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A repost from Digby - Hullabaloo (set a bookmark, visit and revisit the site).
Scorpions
by David Atkins
This is a priceless encapsulation of everything wrong with what America calls a healthcare system:
PHOENIX — An antivenom recently approved for fast treatment of severe reactions to scorpion stings comes with a high price tag.
Metro Phoenix hospitals are billing as much as $12,467 per vial of the antivenom, The Arizona Republic reported. Since the typical dose is three to five vials, bills for patients and their insurance companies can exceed $62,000.
The drug is made in Mexico and was clinically tested through the University of Arizona.
The cost inflates when the serum is sold in the United States. Each link in the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain from the Mexican factory to Arizona patients raises the price.
A Mexican biotechnology company produces more than 250,000 vials for Mexican residents, who are charged about $100 per vial.
Anyway, it's good to know that America isn't a third world country like, say, Mexico. In Mexico, if you're uninsured and you get stung by a deadly scorpion, you have to pay $100 at the hospital to get treatment. In America, you get the privilege of paying $62,000 for the same exact treatment. That helps ensure that hospital and health insurance companies reap huge profits, which in turn distributes out to shareholders, which in turn trickles down throughout the economy, which in turn generates the sort of economic growth that allows you to get a minimum-wage job you should really be grateful for, because it will help you pay off your $61,900 hospital bill that you would have avoided by getting treatment in a third world nation like Mexico.
Makes sense. Also, the OWS protesters are just lazy hippies who should get a job already. This is the greatest country on earth, and I have no idea what they could possibly be complaining about.
h/t Rob Levine
A READER HELP REQUEST: Tell me, folks in Minnesota, if you are one of the fifty million Americans without health coverage, where do you go - in Minnesota - to get a tetanus booster shot, for a Ben Franklin or less?
Do you go to that guy's neighborhood? Don't think so? I don't either.
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And while we are at it, folks in Minnesota, let's build Zygi a stadium, a big billion for it, because - why else - because he's Zygi and New Jersey is a great state.
Team stinks? Doesn't matter. Build the new venue, and get a performance boost in return, as with the football Gophers, the Twins. Check team records. Prove it is true.
IN OUR NATION, THE BEST ON THE EARTH, we have priorities. One priority is to see that those setting the priorities are the right people. The Helmsleys. The Zygis.
No riff-raff. Those with the right stuff.
So, what might that "right stuff" be?
_______________UPDATE_____________
Cleared of irrelevancies, the cowardly [anonymous] blog troll said, "Good God Man! These people are clueless idiots! Grow up! Inequity is what america is all about. A lazy worthless one like you will never have what I have. That is social justice!" Aside from the fact most respect the nation enough to capitalize "America" any thoughts? How does this attitude sit with you? A patriot and savant? A selfish person, mistaking a desire for justice for envy?
What [s]he "has" is irrelevant to the question. My impression - this is clearly NOT a 1%'er but instead a one-percent wannabe, unwilling to pay a fair share of the freight and willing to impolitely rail, without courage enough to show an identity I can challenge to a duel at sunrise. But readers, form your own impressions, please.
Cutting to the quick -- The Bottom Line -- Is Inequality what America is all about? To you? Your America, as you'd like it to be so you could have maximum respect for the nation?