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From the article it seems it's from self-imposed price caps. I wonder how long they will be able to keep this up or if they will use this as a moral capital to
by TeeMassive 3y ago
From the article it seems it's from self-imposed price caps.
I wonder how long they will be able to keep this up or if they will use this as a moral capital to spike the price (non pun intended) of other medications.
It seems to me the main problem in the US healthcare is not the question if it's public or not but its large insane costs. The fact that other countries produce the same drugs for a small fraction of the price, sometimes pennies, is very telling of how rotten and inefficient the whole system is.
Imagine the price of milk slowly increasing to $100 per gallon over decades, due to greed, regulations, price cartels and speculation, and nobody noticing to ask why. People would probably being to ration milk only for those who need it the most like mothers who can't breastfeed their babies and there would be political pressure to create public milk banks and milk insurance and other public mechanisms. But all of that political energy would not solve the root causes of the problem.
- MBCook 3y ago> From the article it seems it's from self-imposed price caps. It does. Except it happened because the Biden administration forced them with threats. This was not done out of any kind of kindness.
- TeeMassive 3y agoThreats or merely a deal. Remember, Big Pharma is to Democrats what Big Oil is to Republicans.
- hackeraccount 3y agoThat's not really a good description though. Milk is still relatively cheap - the problem is that there a number of new milk substitutes (soy milk? yogurt?) that have come one the market that people want more then plain old milk. Those new milk substitutes are great but they're not cheap. We can certainly get the people making them to sell them cheaper. The only downside is that the disincentive to create still newer milk substitutes. If you're really happy with the status quo - or even really happy with plain old milk - then this is a good situation. If you wonder about something better then this is good touched by a bit of worry.
- TeeMassive 3y agoI picked milk as an hypothetical example but it could have been anything that's essential in some way. Could have been salt, sugar, fertilizers, etc.