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Yeah man that's what they do. They sell it at a loss in Canada and then profit in the US to make up the loss. That's definitely how it works. Let's hope they n
by sfn42 1y ago
Yeah man that's what they do. They sell it at a loss in Canada and then profit in the US to make up the loss. That's definitely how it works.
Let's hope they never discover that they could just not sell it in Canada at all and make even more money.
- munk-a 1y agoI'm not certain if there's a specific example you have in mind but as a Canadian familiar with the pharma market you can rest assured that Canada (sometimes through the hidden mechanism of government subsidies) pays well above cost for every medication and medical device I'm familiar with. Sure, companies are gouging the US worse - but they still make a tidy profit in the Canadian market.
- goobatrooba 1y agoThis theory that American prices subsidise the rest of the world has really caught on in the US but I have never seen any evidence for it. Most common drugs are out of patent anyway, so there should be no barrier to low cost production anywhere. Moreover the EU and China give huge funding to basic and specific research, which forms the basis of many drugs. For instance the RNA research that gave us COVID vaccines was completely European from start to finish, only production then involved American companies due to scale benefits and market access. On the contrary where the evidence is obvious is that the US pharma companies have amazing profits (such as the few Europeans that sell at scale in the US). My personal, unscientific, take is that the entire narrative that the US prices fund global low prices is completely unfounded and just an attempt by big pharma to get the US government on their side to break fair pricing mechanisms in other countries.
- mrguyorama 1y agoThe COVID vaccine is such a great example too, because the US government negotiated it's price as part of getting it regulated and distributed, just like other countries do for all sorts of medicine. The US admin negotiated them down to $20 a dose IIRC. Billions of dollars to just do scale manufacturing of a drug someone else slaved over, invented, stood behind for a decade while nobody else cared, and quickly utilized to deal with a novel virus that seemed to evade normal vaccine strategies. $20 ain't nothing, but in our terrible system, it's almost a bargain. And the shareholders of the Pharma company involved were fucking incensed that they didn't get more money. They are ghouls. But no, lets keep insisting that the US government couldn't negotiate prices for drugs to save Americans a significant chunk of change despite the fact we have a recent and obvious example of them doing a good job of it. Let's keep insisting that Democrats are in bed with Pharma and profit off our costs even though it was republicans who banned import of cheap drugs from Canada and republicans who refuse to allow Medicaid to negotiate meaningfully. Pharma companies are public. You can see how much they spend on R&D. The claim is false.