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"Drug prices are high in the US because the US is responsible for funding the the majority of medical and pharmaceutical research for the entire world." A stat

"Drug prices are high in the US because the US is responsible for funding the the majority of medical and pharmaceutical research for the entire world." A statement entirely unsupported by data. If pharmaceutical companies spent on R&D only the money earned due the inflation of US prices, they'd still have plenty left over: http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2017/03/07/rd-costs-for-pharmaceutical-companies-do-not-explain-elevated-us-drug-prices/ http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2017/03/07/rd-costs-for-pharma... You could just as well say the US funds the majority of drug advertising for the entire world - they spend more on ads than R&D: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28212223 http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28212223 Not to mention everything from vital new medicine, to reproducing generics of other companies, and drug reformulations to prolong patents, gets thrown under R&D. If you only count the R&D spending that's not done solely to steal market share from other companies, the ads vs. R&D ratio is even more dire. So given they post more profits and more ad spending each than R&D spending, at what point would it be okay to stop raising drug prices? When profits are >10x their R&D?

chimeracoder 9y ago
You seem to be interested in arguing the statement "Pharmaceutical companies in the US spend too much on R&D". But that's not equivalent to the statement "The US provides the funding for the majority of R&D that the rest of the world benefits from". If you think that pharmaceutical companies should spend less of their money on R&D, or more on it, that's not really relevant. Whatever research pharmaceutical companies are doing, that's being disproportionately funded by the US market. That's a plainly evident statement; it's right there in their financial sheets. > You could just as well say the US funds the majority of drug advertising for the entire world No, because research is a wholly non-excusable good in the global market. Advertising is not. > they spend more on ads than R&D Again, not really the point.
- DarkKomunalec 9y ago
  Sounds like as long as they spend some portion of their revenue on R&D, you'll argue inflated drug prices are good and necessary.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > Sounds like as long as they spend some portion of their revenue on R&D, you'll argue inflated drug prices are good and necessary. Again you're looking at the wrong denominator (fraction of spending spent on R&D, rather than fraction of R&D spending that's funded by the US). Furthermore, I never made any claims about "good and necessary". It looks like you're interested in having a discussion about a different topic altogether, rather than the original statement.

chimeracoder 9y ago

You seem to be interested in arguing the statement "Pharmaceutical companies in the US spend too much on R&D". But that's not equivalent to the statement "The US provides the funding for the majority of R&D that the rest of the world benefits from". If you think that pharmaceutical companies should spend less of their money on R&D, or more on it, that's not really relevant. Whatever research pharmaceutical companies are doing, that's being disproportionately funded by the US market. That's a plainly evident statement; it's right there in their financial sheets. > You could just as well say the US funds the majority of drug advertising for the entire world No, because research is a wholly non-excusable good in the global market. Advertising is not. > they spend more on ads than R&D Again, not really the point.

DarkKomunalec 9y ago
Sounds like as long as they spend some portion of their revenue on R&D, you'll argue inflated drug prices are good and necessary.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > Sounds like as long as they spend some portion of their revenue on R&D, you'll argue inflated drug prices are good and necessary. Again you're looking at the wrong denominator (fraction of spending spent on R&D, rather than fraction of R&D spending that's funded by the US). Furthermore, I never made any claims about "good and necessary". It looks like you're interested in having a discussion about a different topic altogether, rather than the original statement.