Ten years ago I got an ear infection while swimming in water contaminated by human waste in Puerto Rico. I finally had to visit a hospital to get a prescription drug. Even though I managed to unobserved slip through a back door ajar -- thus avoiding to pay the US $150 the hospital wanted for having a medical trainee peek into my ear -- I still had to come up with US $120 at the local Pharmacy to get the drugs in order to treat my infection. Eventually it went away. Puerto Rico, though also a Caribbean nation in its own right, guarantees all its legal citizens American Citizenship. Their medical system, consequently, is ruled by US standards.
Cut. Ten years later. I arrive in Nicaragua with a similar ailment. I go straight to the Pharmacy and ask for some antibiotics. They give me a small bottle with drops to pour into the ear twice a day. The swelling subsides. Cost? 46 Cordobas, the equivalent of $ 1 dollar and 57 cents.
Conclusion. If you can get away with charging 270 dollars for something that doesn't need to cost more than 2 -- and mind you, the Pharmacy and the manufacturer of the drug are still making money from it -- what does that tell you?
What it tells me is that someone makes profits so huge that they're almost unimaginable. No wonder law firms can also get away with suing medical companies for millions and millions of dollars, on behalf of clients who happened to perhaps suffer a side effect from taking a prescription drug.
I believe the American medical system, unfortunately, to be corrupt beyond redemption, and this state of affairs is not something the president elect is going to significantly change. In addition to the hospitals, insurance and drug companies being in cahoots, there are also loads of senators and congress men on their payrolls. And then I haven't even mentioned the arms industry and its subsidiaries in the US (in a public speech delivered just one day before the ominous 11th of September 2001, Secretary of Defense, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, announced that there were 2,3 trillion -- 2 300 000 000 000! -- dollars missing in the Pentagon budget, that is: money that simply was unaccounted for and of course remained unaccounted for after the alleged attack on the Pentagon compound...)
Unless medical companies and hospitals are thus forced to only seek reasonable dividends from their activities, and stop bribing politicians to carry out their devious designs, this swindle will continue until the whole system one day hopefully collapses.
