A Pioneer in 'Flat-Fee Primary Care' Had to Close Its Clinics
A former travelling companion (on a long distance train trip) moved from Head of R&amp;D for an advertising agency into working in the medical technology industry. After six months or so, he returned to his former job of head of R&amp;D at the advertising agency. When quizzed by the staff at the advertising agency as to why he came back to such a corrupt industry. His comment was that advertising were little children in terms of corruption compared to the medical technology industry.<p>I had a long discussion with him about what he had seen. He made the statement that every company that he saw would increase their prices for any product that was being sold into health care by at least a factor of 10 over what they would sell the same product for to non-health care areas.<p>I, myself, have had other conversations with various people (in both drug companies and medical institutions) and it has been common for comments to be made as to the vast difference between drug production costs and the final retail sale prices (even taking into consideration all the development costs, I have seen some of these figures and they are, well ....).<p>Health care is as exorbitantly priced as legal consultations and representation and the value received is in many ways far less than what you would receive by going to Macca&#x27;s.