That's the stupidity of Ryan's plan for sure.
What Congress needs to do is get the govt. out of the insurance business and instead...ban all lobbyists from Washington D.C.
Then open investigations into why the United States citizens pay more for pharmaceuticals and medical procedures than anywhere else in the world.
Get a few heads of the medical, pharmaceutical, and insurance companies behind bars and prices will come down real fast.
Have you ever heard of or seen any of the "medical tourism" sites?
It's unreal. The difference in pricing for heart bypass surgery is astounding for instance.
You can buy a first class round trip ticket, stay in a 5 star hotel, get the procedure done and it still costs less than 1/4 of what it costs here in the U.S.
And do people do it? Hell yes they do.
If you ever get the chance to go to Tijuana...you'll see it first hand.
The whole town is slammed with doctors offices and pharmacies. Every kind of elective surgery you can think of is done there at far, far less than in the U.S.
And most of the doctors live in San Diego (U.S. doctors) and have offices in Tijuana.
People come there from all over the United States to get procedures done.
Plus you can walk into a pharmacy and buy Cialis, Viagra, testosterone, etc. OVER THE COUNTER with no prescription needed. And it's 1/10th the price of the United States.
We have been getting ripped off since at least the 1970's.
I remember reading news articles on this back in the mid-1980's when there was a big story about people going to Canada and back just to buy their prescription medication.
Back then they were taking busloads of people across the Canadian border and back...just to go to the pharmacy.
Did the U.S. govt. help these people by finding out WHY we are paying so much more?
Nope...they instead made it ILLEGAL and pressured the Canadian govt. to put a stop to it and began stopping people at the border.
THAT is what we have gotten from politicians in Washington D.C.
