If you are interested in attending one of my Medicare seminars, contact me here for more information. When I began my medical career more than two decades ago, people were already very concerned about the skyrocketing cost of healthcare. However, as much as everyone knew medical costs were high, no one in my profession seemed to know why.
None of my colleagues could answer even simple questions about what, specifically, was costing so much. This seemed to be a real problem: how could we begin to control these costs, if even the people in the field didn't know what they were? Why didn't we know? To start with, unlike any other business in America, almost all of the financial transactions in healthcare are hidden from the providers as well as the patients.
None of my colleagues could answer even simple questions about what, specifically, was costing so much. This seemed to be a real problem: how could we begin to control these costs, if even the people in the field didn't know what they were? Why didn't we know? To start with, unlike any other business in America, almost all of the financial transactions in healthcare are hidden from the providers as well as the patients.
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If you are interested in attending one of my Medicare seminars, contact me here for more information. Contradictory though they are, each of these arguments seems to have passionate champions with copious amount of their own "evidence." So, who's right? About seven years ago I decided to see what I could do to find out.
If there's any cost in health care that should be easy to understand, it's the cost of prescription medications. Pharmacies buy prescription drugs in bulk from pharmaceutical corporations and suppliers the same way they buy aspirin, and then sell them for a profit. But somehow this simple transaction is wrapped in so many layers of confusion that almost no one understands what's really happening.
How much do pharmacies pay for the prescription medications they buy? Until recently, that had been somewhat of a mystery. Pharmacy costs weren't listed anywhere so, if you wanted to know how much a drug actually cost a pharmacy, the only to find out was to ask a pharmacist and hope he was willing to tell you.
In previous sections of this website I've written about the bizarre, two-level pricing system for prescription medications. Most generic medications usually cost only pennies per dose. These include many of our most useful drugs. But brand-name medications, which are usually the newest drugs, can cost hundreds of times more than that-too expensive for some people even with insurance.
If you've learned anything at all from reading this website you should already know that, contrary to popular belief, most prescription medications sold in the U.S. aren't really very expensive. In fact, roughly 87% of prescriptions filled in the U.S. in the last two years were for generic medications and most generic prescription drugs cost pharmacies only a few pennies a pill.
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