So private healthcare is also much more affordable than it is over here, although, and there is free public health care available to those who cannot afford the private care. And I see the benefits of both. And I see the drawbacks of both as well. And I just would like to better understand how we should think about healthcare policy policy. And it's really a conversation on policy
phil spade
@Phil · 2:12
But I don't know what the ultimate goal is other than we'll fix you when you break down. And I really think we need to take a look at what the goals that we have for our society as it relates to health care are before we enact that policy. And if anybody has any thoughts what those goals are, I'd love to hear them because they're not clear. Cut to me
Sudha Varadarajan
@sudha · 3:01
My first one, potentially, you could argue, is more capitalistic, and I'm happy to talk through each of these and why I believe it is essential in order for us to come up with something that is affordable in terms of health care, because competition has to come into the marketplace and it's only with competition can we achieve affordability and would love to, you know, get your thoughts on this
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Sudha Varadarajan
@sudha · 4:09
And it so happened that once I had my grandmother visit and she was coming from India, and she was here for a couple of months, and unfortunately she had a fall for which I had to take her in for an X ray, and she had no acceptable insurance because she was only on a travel visa. So I said I would pay out of pocket for the X ray and I was given a bill of, I believe, 200 or $250
phil spade
@Phil · 3:49
Thank you. And when I think about health insurance over this past year, I was actually I have a user of health insurance for the first time in my life, really. And it really opened my eyes. And I hear other things from different people that went through the same things where it opens their eyes to what we have. And if our health insurance was anything like a business that we owned or a platform, the first thing that I would think is we need to completely redo this whole thing
phil spade
@Phil · 2:56
And over the past few years, I've seen companies go after and acquire companies that have orphan drugs and raised the prices on that. And I think Elizabeth Warren addressed that in her campaign. That's a real problem. And I think there's been more attention to that than there has been R and D. And when I think about that, I always challenge people to say, what are the five most innovative drugs that you've seen over the past five years over the past ten years?
Sudha Varadarajan
@sudha · 1:47
Phil, this was so informative. I didn't know about this inefficiency and I watched the entire video and just completely blew my mind away that there is such an inefficient system here and it's not yet been disrupted. I would think this is so easy to disrupt this marketplace with technology. I mean, if an Amazon could disrupt retail, this is like a very easy no brainer to disrupt with digital
phil spade
@Phil · 2:51
I think it does have some transparency, and I do have to bring this all the way back to the original discussion because I wanted to use this as an illustration of a clear cut illustration where a middleman really doesn't create value except for himself. And that's what these companies are doing. And if this exists and we see it in Sudha plain and simple example, as PBMs just know that the health insurance industry overall is doing the same thing by being the middleman
Sudha Varadarajan
@sudha · 0:57
So I wanted to add this recent article that I read a few days ago to the Swell. And once you read it, you start to realize how much money is skimmed off by, you know, people