5 ms·
No, unless you feel that people who use medicine are nothing more than a resource to be exploited. Were it not for a (probably illegal in this case) monopoly,
by powera 11y ago
No, unless you feel that people who use medicine are nothing more than a resource to be exploited.
Were it not for a (probably illegal in this case) monopoly, other people would be able to make that same pill for $5 per tablet. And then nobody would pay $50 for the pill.
Supply and demand IS NOT the same as "charging everyone as much as they will pay for everything". It's inherently unfair to everyone who has to buy that thing, and that's why people think it's a rip-off, because it is.
[edited to remove some hyperbole]
- qsucvatz 11y agoQuite an opener, do you practice hyperbole often? Fairness is whatever two people will agree to pay for a service. Imagine how silly it would be if we all paid the same amount for seats on an airline - which is how it worked before deregulation. Many seats would go empty, the utility would not be maximized, and we'd be missing out on the great transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor.
- powera 11y agoAnd everybody also generally hates the airlines and feels the pricing is unfair because of this. You might say that without it airplanes would not fly at all, and you might be right. But it's incredulous to claim that without these profits the medicine would not exist at all; it has existed already for 5 decades. (And we have patents as a system specifically designed to allow for funding the creation of drugs)
- ikeboy 11y agoThe question is, if it costs me X to make a product, and the value to you is 100X, who captures the 99X spread? I could charge 99X, you would pay it since the value is higher, and I'll capture most of it. I could charge 2X, it's still worth it to me to produce it, and you'll capture most of it. What value here is most fair? Why is one value fairer than another? The standard economic answer is "let the market decide", and that works, up to a point. If you reject that, you need a better way to decide. Let's say you have a government agency set prices: how do they choose? You've just pushed the problem around. Saying "get rid of the free market" in only a solution if you have a concrete alternative.
- powera 11y agoI'm not saying "get rid of the free market". I'm saying that in a monopoly situation, there is no free market. And if there is no free market, claiming "the free market will work" is insanity, so we have no choice but to try something else.
- ikeboy 11y agoWhat is that something else? In a monopoly situation, the price tends towards 100X in my example, which is still less than the value provided. Even in a monopoly, nobody's paying more for a product than they receive value from it. Yes, it may still seem unfair, but what else are you proposing? Nobody should sell the product? How is that making anyone better off?
- pxndx 11y agoThe thing is, the value for these products is infinite. If people don't have them, they'll die.
- ikeboy 11y agoThe value of a human life is not infinite, at least not in health budgets. Insurance companies set a non-infinite value to decide what procedures to cover. In theory, you could calculate the exact value provided by this drug (under the QALY model).
- 11y ago