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Big fan of your comments usually, so it's disappointing to see such a specious argument. Not only is this a false dichotomy (free drugs vs getting paid fairly),
by pdeuchler 11y ago
Big fan of your comments usually, so it's disappointing to see such a specious argument. Not only is this a false dichotomy (free drugs vs getting paid fairly), it's dramatically removed from reality.
Currently, without the TPP, the large pharmaceutical companies make billions in profit every year even including the rampant "piracy" in countries like India and China.
Or, with the TPP, all of those generics go poof, billions lose legal access to modern drugs, and pharmaceutical companies increase profits by 30, maybe 40 percent?
Of course that slack will get taken up by USAID, like you said, which means that now American tax payers will be on the hook to provide medicine that is now more expensive because our own government made them so.
Doesn't really add up, does it?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 11y agoI'm using the limiting cases to illustrate the incentives of the parties, not as a characterization of the actual argument being made. My point is that Doctors without Borders and the USTR serve different constituencies with conflicting interests. As for getting "paid fairly" I disagree with the general notion that companies that make unimportant things should get paid "what the market will bear" while companies that make important things should get "paid fairly." I think that creates perverse incentives.
- saint_fiasco 11y ago"What the market will bear" is actually pretty low in this case (medicine for the people helped by Doctors without Borders). The whole point of patents is to artificially reduce supply to increase the price.