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This 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 ar

This 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 ago
The 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.

mrguyorama 1y ago

The 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.