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> Resists changing the price in the country that is imported into. If they don't, then people will just import drugs from the cheaper source, as long as it rem

> Resists changing the price in the country that is imported into. If they don't, then people will just import drugs from the cheaper source, as long as it remains cheaper. Which amounts to the same thing. > With open export regulations on drugs, there is effectively no way to subsidize a drug for your own citizens without subsidizing it for others where it is lower than another country that allows importation as long as the combined import fees and subsidized cost are not more than the cost in the importing country. Correct. And on the flip side, there is no way for one country to force the other to subsidize its share of medical research, by purchasing the drugs at a price that doesn't cover R&D. Currently, that's what is happening. Pharmaceutical companies don't complain too much, though, because they can still make up the difference off of their largest customer: the US. If they couldn't, then things would be very different. The US is the largest consumer of patent-protected drugs, by a huge margin. It also funds half of all medical research worldwide, the benefits of which are then available to all countries, even though most pay rates that wouldn't sustain that level of research. There's a reason that even most European pharmaceutical companies get the bulk of their research funding from the US. Any solution which reduces drug prices in the US will inevitably result in either other countries that recognize US parents having to pay more, or total medical research funding dropping, which affects all countries worldwide. Realistically, it'll probably be some combination of both.

kbenson 10y ago
I think fundamentally what we have here is the collision of socialism and capitalism, and I'm not sure how to make those work at the margins where they meet. Government funding of research is socialism, but selling the developed drugs is capitalism, and selling them outside the funding country without an increase in price costs the funding country. I'm not sure what the research on this topic says, but I suspect the solution is moving the demarcation of socialism and capitalism to a more acceptable point, as much as that makes sense. For example, instead of freely funding development, if the government got some ownership stake in the drugs developed with some of their funding, as profits as well, then any gain from their own citizens or the citizens of other countries would go towards teh budget, and thus the good of the citizens of the funding government. I guess the real question is how do you mix capitalism and socialism in a way that eliminates, or at least reduces the friction caused where they push up against each other?
- chimeracoder 10y ago
  > I think fundamentally what we have here is the collision of socialism and capitalism, and I'm not sure how to make those work at the margins where they meet. Government funding of research is socialism, but selling the developed drugs is capitalism, and selling them outside the funding country without an increase in price costs the funding country. I don't think you really want to call what happens in Europe and Canada "socialism" in this context, because it's quite literally "Europe and Canada receive the benefits while the US pays for it". That's a definition of socialism I've heard, but only ever in a pejorative context. And government funding of research is not "socialism". It can happen in a socialist society, or it can happen in a capitalist one, and it's not inherently inconsistent (or synonymous) with either philosophy). I'm also not really thrilled with this framing of "socialism vs. capitalism", because Canada and most European countries do not officially claim to be socialist[0], and most of them aren't particularly socialist in practice. As a result, discussing the topic on those terms runs the very real risk of veering off into abstract philosophy without much grounding in the practical matter at hand, which is a very far way off from the original article. [0] Of all Western, Central, or Scandanavian European countries, only one (Portugal) even claims to be socialist officially, and that claim is made rather nominally.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    I'm not labeling countries socialist and capitalist, I'm labeling practices such. I was talking about socialism and capitalism purely within the context of the U.S. Government funding of medical research for the good of its citizens is socialistic. Selling developed drugs on the market is capitalistic. When you use government funds for something which is eventually sold, but the government doesn't receive any direct compensation, there's a friction between the socialistic and capitalistic forces at play, and that's what we've been discussing. To be clear, I've made zero claims as to what is better, just that dthey engender different incentives that don't always play well with each other. My personal view is that there are definitely things we want the state to handle (some degree of welfare including health, some level of regulation of various parts of the economy), but the details as to how much government control are the important bits. Purely socialist and purely capitalist environments don't seem to function nearly as well as a mix, from what I've gleaned from history.

kbenson 10y ago

I think fundamentally what we have here is the collision of socialism and capitalism, and I'm not sure how to make those work at the margins where they meet. Government funding of research is socialism, but selling the developed drugs is capitalism, and selling them outside the funding country without an increase in price costs the funding country. I'm not sure what the research on this topic says, but I suspect the solution is moving the demarcation of socialism and capitalism to a more acceptable point, as much as that makes sense. For example, instead of freely funding development, if the government got some ownership stake in the drugs developed with some of their funding, as profits as well, then any gain from their own citizens or the citizens of other countries would go towards teh budget, and thus the good of the citizens of the funding government. I guess the real question is how do you mix capitalism and socialism in a way that eliminates, or at least reduces the friction caused where they push up against each other?

chimeracoder 10y ago
> I think fundamentally what we have here is the collision of socialism and capitalism, and I'm not sure how to make those work at the margins where they meet. Government funding of research is socialism, but selling the developed drugs is capitalism, and selling them outside the funding country without an increase in price costs the funding country. I don't think you really want to call what happens in Europe and Canada "socialism" in this context, because it's quite literally "Europe and Canada receive the benefits while the US pays for it". That's a definition of socialism I've heard, but only ever in a pejorative context. And government funding of research is not "socialism". It can happen in a socialist society, or it can happen in a capitalist one, and it's not inherently inconsistent (or synonymous) with either philosophy). I'm also not really thrilled with this framing of "socialism vs. capitalism", because Canada and most European countries do not officially claim to be socialist[0], and most of them aren't particularly socialist in practice. As a result, discussing the topic on those terms runs the very real risk of veering off into abstract philosophy without much grounding in the practical matter at hand, which is a very far way off from the original article. [0] Of all Western, Central, or Scandanavian European countries, only one (Portugal) even claims to be socialist officially, and that claim is made rather nominally.
- kbenson 10y ago
  I'm not labeling countries socialist and capitalist, I'm labeling practices such. I was talking about socialism and capitalism purely within the context of the U.S. Government funding of medical research for the good of its citizens is socialistic. Selling developed drugs on the market is capitalistic. When you use government funds for something which is eventually sold, but the government doesn't receive any direct compensation, there's a friction between the socialistic and capitalistic forces at play, and that's what we've been discussing. To be clear, I've made zero claims as to what is better, just that dthey engender different incentives that don't always play well with each other. My personal view is that there are definitely things we want the state to handle (some degree of welfare including health, some level of regulation of various parts of the economy), but the details as to how much government control are the important bits. Purely socialist and purely capitalist environments don't seem to function nearly as well as a mix, from what I've gleaned from history.