When people in Europe and elsewhere pay as little as 10% of what we pay in the United States, then something is seriously wrong with our system. We need regulation of the profit that hospitals and their suppliers are making; and suppliers include makers of artificial limbs, CAT scanners, any equipment hospitals use and mark up. The regulation must be done federally, as it would be inefficient for states to do it.

Drugs are a big problem, and what is not understood is drug suppliers are business people, and they see lots of profit to be made. (Even more hard to believe than the med industry.) When a drug dealer is jailed because of the profit motive, there are 10 dealers ready to move in. The government is playing a whack-a-mole game, doing the same thing, making the same mistake for over 40 years.

What we need to do is to remove the profit motive and make drugs a misdemeanor and spend the money on rehabilitation. This has been successfully done 10 years ago in Portugal. By eliminating the profit motive, you don’t get the salesmen pushing people into drugs. And by removing serious penalties, people won’t be forced to invent ever more dangerous drugs, which in most cases are not regulated.

In the past we tried to outlaw alcohol and that did not work, and the drug laws are only making the situation worse.

Let’s think out of the box and make this country greater.