cicerone imposter wrote:The 3% increase in salary is meaningless when it doesn't keep up with inflation. All it's doing is providing a very simple fact that salary increases are not keeping up with the cost of drugs or health care premiums - and everything else we buy. Everybody losses buying power no matter how you wish to translate percentages whether with the big numbers (salary @ 3%) or smaller ones (cost of drugs @ 10%).
When the average person can't afford either the insurance premium or the cost of the generic antibiotic, serious consequences can arise.
For example, the patient has a simple UTI( urinary tract infection ), needs a generic antibiotic to treat the UTI, but can't afford the antibiotic which incidentally isn't covered by his/her health plan.
What happens next? Often the UTI will resolve on it's own. On other times, the UTI can be so serious that infection progresses until the patient's kidney ( one or both ) are affected. Renal failure may set in, thus requiring the patient to have a kidney transplant or else face death.
Net result: major hospital expensive to patient/society/hospital/ taxpayer...all because the patient couldn't afford to pay for the antibiotic.
