[Marxism] Australia's health care system

["Clinton Fernandes" <cfer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The recent US-Australia negotiations on a "free trade agreement" were held up 
by Washington's concern over Australia's health care system, perhaps the most 
efficient in the world. In particular, drug prices are a fraction of those in 
the US: the same drugs, produced by the same companies, earning substantial 
profits in Australia though nothing like those they are granted in the US - 
often on the pretext that they are needed for R&D, another exercise in deceit. 
Part of the reason for the efficiency of the Australian system is that, like 
other countries, Australia relies on the practices that the Pentagon employs 
when it buys paper clips: government purchasing power is used to negotiate 
prices, illegal in the US. Another reason is that Australia has kept to 
"evidence-based" procedures for marketing pharmaceuticals. US negotiators 
denounced these as market interference: pharmaceutical corporations are 
deprived of their legitimate rights if they are required to produce evidence 
when they claim that their latest product is better than some cheaper 
alternative, or run TV ads in which some sports hero or model tells the 
audience to ask their doctor whether this drug is "right for you (it's right 
for me)," sometimes not even revealing what it is supposed to be for. 

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=90&ItemID=6751
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