4 ms·
You can do this math yourself. The average drug costs about $1.3B to develop [1]. What's the profit margin per dose in your country of choice, times the numbe
by mdorazio 5y ago
You can do this math yourself. The average drug costs about $1.3B to develop [1]. What's the profit margin per dose in your country of choice, times the number of expected doses before the patent runs out? I can pretty much guarantee the total of that is nowhere near [1], let alone high enough to satisfy shareholder expectations. The unfortunate truth is that drugs are expensive to develop, and the US market subsidizes them for the rest of the world.
[1] https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/new-drug-cost-research-development-market-jama-study/573381/ https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/new-drug-cost-research-de...
- CoolGuySteve 5y agoWell conveniently there are 1.3 billion people in the OECD countries. A $1 per person tax burden for each new drug sounds downright reasonable.
- mdorazio 5y agoReplying to myself since apparently people don't like financial facts. If you read Pfizer's 10-K for 2019 (chosen for pre-pandemic numbers), the US accounted for 45% of their gross revenue compared to Western Europe's ~15%. If you discounted the US down to a similar per-person revenue level as Europe, the company would fluctuate between profitability and non-profitability quarter to quarter. I genuinely don't know what people want here - drugs aren't magically summoned into existence for free. If you want new drugs, someone has to cover the cost and the prices that the non-US world pays aren't nearly high enough to do that. You could lower the prices for Americans, but only if you simultaneously increase the prices for everyone else, too.