I have Clinical Depression. Clinical Depression is a serious disease. It has to be, it’s capitalized. I’m currently on Prozac (Fluoxetine) at 40mg per diem. Just started after a few weeks at 30mg, and I’m starting to see some positive effects after just a few days.
Medi-Cal (Medicaid in California) pays for my Prozac because I’m on SSI—because I have Clinical Depression. Medi-Cal pays for 20mg capsules. Barr Labs (Now owned by Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israeli firm (curse them Jews for being so supportive of people like me [humph])) manufactures Fluoxetine in 10, 20, 40, 60, and 80 mg capsules.
I’m taking 40mg of Fluoxetine a day, you would think that providing a supply of 40mg capsules would be the sensible, prudent, cost effective thing to do. But not for the Medi-Cal bureaucracy. Medi-Cal regulations say 20mg capsules, so 20mg capsules it is. A prime example of penny wise, pound foolish thinking.
This sort of thing is typical of bureaucracies, the adherence to regulations and rules over common sense. It is an example of why I’m opposed to government running anything unless nobody else can do it.
Defense is one thing only the government can handle. As is maintaining public roads. Medicine is not. If it were the government would be running medicine today. Government projects are not run to be efficient and cost effective, government projects are run to be bureaucratically efficient, and that leads to real world inefficiencies as a necessary result of the process.
I take two 20mg capsules of Fluoxetine a day instead of one 40mg capsule at a higher cost to the tax payer, because of a regulation that only allows payment for 20mg capsules. That is the sort of bureaucratic efficiencies we can expect under a universal government health care program. Bureaucracies are run to benefit the bureaucracy and its bureaucrats, not the public it ostensibly serves. Thus it has ever been, and thus it shall ever be.
You want health care costs to come down? You need to be responsible for your health care, the obtaining of it, and the paying for it when you have the wherewithal to do so. You deciding on what you’ll pay for means you don’t have to rely upon, and pay for , some anonymous paper pusher who depends upon some rule that seemed like a good idea at the time. It means your health care provider doesn’t have to fill out any paper work to send to some anonymous paper pusher, or have his staff fill out that paper work. Which cuts into the time he has available to see patients, and cuts into the time his staff is available to assist him in providing medical care.
But it means being responsible for yourself. Are you grown up enough to be responsible for yourself?
