By Elizabeth Carson
The Washington Post, Jan. 7, 2018
The Jan. 3 Economy & Business article “Under fire, pharma points finger” described the pharmaceutical industry’s campaign to shift blame for high drug prices to insurers and pharmacy benefit managers. While this may have been successful at causing confusion, it is not hard to comprehend the problem or the solution.
Our health-care system is a very complicated, for-profit industry with many middlemen who take our money but contribute nothing to our health care. A universal, single-payer health-care system would provide high-quality care while saving money. It would get rid of all the middlemen. It would have the power to negotiate with drug and medical-supply companies. And it would allow care decisions to be made by health-care providers and patients. All we need is the courage to make the change and treat health care as a human right, not a business.
Elizabeth Carson is a member of the Leadership Council of Healthcare is a Human Right Maryland and a retired psychiatric nurse.