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Lets look at a very extreme case. What if one company develops a cure for all forms of cancer, and they won't release the secret (let's assume our hypothetical

by sib 12y ago

Lets look at a very extreme case. What if one company develops a cure for all forms of cancer, and they won't release the secret (let's assume our hypothetical country has no drug regulations), and they charge $100k for treatment. Is it wrong for the government to step in and regulate? Yes, it is wrong for them to do so (if by regulating you mean setting the company's price for the product that it developed, rather than just the standard regulations that are in place). And the fact that there are people who don't believe it is wrong - probably including politicians - produces a reduction in the amount of money that would be rational to invest to search for such cures, thereby reducing the likelihood of finding them.

learc83 12y ago
In this hypothetical situation, the government could step in and save millions of lives per year with a short term loss of profit to one company. In this situation you'd let millions of people die because you think it might reduce future medical research outcomes? So obviously I haven't found a hypothetical situation extreme enough for you yet. We make policy decisions that limit how much money companies can make from medical breakthroughs all the time. The FDA approval process, for instance. If we stopped requiring FDA approval, developing drugs would be much more profitable, but as a society we agree that drug safety is a good trade off. What if drug affordability is a good trade off as well? There's no way to know without investigation, but that is why I'm opposed to making policy on purely ideological grounds. What if it turns out that limiting pharmaceutical profits, decreases medical funding by 10%, but increases access to drugs that are developed by 100%? Again it may work out exactly opposite, but if you oppose limiting the price of drugs just because "it's wrong", you'll never know. What if it turns out that medical funding isn't the bottleneck in medical breakthroughs. What if the number of people capable of becoming researchers is, and what if that amount goes up with more affordable drug access. Again, I'm not proposing a specific course of action, but I'm saying that there are situations where the free market doesn't work and regulation is necessary.

by sib 12y ago

learc83 12y ago

In this hypothetical situation, the government could step in and save millions of lives per year with a short term loss of profit to one company. In this situation you'd let millions of people die because you think it might reduce future medical research outcomes? So obviously I haven't found a hypothetical situation extreme enough for you yet. We make policy decisions that limit how much money companies can make from medical breakthroughs all the time. The FDA approval process, for instance. If we stopped requiring FDA approval, developing drugs would be much more profitable, but as a society we agree that drug safety is a good trade off. What if drug affordability is a good trade off as well? There's no way to know without investigation, but that is why I'm opposed to making policy on purely ideological grounds. What if it turns out that limiting pharmaceutical profits, decreases medical funding by 10%, but increases access to drugs that are developed by 100%? Again it may work out exactly opposite, but if you oppose limiting the price of drugs just because "it's wrong", you'll never know. What if it turns out that medical funding isn't the bottleneck in medical breakthroughs. What if the number of people capable of becoming researchers is, and what if that amount goes up with more affordable drug access. Again, I'm not proposing a specific course of action, but I'm saying that there are situations where the free market doesn't work and regulation is necessary.