Cancer Costs

As chemo prices rise, doctors get first guidelines on discussing
affordability
When I first saw the headline, my thought was 'here is another article about medical care costing too much and pushing for universal health care', but surprisingly it is a rather fair and balanced article about the cost of research and choices cancer paitients are making about using more expensive drugs to prolong their lives while having terminal cancer. A few excerpts:

It’s a particular issue for patients whose cancer can’t be cured but who are seeking both the longest possible survival and the best quality of life — and may be acutely aware that gaining precious months could mean bankrupting their families.

The prices can be staggering. Consider: There are two equally effective options to battle metastatic colon cancer, the kind spreading through the body — but one costs $60,000 more than the other, says Dr. Leonard Saltz of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

It even references the cost of drug research:

Make no mistake: Some of these newer drugs have greatly helped some patients — Gleevec, for example, has revolutionized care for a type of leukemia — and the prices reflect manufacturers’ years of research and development investment.

This from the Associated Press too! How did this reporter slip through. He does throw a bone to the National health care folks with the last paragraph, but other than that a good article.
On a side note, my daughter was at dance class and the mothers were talking politics and one of them stated that she thought this election would be decided on "Universal health care". I asked her what she thought that meant since people throw the term around, but do not define it. She said health care for everyone, and I said everyone gets health care, no one can be denied emergency care and for that matter, no one is denied care because hospitals don't want to diagnose the sniffles and it turn out to be lung cancer and then face a law suit, so everyone gets a high standard of care in emergency rooms and if you can't pay, you don't have to. So I posed the question again, and she finally got around to saying nationalized health care because medical costs are too expensive and need to be regulated. I asked her how expensive do you think health care will be when it's free? Someone still has to pay for it. You think someone is going to go to the corner drug store and get a decongestant for 10 dollars when they can go get prescription decongestant for free? Instead of paying the doctor, you pay the federal government, who takes its cut then pays it out like Medicare.
If you want to lower costs you need to get market forces back into it. Medical savings accounts are the way to this. You pay it to your employer just like insurance, but you use it and the amount builds over time and moves with you from job to job. Like a 401k, but not invested like that. My wife had something like this at her last job. It cost $400 month, but you didn't pay the first $3,000 in medical expenses, then you paid the next $1,000 out of your pocket, then it went 80/20 after that. the key was that $3,000 rolled over to the next year. Don't see the doctor? start off the next year with $6,000 in your account. As you can see, the person has control over the money to a large part and knowing the limit and that they start paying after, they will be more frugal when it comes to going to the doc for the sniffles. This will eliminate the need for insurance except at the most extreme level of care, thus lowering costs.