>"Monopsony leverage" and "bargaining" is just price controls. You don't even need single payer for that if you want to do it, you can just legislate prices. N

>"Monopsony leverage" and "bargaining" is just price controls. You don't even need single payer for that if you want to do it, you can just legislate prices. No, monopsony leverage is not the same as a price control. The minimum price that monoposony can give you is the cost to produce the given drug. Price controls allow you to mandate a price lower than their cost to produce, hence the negative effects you mention. >This is complicated in this case by the fact that most of the cost is R&D This is also false. Marketing outweighs the R&D budgets at most private pharmaceutical companies. >a lot of the costs basically amount to regulatory capture or drug companies outsmarting the government It sounds like you’re advocating for the dismantling of the drug patent system, which is a far more radical proposal. I agree that regulatory/market failure also contributes to high costs, it’s why I believe the free market poorly maps onto the problem of providing healthcare.