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"Would you rather live in a society where everyone has a right to medical care regardless of their social standing or financial wherewithal, but some people wil

• nostrademons 9y ago
  I'd love to see you and chimeracoder (sibling comment) fight it out, because his comment was exactly that medical advances happen because of freeriding off the American system, and without the American system, those advances would not happen.
  • robbiep 9y ago
    The idea that the American system is pulling the rest of the world up by its bootstraps is in my belief absurd. Copied from earlier comments by me: let's go through a quick run-down of the 'major' pharmaceutical companies of the world, and where they are headquartered. Company Revenue (USD) Headquarters Novartis 53.6 Bn Switzerland Roche 47.8 Bn Switzerland Sanofi 36.9 Bn France GSK 34.9 Bn UK AstraZeneca 26 Bn UK/Sweden Bayer 43.4 bn Germany Baxter 15.3bn US Pfizer 49 Bn US Merck 42.23 Bn US BMS 18.8 bn US So, 4 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies by revenue are headquartered in the US. By Revenue, those 4 account for 125.3 Bn out of a pie of 367.9 Bn; or 34%. It is not easy to get a list of the number of drugs under clinical trial, or the number of drugs that were recently brought to market by various manufacturers; and, as a side matter, a number of the more innovative drugs brought to market recently were all developed by small pharmaceutical companies (Boceprevir, Telaprevir, Imatinib, Ipilumimab) that were later acquired by the big boys. So a small pharma company did the innovating, usually funded by a university or the product of particuarly profound insights by PhD students; turned into successful drugs; run through to the stage 3 trial stage and then, once all the development costs are done and dusted, acquired for a discount price of the predicted future revenue stream So tell me, where are all the drugs being developed by america? I would say the rest of the world is more than pulling it's weight. In fact, given rough population parity between the European first world and the United states, it could in fact be argued that the United states is not pulling it's weight.
    • chimeracoder 9y ago
      > So tell me, where are all the drugs being developed by america? I would say the rest of the world is more than pulling it's weight. Going by where the companies are headquartered is meaningless, because these are all multinational conglomerates. The question is where they procure the funds for their R&D. As it turns out, not only is 50% of the entire world's medical research actually conducted in the US, but even for research developed outside the US, the US market still serves as the primary driver for the funding, which is pretty easy to see if you bother to dig into their public financial disclosures.
    • fern12 9y ago
      From the 2016 ITA Pharmaceuticals Top Markets Report: >"In addition to a favorable IP and regulatory environment, U.S. laws allowing direct-to-consumer advertising creates immense demand for specific patented drugs. More importantly, the United States is the world’s largest free-pricing market for pharmaceuticals. As a result, prices are comparatively high to make up for lower profits in other countries and to cover R&D costs. The United States also has high per capita incomes, unmatched access to healthcare, a large elderly population, a culture of end-of-life prolongation, high rates of chronic diseases and drug consumption and a strong consumer preference for innovative drugs. All of these factors contribute to it being, by far, the world’s largest pharmaceutical market with $333 billion in sales in 2015, about triple the size of its nearest rival, China. The United States will remain the world’s most important market for the foreseeable future with healthy growth expected across all product sectors." <trade.gov/topmarkets/pdf/Pharmaceuticals_Executive_Summary.pdf>