r/FluentInFinance • u/The-Lucky-Investor • 11d ago

“Medicare for All” would save the U.S $5.1 Trillion over 10 years Discussion/ Debate

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/11/30/easy-pay-something-costs-less-new-study-shows-medicare-all-would-save-us-51-trillion
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u/imposta424 11d ago

How much would we save if overweight adults dropped to below 20%?

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u/Ginden 11d ago

How much would we save if overweight adults dropped to below 20%?

Around 170 billions per year in 2016 prices, or $1.7T in 10 years.

Fear not, semaglutide is going off patent in 2033 in US and 2026 in Europe.

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u/Responsible-Fox-9082 11d ago

Hate to ruin your hope, but it's not ever going to legitimately be off patent in the US. They will slightly alter the chemical makeup of it and renew the patent with marginally worse results(more side effects) and keep it going for another 40 years.

Why? Because the people everyone says will help wrote the laws around medical patents to allow this level of bullshit. No not one party or the other. Both agreed to this. They even wrote the way "generic" medicines were to be made in a way that one company can make a life saving drug, make a second company to make the generic and charge 10% less and if anyone questions it rinse and repeat the middle step until no one notices for a life saving medication the only companies allowed to make it all run at a cost you can google the price to manufacture and realize they are all charging way more than necessary if they truly were competing.

They aren't. US healthcare is rigged to dump the entire cost of developing medicine for the world on the US citizen. They can't negotiate with other countries because as you said they have their own patents that follow ours somewhat close so it's play by their rules or miss out on that money so they get their profits from the only place they can. Healthcare wouldn't be so expensive if they had fair negotiations around the world, but they automatically lose China and Russia due to China just stealing everything and they'd sell to Russia on the cheap.

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u/limukala 8d ago

They will slightly alter the chemical makeup of it and renew the patent

Which won't affect the patent on the original formulation.

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u/Responsible-Fox-9082 8d ago

It does because they list it under the same patent as the "improved" formula aka there's a reason why Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama all have multiple mansions in multiple states worth tens of millions of dollars while on(mostly) a 150k-174k salary.

You can't be mad at the companies for being able to bribe politicians who wrote the rules of what a bribe is to only be considered a bribe straight cash. Hell it's why even by congressional standards justice Thomas didn't do a thing wrong. It's just the rules they have made for themselves.