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Why doesn't the US pass a law that prevent such large deprecencies? Is it because the legal landscape is different and pharmaceuticals companies worry about the
by rafale 6y ago
Why doesn't the US pass a law that prevent such large deprecencies? Is it because the legal landscape is different and pharmaceuticals companies worry about the cost of litigation in the US?
- GiorgioG 6y agoBecause the passage of laws is bought and paid for by corporations.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoBecause Big Pharma lobbies to prevent such laws from being imposed. There’s even a law that prevents Medicare from negotiating down the price of drugs, with obvious consequences.
- rtkwe 6y agoBecause the GOP is ideologically opposed to price controls (except when it's in the form of subsidies to their state's pet industry of course). Something, something, free market distortions I think is the usual reason.
- midasuni 6y agoDems control President, Senate and House
- rtkwe 6y agoYou know about the filibuster right? Republicans can filibuster (force infinite 'debate' though modern rules don't require people to actually talk during a filibuster any more [0]) anything they don't want to pass and it's up to extremely centrist (barely) Democrats like Joe Manchin if the filibuster remains. Without removing that it takes 10 Republican votes to stop debate on any bill. There are some work arounds but they're limited to things that one person decides are sufficiently budget related enough to go through the reconciliation process that prevents filibusters. And that is a thrice a year option at most. [0] I get why since senators have all sorts of commitments to their time even counting just Senate business but it means a there's basically no cost to doing one where there was.
- FentanylFloyd 6y ago> You know about the filibuster right? standard Dem excuse for being impotent and/or complicit
- stupendousyappi 6y agoFilibuster.
- madeofpalk 6y agoI think you’re misguided if you think this is a partisan issue. It’s an American issue where neither party has really adequately done anything about affordable healthcare and gouging like this.
- rtkwe 6y agoEverything that has been done or been tried has had to pass or be written under the specter of the filibuster though. It fundamentally limits the type of options that get through. The only major change in the last decade was Obamacare which is remarkably similar to the system passed under a the Republican Governorship of Mitt Romney. Democrats have some options they'd like to do that might help but cannot because of the filibuster. Reconciliation which is the only way around the filibuster guaranteed is pretty limited in scope due to the rules around it. Whether those could pass a vote if there was no filibuster is unknown because they all get completely blocked by Republican filibuster.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> The only major change in the last decade was Obamacare which is remarkably similar to the system passed under a the Republican Governorship of Mitt Romney. Which itself was a state level implementation of a program the insurance industry and national Republicans were talking up as an alternative in the 90s when, i the wake of the failure of Clinton’s healthcare reform, it seemed there was enough residual demand for something to be done in that regard nationally that they thought they needed to bring something to the table.
- tdeck 6y agoThe filibuster is a set of rules that both parties agreed to. One might well ask why Democrats in the senate agreed to this rule once again, knowing full well it would impede their ability to accomplish their publicly touted platform over the next few years.
- bluGill 6y agoThe obvious answer is eventually they will be out of power again and will want it. In fact until a few years ago they had it for judges, but they got rid of it when Republicans filibustered. Then when Trump nominated a judge they didn't like, well they discovered the filibuster was gone by their own doing and they were powerless.
- kortilla 6y agoDidn’t Trump pass some executive order clamping down on this very thing?
- IncRnd 6y agoHe signed at least two of them, one to cover Medicare Part B and one to cover Medicare Part D.
- barbacoa 6y agoBiden stopped it before the EO went into effect. https://archive.is/eh5GV https://archive.is/eh5GV
- WalterGR 6y agoTo be clear, the Biden administration issued a regulatory rule freeze memorandum, and that's one of the things that was frozen. Has any decision since been made whether to implement the rule?
- contravariant 6y agoEnglish isn't my first language so I might be asking something obvious here, but what's a deprecency?
- edflsafoiewq 6y agoTypo of "discrepancy".
- EarthLaunch 6y agoSeems to indicate the status of the commenter.
- analogdreams 6y agoWe had a president that addressed this but people didn't like that he sent 'nasty' tweets. then his successor overturned the order and we all celebrated.
- actinium226 6y agoOK, I'm legitimately curious to know more. I do remember him talking about "making insulin as cheap as water" or something like that, but can you point me to the actual executive order or bill he was trying to pass that dealt with this issue of lowering the cost for prescriptions? A source about Biden overturning whatever it was would be great as well. I don't preclude Trump from having actually done something meaningful, but a lot of what he does is vain and self-promoting, so I could easily see this being a case where he tried to put something into effect that looks good on the surface but doesn't actually accomplish anything, or doesn't accomplish it in a sustainable way and thus would need to be revoked to prevent prices going up in the long term.
- fny 6y ago> ...can you point me to the actual executive order or bill he was trying to pass that dealt with this issue of lowering the cost for prescriptions? [0]: https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=trump+prescription+executive+order https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=trump+prescription+executive+... [1]: https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=biden+trump+prescription+executive+order https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=biden+trump+prescription+exec...
- monkeywork 6y agoThe condescending nature of using LMGT make me just ignore you.
- kmos17 6y agoI remember him making a lot of noise about making insulin super cheap or giving us the best and cheapest health plan to replace obamacare, he had a full 4 years in office to accomplish this, including two years with complete control of congress. So what exactly did he accomplish?
- missedthecue 6y agoWorth noting that no one pays $1400 a month. Their insurance covers it, just like insurance covers you in Australia or Germany or Canada or anywhere else.
- danm 6y agoBut then, doesn't that mean everyone with coverage pays for it?Insurance pays for it, and everyone with coverage pays for these high costs through high premiums -- public healthcare in Canada doesn't pay for drugs, and even without insurance the cost of those drugs tends to be substantially cheaper, at least in the few scenarios I've been exposed to.
- caspper69 6y agoMore likely it means you pay (or more appropriately, your insurance company pays) the negotiated rate, which is often far, far less than the published retail cost of a medication. Those big monthly $$s get investors excited tho. This is to say nothing of the public / private debate.
- missedthecue 6y agoInsurance doesn't pay $1400 either. I mean 225,000 Americans are on it, and multiply that by 1400 x 12, and you're already way past Truvada's global annual revenue. The numbers don't work out. Americans do subsidize European and African prices though, there's no doubt about that.
- ur-whale 6y agoMoney still has to come from somewhere.
- ojbyrne 6y agoIf you are insured and look at medical bills in the US you generally see an obscene top line cost, a very large discount that the insurance company negotiates, and your personal copay. That discount doesn’t really seem to come from somewhere.
- ddingus 6y agoCorruption. Seriously. It is both chronic and legal here.
- dudeinjapan 6y agoThe US had a president who tried. Yeah, that guy. https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/11/20/fact-sheet-trump-administration-finalizes-proposal-to-lower-drug-costs.html https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/11/20/fact-sheet-trump-a...
- at_a_remove 6y agoIt costs quite a lot to take any given new drug to market (one study suggested a median of 0.985 billion, and a mean of 1.3 billion), and most of them do not make it. They must recoup expenses somehow, or go broke, and then ... no new drugs. To that end, they get a limited period of exclusivity over their invention. Now, is this done efficiently? I don't know. Perhaps the FDA approval process could be less costly. Or we could limit litigation in some manner. And so on. But they're sure not gonna churn out new drugs for the cost of some generics.
- jackson1442 6y agoWhile I can appreciate that drugs _do_ cost money to manufacture, it does not mean that people should be expected to pay hundreds or thousands for a drug that is vital to their health.
- at_a_remove 6y agoThe money comes from somewhere. You can make it direct or you can make it indirect, but it is still coming from one bank account or another. Essentially, the US is footing the bill for the world. If you look at overseas pharmacies, PReP has been available (as are many drugs) at very cheap prices for quite a while now. Some countries just ignore the drug patents and go on their merry way. Our current method of accounting inside the US has people pay into insurance, which then pays out for these particular drugs.
- dillondoyle 6y agoOr pharma could not make profit/pay dividends? That seems like a much bigger 'cost' than FDA paperwork (though trials are expensive)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- at_a_remove 6y agoInstead of making a smart-ass comment, I was prompted by your reply to look. Some non-profit pharmas do exist, but it appears that they are largely focused on generics or orphan drugs. I have seen some press-release stuff on how some of them could work in drug discovery, but it was always a team-up with someone else, and I couldn't find what new drugs had actually made it to market from non-profit pharmas. I suppose the only way to really prove this one way or another would be to select the last thousand drugs to market globally, note the country of origin and the company, and whether or not they were for-profit or not. Perhaps build out on that -- how much did it cost to bring that to market? How many failed per pharma?