The insured rate and the uninsured rate.  It may be $400 for something if you have insurance but $150 if you don't.

My understanding was that generally its the other way around.  Insurers get the negotiated rate people off the street get the higher rate.  No rate should be lower than the Medicare/Medicaid rate.

Ya gotta wonder sometimes if society didn't evolve into these tight capitalist systems, how many more diseases would be cured and not just treated.

Do not discount the effect that capitalism has on enterprise!  Incentivizing innovation is a very capitalist thought! 

The insured rate and the uninsured rate.  It may be $400 for something if you have insurance but $150 if you don't.

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My understanding was that generally its the other way around.  Insurers get the negotiated rate people off the street get the higher rate.  No rate should be lower than the Medicare/Medicaid rate.

Nope.  I'm speaking from first hand experience. 

I think what you are thinking about is they charge the insurance $400 and then receive a negotiated rate of maybe $150.00 for the charge and the doctor writes off the difference.  You see that all the time.  If they only charged the insurance $150 the insurance would try to pay $50.

Now I'm guessing the uninsured rate probably ends up being about the same as the negotiated rate they get from the insurance companies, which would make sense.

Which leads me to wonder why this answer was not provided by Palin when asked about her "foreign relations" experience.  Surely she must have courted some international business as governor,

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She did mention that but it was edited out of the interview.

GIBSON: Have you ever met a foreign head of state?

PALIN: There in the state of Alaska, our international trade activities bring in many leaders of other countries.

GIBSON: And all governors deal with trade delegations.

PALIN: Right.

GIBSON: Who act at the behest of their governments.

PALIN: Right, right.

GIBSON: I’m talking about somebody who’s a head of state, who can negotiate for that country. Ever met one?

PALIN: I have not and I think if you go back in history and if you ask that question of many vice presidents, they may have the same answer that I just gave you.

There will never be another "cure" for anything...a cure removes the profit base.

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Nonsense.  We'll never run out of disease.

I don't think the drug companies are doing that (holding back cures) for the simple reason that not all the research and not all the drug companies are in the US.  There are countries that don't have purely capitalistic societies and they'd have no reason for holding back a cure.  So if a cure was found, no matter how hard drug companies in the US might want to hold it back, they couldn't stop others from not doing so.