4 ms·
That's nice. The rest of the world has price caps on what these companies can charge for drugs. It's one or the other. You can have your ''patents'' and ''inte
by selectively 8mo ago
That's nice. The rest of the world has price caps on what these companies can charge for drugs.
It's one or the other. You can have your ''patents'' and ''intellectual property'' respected...but that requires you not charge an outrageously higher price in certain markets, like the US.
- pfdietz 8mo agoThe rest of the world is free riding. The solution is a law preventing drug firms from pricing in the US higher than (some small multiple of) what it charges anyone else in the world.
- selectively 8mo agoNope. That would require those same companies from not abusing our political process to obtain illegal political outcomes - outcomes that are unconstitutional - like Citizens United, which led to PHrMA dumping unimaginable money into bad faith political advertising/lobbying. Until or unless they stop being bad actors, everyone should pirate their stuff. Free Luigi.
- eddythompson80 8mo agoWhenever someone cites Citizens United, I'm 99.9% sure they have no idea what that ruling was about.
- selectively 8mo agoIn other words: you are a reactionary who thinks little of others. Noted.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- eddythompson80 8mo agoNo because you literally have no idea what the citizen united ruling was based on what you wrote. Those 99.9% of people use “Citizen United” the way you used it. As a catch all for “corporate political contributions” except it wasn’t that impactful of a ruling regarding that. If you actually know what it was then answer how does limiting non-electioneering advertisements from PACs for 30 days out of the year changes anything?
- pfdietz 8mo agoHoly non sequitur, batman.
- johanvts 8mo agoSomebody has to pay for the drugs development, the poor can't pay, if the rich (US) won't pay, there simply won't be any drug.
- sowbug 8mo agoThe poor can pay for the drug development quite well. It takes a rich country to pay for all the regulatory capture.
- johanvts 8mo agoNicely put :)
- direwolf20 8mo agoThat's why I pay Apple extra money to develop the next big thing. If I only pay the sticker price of the iPhone, there won't be any more innovative products. But if we all get together and pay double the sticker price, we'll get some true innovation!
- johanvts 8mo agoNobody is suggesting paying Novo up front, they footed that bill, we are talking about paying a premium after product lunch, which people certainly did for the iPhone.
- A1kmm 8mo agoIn a free-market approach to drug development, if the expected loss of attempting to develop as drug is negative, and the cost isn't too high, then there is an incentive to develop that. The best public policy outcome in such an approach would be for losses to be only slightly negative. Positive or zero expected losses mean no drug development, and highly negative expected losses mean the drug is more expensive than necessary and reduces the accessibility of the drug. However, current patent law allows companies to minimise their expected loss, with no controls to prevent highly negative expected losses. There are alternative models - such as state funding of drug development. This model has benefit that it is possible to optimise more directly for measures like QALY Saved (Quality Adjusted Life Years Saved) - which drug sale revenue is an imperfect proxy for due to some diseases being more prevalent amongst affluent people, and because one-time cures can be high QALY Saved but lower revenue. The complexity of state funding is it still has the free-rider problem at a international level (some states invest less per capita in funding). This is a problem which can be solved to an extent with treaties, and which doesn't need to be solved perfectly to do a lot of good.
- Closi 8mo ago> The rest of the world is free riding. The rest of the world isn't free riding - the USA has just setup a market where there is very little bargaining power for consumers because of how the US medical market and insurance works. Novo and Eli are still making plenty of money in Europe where these drugs cost a fraction of the price, and where there aren't other significant suppliers for GLP-1's like is being implied.
- loeg 8mo agoNo, they're free-riding. If drug companies can't charge higher prices in the US, they will do less drug development. Everyone involved in the business/investing side of pharma knows this; it's not even an argument.
- Closi 8mo agoI think we have a different definition of free riding. If you and me both buy the same car, but i'm better at negotiating than you and get a lower price, I'm not free riding because you 'funded the design of the car with the extra money you paid', you are just bad at negotiation.
- pfdietz 8mo agoThe free riding is referring to outcomes rather than causal links.
- loeg 8mo agoIn this metaphor, the car manufacturer only invested R&D in new models because it expected to be able to recoup that R&D spending from my higher purchase price. If I start paying the same low price for cars as you do, the manufacturer stops investing as much in R&D for new models. Your access to new models was free riding on my higher prices. When we all negotiate lower prices, we get fewer new drugs. Maybe that's better than the status quo (for Americans). Maybe it isn't.
- direwolf20 8mo agoRemind me from whenceforth come Bayer, Novo Nordisk, Moderna?
- pfdietz 8mo agoRemind me from whenceforth comes the money that they depend on to make a profit?
- direwolf20 8mo agoThe European Central Bank system prints it
- pfdietz 8mo agoLet me rephrase that. Where do the resources come from to develop new drugs? Printing money doesn't create resources.
- direwolf20 8mo agoThey are born from wombs through vaginas, approximately 9 months after males inject their semen into females for a myriad of reasons.
- loeg 8mo agoThese are international companies that depend heavily on profits from the American market. Their C suite knows this; their investors know this.
- SilverElfin 8mo agoNah modern mega corps are free riding on all our backs. They use the power of the state and frivolous mechanisms like the broken patent system to create monopolistic situations for themselves.
- pfdietz 8mo agoWithout the patent system the drugs largely don't get invented, so that's a bad argument.
- johanvts 8mo agoWhat percentage of global rich, obese people live in the US? This is the main market and the product would not exist if it could not command a high profit here. Besides that, I think the US prices are so high due to the insane medical insurance structure, not because the drug companies really make much more than in other countries.