4 ms·
What's stopping US companies from competing based on price? There's multiple producers of insulin in the US. Why do you need a foreign company to undercut them
by yarcob 5y ago
What's stopping US companies from competing based on price? There's multiple producers of insulin in the US. Why do you need a foreign company to undercut them? If an international market would fix it, why doesn't the national market fix it? Why doesn't one of the US companies charge less than the others?
- fighterpilot 5y agoBecause of price fixing among the 3 big insulin providers, which is only possible in an environment where competition is heavily constrained by monopoly powers (or in this case, oligopoly powers) endowed by governments through the patent system. If we have an international free market that encourages 10+ competitors that aren't banned from producing insulin due to patents, then price fixing becomes impossible. So if government just got out of the way (in this case - patents and banning imports), you could import cheap insulin from anywhere and the problem would be completely solved.