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November 14, 2005
Taking Back Healthcare with Health Savings Accounts
Hank McKinnell, chairman of Pfizer pharmaceuticals, challenges Americans to take back control of their health from a system dominated by third parties. He says Health savings accounts will provide incentives for consumers to shop wisely for health care services, since their incidental bills are paid from their HSA accounts.
Another approach is to provide low-income workers a tax credit to purchase their own health insurance, similar to the tax-exemption on health insurance the middle-class workers have.
Furthermore, McKinnell offers some remarkable facts about prescription drugs for those who wonder why they cost so much in the United States.
- Prices of innovative drugs have actually fallen over the long term, and prescription drugs do not constitute a larger share of health care resources than they have in the past.
- In 1993, the average wholesale price of 10 best-selling drugs was $44 per month's supply; now, nine of the 10 drugs have gone off patent, and have fallen to about $11 per month.
- While Americans pay higher prices for name-brand drugs than consumers in other developed countries, they pay lower prices for generic drugs.
The central theme of McKinnell's book, is that individual patients, not bureaucracies, are the key to reforming health care.
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Posted by Wiley Long at November 14, 2005 06:40 PM