Ralph Nader on Health Care

Enforce fair drug prices if sponsored by govt research

In the critical area of pharmaceuticals, this research giveaway policy leads to superprofiteering by drug manufacturers, who charge unconscionably high prices for important medicines-costing consumers, and often resulting in the denial of treatment to consumers who are unable to pay high prices.

Where the government hands an annual billion-dollar revenue earner [like exclusive licenses to distribute government-researched medicines] to a private company for a pittance, is it too much to ask the relevant federal agency to enforce reasonable pricing requirements? This has resulted in a failure to avert preventable cancer deaths. Shame clearly will not work as a disciplinary force to limit corporate welfare abuses.

Medicare prescriptions covered under universal health care

A: Yes, under a system of universal health care. Price restraints should be placed on all drugs especially developed with taxpayer money, and multiple licenses should be issued for those drugs in order to stimulate competition and bring prices down. The Medicare authorities should negotiate lower drug prices, as the V.A. and the Pentagon are already doing.

Price restraints on drugs; limit profiteering

Opposes assisted suicide laws for terminally ill

Cradle-to-grave health care better than Clinton’s plan

A: It’s a jury-rigged health care proposal that makes the health care industry half happy and everyone else half happy. Why can’t the richest country have cradle-to-grave health care like Europe and Asia? We need universal health care which is accessible, affordable, with quality care, and relying on preventive health. We have waited long enough -- we don’t need a plan like Bush’s or itty-bitty steps like Gore’s.

Use Canadian system as a model for US

North of the border, the Canadians said:
• Universal health from cradle through nursing home;
• You don’t have to see a bill;
• We’re going to do it on 10% of the economy;
• We’re going to spend 11 cents per dollar on administrative costs;
• We’re going to give you the freedom to choose your own doctor and hospital;
• We’re going to relieve the anxiety of losing a lifetime of savings to an illness.

Down South of the border:
• We’re spending 15% of our economy and we’re not even covering everybody, almost 50 million uninsured and millions grossly under-covered;
• Worrying about pre-existing conditions, co-payments, and other fine print, to take away your right to bring these HMOs to justice after they deny you health care;
• 24 cents on every dollar on administration, not to mention $100 billion in billing fraud every year;
• And more and more we can’t choose our own doctors and hospitals, so were losing our choice.

Health care is a universal human right

Recast health care in a non-profit mode

Keep commercialism out of maternity wards

Make medicines affordable in Third World

Challenge the monetization of HMOs

HMO review procedures must be independent of HMOs

HMO plan: accountability, doctor-driven, independent review

A worthwhile HMO reform plan necessitates the following changes in civic control over HMO corporations.
• HMOs must be legally accountable for damages when they delay and deny medically necessary treatment.
• Only doctors should determine medical necessity, not corporate bureaucrats.
• Independent review procedures only work well in conjunction with civil liability and when reviews are truly independent of the HMOs.
• Executive salary caps should apply to any HMO that services Medicare or otherwise receives tax money.
• A facility to encourage consumers to band together on a statewide basis, at their own volition and without any taxpayer money being used, to form consumer health action groups should be authorized.

Criticizes “sweetheart deal” for big tobacco

The multistate settlement agreement between some state attorneys general and Big Tobacco is plainly a sweetheart deal concocted by the addictive companies’ law firms for the industry. State AGs should reject it.
• The deal would let the industry get off cheap, enable the companies to keep secret many of their most incriminating documents, interfere with local enforcement actions and suits against Big Tobacco, and tie the hands of future attorneys general in addressing future misconduct by the industry.
• It contains worrisome provisions that will enable Big Tobacco to shield its food and beverage divisions from payment obligations.
• The deal’s public health measures are very weak. There are no “look-back” penalties, which would penalize the companies if sales to minors do not fall.

Let FDA regulate nicotine as an addictive drug

A: At least as far back as the early ‘60’s. At the same time these tobacco companies were saying: tobacco doesn’t cause cancer, tobacco isn’t harmful, and all these 300 or 400 medical studies are nonsense.

Q: And the role of the federal government?

A: The FDA laid off tobacco for years because it was never classified as a drug. Therefore it had no jurisdiction to go after tobacco. Now they’ve held hearings in Congress, and there’s a rule in the making that classifies nicotine as drug. Pharmacologically it’s as an addictive drug as you’ll ever get. It’ll probably be about a year before the FDA issues a rule severely restricting the tobacco industry from marketing tobacco to children. They’ll still sell to adults. But they can’t start giving out free cigarettes, having cigarette machines where kids can access, & having advertisements like Joe Camel beaming to the kids, if this rule passes.

Tobacco is the world’s worst air pollutant

A: Yes, at college and at law school. [But one day] I sat down and thought it through and I said, “Why am I smoking? This is foolish.” And I just went cold turkey. It was about 3 years before the surgeon general report.

Q: His recent report said that the smoking companies were trying to fight back, but with little effect?

A: I think so, because they’re running up against the right of people to breathe air without someone else’s smoke, and second, the social stigma. They cannot fight that kind of cultural tide. And I think they’re going to lose. That’s why they’re spending their time trying to hook millions of Chinese and Russian peoples with tobacco. That’s where their main expansion is. And fortunately, there’s a growing anti-smoking consumer movement worldwide.

Q: What about other air pollutants?

A: The worst pollutant still is tobacco. It kills over 400,000 people in the US, about two and a half million worldwide, and going up fast.

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