True Cost

The True Cost of Healthcare

A View of Healthcare Costs from the Inside

From the Website: truecostofhealthcare.net

David Belk MD

Edited by Paul Belk PhD

Table of Contents with Summary Points

1) Hidden Costs

Page 5

a. Almost all health care costs are hidden from both doctors and patients.

b. Any cost that’s hidden or confusing is easy to inflate.

2) Medications: What Your Pharmacist Won’t Tell You

Page 7

a. Most generic medications aren’t 50% or 75% less expensive that their brand named

equivalents, they are 100 times cheaper!!

b. Most people can pay less for medications if they pay for them directly than if they use their

insurance and pay a copay (people pay extra for the privilege of being overcharged).

c. The Costco list at the end is only partial but it’s obvious $32.95 a year is a lot less than $10 a

month.

3) Medications: The Bad News

Page 10

a. When medications are expensive, they can be REALLY expensive!

b. It doesn’t help that the patents on many of the most expensive medications have been

extended (artificially) for decades.

c. The tips given at the end of the section would be useful to most people

d. Pharmaceutical reps should be banned.

4) The Pharmaceutical Industry

Page 12

a.

We in the U.S. pay far more than anyone, anywhere else in the world for brand name

prescription medications.

b.

Pharmaceutical companies do spend a lot of money on research but they spend nearly

twice as much on marketing as they spend on research. They also make more in profits,

on average, than they spend on research.

c.

Not all of the money they spend on research goes toward developing good products.

d.

The entire pharmaceutical industry appears to be living on borrowed time.

2

5) Office Billing

Page 28

a. Most doctors have no idea how much they’re paid for what they do.

b. We give insurance companies discounts to abuse us every day while private payers (the

uninsured) are...