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If I understand your analogy correctly, Walmart is Medicare, and the manufacturer is a drug company? If so, then said QA testing is not a guarantee; you cannot
by DaveWalk 12y ago
If I understand your analogy correctly, Walmart is Medicare, and the manufacturer is a drug company? If so, then said QA testing is not a guarantee; you cannot design a drug that will extend the lives of patients with end-stage cancer like you design a grill. It'd be like there was a government agency that compared the manufacturer's new grill to all other grills on the market, and only let the manufacturer sell theirs if it had a clearly defined benefit over the others.
- bradleyjg 12y agoI guess I didn't make my point clearly enough either time. The government pays for the early research, sets all the ground rules for the drug trials, and -- as the drug companies' biggest customer -- ends up ultimately shouldering much of the cost of those trials whether successful or not. The government certainly has the financial wherewithal to fund stage 3 trials, $100M a pop is a rounding error on federal spending or even on just federal medical spending. So why not just go ahead and do so? Why the farce with pretending there's a healthy drug market when the government is driving so much of the process? Let's just admit this is a market failure of the public good variety, like firefighting and roads, and have the government provision it.