by Adrianne Appel
BOSTON, Mass., Apr. 5, 2007 (IPS/GIN) -- The U.S. is entering a national health crisis, with an estimated 46 million people unable to afford health insurance. As World Health Day approaches, experts are turning a concerned eye to the rich superpower, which has one of the poorest health profiles in the developed world.
Drug prices, health insurance, doctor visits and hospital stays are too expensive for many people to afford, while insurance- and drug-company profits continue to climb. At the same time, pharmaceutical giants are raking in record profits.
In 2005, Johnson and Johnson earned profits of $10 billion and Pfizer had profits of $8 billion, according to Fortune Magazine.
Health care is bankrupting even well-to-do U.S. citizens, especially people who have the misfortune of becoming seriously ill.
'The reason our health system is so crazy is we treat health care as a commodity. That really doesn't work. Most countries see it as part of their job to take care of their people,' said Meizhu Lui, executive director of United for a Fair Economy.
The U.S. system is mostly privatized, which means that individuals alone or through their employers must buy their health care and health insurance on the open market. The government provides subsidized health care for the elderly and some of the poor and disabled.
Prices of many health services have soared in recent years and today individuals and the government spend $2.3 trillion annually to purchase health insurance, doctor visits, medicines, hospital stays and special tests, according to Families USA, a health advocacy group.
'Our health care is in a car that is accelerating toward a cliff,' said Alan Sager, co-director of the Health Reform Project at Boston University.
The U.S. has a high rate of untreated diabetes and high blood pressure, which fall disproportionately on African Americans, Lui said.
'Unless you're extremely wealthy it's almost impossible to buy insurance. I'm in my fifties and it would cost me $6,000 a year, and for a family it costs $12,000,' said Steffie Woolhandler, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard University.
The U.S. system today has created strange incentives, so that high-tech care is abundant for those who can pay for it while preventive care measures such as annual check-ups are not encouraged, Woolhandler said.
'It is remarkable we spend so much and yet fail to cover so many people,' Sager said.
For years, health activists, organizations of the elderly and labor unions have tried to convince Congress to allow citizens and the government to negotiate bulk prices for drugs or to purchase them from Canada, rather than paying full price on the open U.S. market.
Congress has not budged on this or other health-care reform issues.
Behind the scenes, drug companies, hospitals, insurance companies and doctor organizations spent $400 million in 2005 and 2006 lobbying Congress and federal candidates to enact policies the companies favor, according to Opensecrets, an organization that tracks the records.
'Our government, instead of helping people, is being held hostage by these profit-making companies,' Lui said.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, drug companies recently lobbied against strong safety regulations, and successfully lobbied to include patent protection in trade negotiations with other nations
Drug companies also benefit because they receive favorable tax treatment from the U.S. government, said Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice.
'They get to write off their purchases of equipment. They get a big break for anything considered research,' McIntyre said.
All this adds up to big profits for the companies involved. In 2005, the drug companies Proctor and Gamble, Merck, Amgen, Abbot and insurer UnitedHealth Group were among the 50 most profitable Fortune 500 companies in the U.S., according to Fortune Magazine.
Many large drug companies richly reward their chief executive officers with salaries and bonuses. Johnson and Johnson's CEO received salary and bonuses in 2006 of $28 million, according to Dow Jones. And Merck CEO Richard Clark received $10 million in compensation, according to AFL-CIO Corpwatch.
When former Pfizer CEO Henry McKinnell left the company in 2006, he was given pension, stock and other benefits worth $180 million, according to AFL-CIO Corpwatch.
But CEO William McGuire, of UnitedHealth Group, a health insurance company, stands alone. His annual salary in 2005 was $124 million and he has been provided stock options worth more than $1.7 billion, according to Forbes.com. As part of his retirement package, he and his spouse will receive free health care for as long as they live, according to AFL-CIO Corpwatch.
This is not the case for the average U.S. family, Woolhandler said. If parents become too ill to work, they may lose their salary and be unable to pay their health insurance.
'We found that three-quarters of people bankrupted by illness had insurance at the beginning,' Woolhandler said.
People who have pre-existing illnesses such as asthma are charged double the price for insurance or may be refused altogether, said Woolhandler, who founded Physicians for a National Health Program, which wants the U.S. to switch to a government-run health care system such as Canada's.
A number of companies made headlines recently by trying to boost their profits through illegal drug-marketing schemes, cheating on their taxes or skimping on safety, according to Peter Rost, former vice president of marketing for Pfizer and author of the book 'Whistleblower.'
Pfizer was recently fined $430 million for attempting to defraud a government program. Schering Plough paid a $500-million fine for manufacturing violations, and $345 million for improper marketing of Claritin, an allergy drug, Rost says.
The U.S. tax authority, the Internal Revenue Service, has demanded that drug company GlaxoSmithKline pay $7.8 billion in back taxes while Merck may be facing $2 billion in back tax payments.
