problems with the medicare system. Or is the entire medical system in disarray? Too many lawsuits, creating too many unnecessary tests because everyone is CYAing as a SOP. Dick was in the hospital for two days for testing. Nothing was found. The bill was $7,000. Medicare and our private insurance paid their share. The hospital wrote off the difference. I would guess the hospital received less than $1,000 of the $7,000 bill. Was the $7,000 a real bill? I suspect not. I believe the hospitals boost their base rate charges knowing that they will have to write off the bulk (due to the amount medicare determines is reimbursable for a procedure). I know that Dick received far more than $1,000 of medical services and far less than $7,000 of medical services.

So, who ever pays the $7,000? I would guess, auto insurance claims, worker's comp insurance claims, lawsuit settlements, etc. are forced to reimburse these inflated medical costs. Inflated, because medicare can only afford to reimburse about 15 cents on a dollar. Is this fair? No. What is the answer? Donno.

Adding drug coverage is going to be incredibly costly. Right now, the government gives the pharmaceuticals huge incentives to research and develop new drugs. Basically, when the have a successful drug patent, they can gouge the market for a period of time (three years, I think). Then, other drug companies can compete via generics. The "free" period is supposed to compensate the drug companies for the losses they incur in R & D (most new drugs never make it to market).

The drug companies are geared to surviving on their "home runs". Apparently, the drug companies have been playing a lot of games:

making cosmetic changes to their successful patents to obtain a new patent and another period to gouge the market
wining and dining MDs to get them to prescribe their medicine
sponsoring research which appear scientific, but is really just a plug for their drug
buying (by proxy) drug testing companies and directing the subsequent research
touting uses of their successful drugs that the FDA never approved
using celebrities to market their drugs and the unfair inference that the drug if better than all the others

I don't have tremendous heart-burn with the drug companies' ability to gouge for a limited period. This is the carrot. We benefit because of the new drugs that are discovered and brought on the market.

It is the rest that really pisses me off! Drug companies are failing the OINK test! Enough is enough!