4 ms·
It has absolutely nothing to do with subsidization by Americans. It's simply that universal health care allows patients to be fairly represented as consumers vi
by DasIch 11y ago
It has absolutely nothing to do with subsidization by Americans. It's simply that universal health care allows patients to be fairly represented as consumers via insurance agencies.
The American health care system is a perfect example of what happens, if you confuse lack of government regulation with free markets. The resulting oligopoly and in some areas monopolys cause prices to increase massively, especially given the unique traits demand acquires when demand is literally wanting to survive. That's just basic economics and trivially easy to explain.
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoFWIW, you have the exact same system with college textbooks: the International Edition we get in Europe is often 30-50% cheaper than the US Edition, and has big letters saying "Not for sale in the US or Canada". Then you also have a further Low Price Edition, saying "Not for sale outside India, Pakistan, ..." which I've seen at 1/10th of the US price, though usually printed on lower quality paper and lagging an edition behind. This suggests that pharma is not a special case. And you can't point to any huge R&D costs for textbooks that are subsidized by the US.
- DasIch 11y agoThat's easily explained though. Students don't have a lot of money and textbooks are next to rent and in some cases tuition the most expensive thing you're going to buy as a student. Students in the US are already comfortable paying enormous amount of money for the education, students in Europe much less so and students in India and Pakistan simply can't afford to pay what US students can. Still even if your profit margin is much smaller, that's still a large market, so you sell these books in India with a smaller profit margin and increase them in Europe and the US. Additionally universities in the US forcing students to buy certain textbook creating monopolies also certainly doesn't help prices to stay down.
- semi-extrinsic 11y ago> Students in the US are already comfortable paying enormous amount of money for the education, students in Europe much less so and students in India and Pakistan simply can't afford to pay what US students can. Yes, exactly. Substitute "people" for "students" and "health care" for "education" and you have also explained the price differences in the cost of drugs.
- DasIch 11y agoThis is certainly one reason for higher drug prices but I don't think it's the only one.
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoNo, certainly not.