5 ms·

> or if the US is basically subsidizing the low prices elsewhere by paying the exorbitant prices here. Nope, you're just being taken for a ride because they ca

> or if the US is basically subsidizing the low prices elsewhere by paying the exorbitant prices here. Nope, you're just being taken for a ride because they can. Remember that the biggest line item for pharmaceutical companies is their advertising budget, not their research budget. Also, this kind of thinking is some weird sort of Stockholm Syndrome, you're basically trying to frame being taken advantage of as some sort of altruism.

roenxi 6y ago
> the biggest line item for pharmaceutical companies is their advertising budget There seems to be some tension between that and a $14,000/month leukemia drug. The drug companies shouldn't really need to advertise life saving medication. The world is full of surprises, but I assume the advertising budget is more for the less important medications where people have to be more active in seeking them out.
jandrewrogers 6y ago
The reason their advertising budget is so high is that they have a small number of years within which to recover a billion dollars in development costs. They have to find customers fast for new drugs, they have no time to waste, and that requires aggressive marketing. Companies don’t advertise for laughs since it costs money, it has a concrete ROI. It is a matter of incentives. If you want them to spend less on advertising, you’d have to provide them with a much longer time to recover development costs. Which also has significant downsides.
- GiorgioG 6y ago
  I'm just going to leave this here: http://www.drugood.com/2018/07/15/gleevecs-cost-and-price/ http://www.drugood.com/2018/07/15/gleevecs-cost-and-price/ Gleevec did not take many years at all for Novartis to recover its trivial relative costs and generate billions of dollars of profit for nearly 2 decades. The problem is when you have a disease and there's only one treatment around, you'll literally pay whatever it costs - because not having it means you're dead. These companies then turn around and extract as much money as they possibly can. They're monopolies, pure and simple. I've seen this with my son's diabetes as well. The costs continue to rise (insulin, Dexcom sensors/transmitters, etc.) I've turned down jobs because their health benefits only covered a lousier insulin pump / glucose monitor due to an exclusive agreement with their chosen health insurer. The problem is if you or a loved one isn't sick, this doesn't affect you one damn bit. My dad (an italian-born immigrant) has always complained to me about our healthcare system (and he had a great healthcare plan as a GM employee.) I didn't really paid it much attention because I was young and healthy. Now, quite a bit older and with family members with a variety of health issues, I realized that he (in my opinion) was right.
  - jandrewrogers 6y ago
    Yet Novartis only has 15% margins. Not shabby but not exactly living large, and much worse than tech companies. You aren’t going to move the needle on drug costs by making those margins 0%, and no amount of wishing will change that. That’s math. I guess you could pay people less at Novartis but it probably won’t have the desired effect. These things cost a certain amount of money to produce. What you are complaining about is how that cost is distributed among the people that might consume it. However, the implications of redistributing that cost are not particularly palatable either. Ultimately, someone has to pay for development and there are only so many places you can hide the necessary revenue that no one wants to pay. These costs don’t automagically disappear through political sleight of hand.
    - freeone3000 6y ago
      >the implications of redistributing that cost are not particularly palatable either Perhaps not to you, but socialized healthcare is being advocated for by several elected officials, so it's not completely off-the-table.
ineedasername 6y ago
I wouldn't exactly frame paying for other countries' healthcare costs as a sort of altruism, not when it puts many people in the US in crippling debt and causes thousands upon thousands of medical-debt bankruptcies every year. This isn't me speculating there's some benevolent reason for high costs. This is me speculating on whether or not the US, if it dealt with these issues head on, would inadvertently cause prices to rise elsewhere. And if it did, that would simply mean the world, and not just the US, would have to deal with the systemic issue at hand.

roenxi 6y ago

> the biggest line item for pharmaceutical companies is their advertising budget There seems to be some tension between that and a $14,000/month leukemia drug. The drug companies shouldn't really need to advertise life saving medication. The world is full of surprises, but I assume the advertising budget is more for the less important medications where people have to be more active in seeking them out.

jandrewrogers 6y ago

The reason their advertising budget is so high is that they have a small number of years within which to recover a billion dollars in development costs. They have to find customers fast for new drugs, they have no time to waste, and that requires aggressive marketing. Companies don’t advertise for laughs since it costs money, it has a concrete ROI. It is a matter of incentives. If you want them to spend less on advertising, you’d have to provide them with a much longer time to recover development costs. Which also has significant downsides.

GiorgioG 6y ago
I'm just going to leave this here: http://www.drugood.com/2018/07/15/gleevecs-cost-and-price/ http://www.drugood.com/2018/07/15/gleevecs-cost-and-price/ Gleevec did not take many years at all for Novartis to recover its trivial relative costs and generate billions of dollars of profit for nearly 2 decades. The problem is when you have a disease and there's only one treatment around, you'll literally pay whatever it costs - because not having it means you're dead. These companies then turn around and extract as much money as they possibly can. They're monopolies, pure and simple. I've seen this with my son's diabetes as well. The costs continue to rise (insulin, Dexcom sensors/transmitters, etc.) I've turned down jobs because their health benefits only covered a lousier insulin pump / glucose monitor due to an exclusive agreement with their chosen health insurer. The problem is if you or a loved one isn't sick, this doesn't affect you one damn bit. My dad (an italian-born immigrant) has always complained to me about our healthcare system (and he had a great healthcare plan as a GM employee.) I didn't really paid it much attention because I was young and healthy. Now, quite a bit older and with family members with a variety of health issues, I realized that he (in my opinion) was right.
- jandrewrogers 6y ago
  Yet Novartis only has 15% margins. Not shabby but not exactly living large, and much worse than tech companies. You aren’t going to move the needle on drug costs by making those margins 0%, and no amount of wishing will change that. That’s math. I guess you could pay people less at Novartis but it probably won’t have the desired effect. These things cost a certain amount of money to produce. What you are complaining about is how that cost is distributed among the people that might consume it. However, the implications of redistributing that cost are not particularly palatable either. Ultimately, someone has to pay for development and there are only so many places you can hide the necessary revenue that no one wants to pay. These costs don’t automagically disappear through political sleight of hand.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    >the implications of redistributing that cost are not particularly palatable either Perhaps not to you, but socialized healthcare is being advocated for by several elected officials, so it's not completely off-the-table.

ineedasername 6y ago

I wouldn't exactly frame paying for other countries' healthcare costs as a sort of altruism, not when it puts many people in the US in crippling debt and causes thousands upon thousands of medical-debt bankruptcies every year. This isn't me speculating there's some benevolent reason for high costs. This is me speculating on whether or not the US, if it dealt with these issues head on, would inadvertently cause prices to rise elsewhere. And if it did, that would simply mean the world, and not just the US, would have to deal with the systemic issue at hand.