HOW DRUGMAKERS SWAY STATES TO PROFIT OFF OF MEDICAID

[publicintegrity.org]

This is why we can't get health care we deserve. When you have doctors working towards perks, representatives being bought by lobbyist, and the narrative being set by companies at conferences, you end up with patients poorly medicated, sometimes wrongly, half ass legislation to benefit the companies, and a program in which its expenses go off the charts due to being forced onto the public via another massive failure, the ACA, Obamacare. Essentially what happened is that the Medicaid program was systematically sabotaged. And of course all the fraud that goes with it in which it's rarely mention when debate over this issue comes up from our representatives.

(Meanwhile, the cost of Medicaid is ballooning, not only because the program expanded in 33 states and the District of Columbia under the Affordable Care Act.

Medicaid accounts for more than a quarter of 26 states’ budgets, pitting the costs of classrooms, roads and public defenders against paying for health care. And prescription drugs are helping drive the increase nationwide. From 2008 through 2016, Medicaid drug costs grew almost 50 percent per patient, helping to nearly double the program’s drug spending to $31 billion.)

With these companies controlling the narrative and legislation Medicare for all will go the same way. Providing ammunition for the republican party to cry foul on a program that quickly becomes unaffordable and attempt to drive our health care right into a private market controlled by these very companies.