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From your comment, I’m not sure if you are downplaying the high price of medication in the United States or simply stating a fact, so I’m going to clarify (apol
by tareqak 7y ago
From your comment, I’m not sure if you are downplaying the high price of medication in the United States or simply stating a fact, so I’m going to clarify (apologies on my part). Reducing 1.6% of the aggregate healthcare spending isn’t the full picture. That amount is not going to go to reduce the price of over-the-counter Acetaminophen or over-the-counter Ibuprofen: it’s going to go to things like grossly marked-up Epipens and the like.
- rayiner 7y agoThe point is that the amount of political attention paid to drug spending vastly outweighs the actual impact of drug spending on the economy (or peoples' wallets). My cynical take is that it's easier to fixate on an area where you can demonize a small number of large companies, instead of looking at the structural reasons why the U.S. spends twice as much per person as Canada on healthcare overall. Okay, let's import all our drugs from Canada and save a few hundred dollars per person on pharmaceuticals. Then let's get rid of all health-insurer profits and save another $180 per person. Now what about the other $5,432 more each American spends than each Canadian?