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The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins

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Re: The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins

#51

Post by cameronh90 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #29
airstrike wrote: post #2

It's worth noting that the U.S. market does pay for the lion's share of patented drugs, effectively funding a significant portion of R&D that benefits the whole world years later when generics come into market (at least for those drugs which are not costly to manufacture, which happen to be the majority). I'm not saying this model is right. I'm just saying that doing away with it will have fundamental consequences to…

I would like to see some hard numbers for this. Otherwise I believe this is just self-serving propaganda by drug manufacturers.

Especially when you consider most pharma companies seem to make around 15-30% profit after all costs/R&D... not many industries manage those kind of numbers.

Re: The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins

#52

Post by Retric »

airstrike wrote: post #16
brohoolio wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure what kind of R&D the $800 or whatever it costs now Epipen is paying for. R&D for lobbyists? Or profits because the company gamed the market.

The EpiPen is one of the "hard to manufacture" drugs I mentioned. Although it is top of mind to many, it is not representative of the market. EDIT: "hard to manufacture" is in quotes because it's what I said in my parent comment (though to be fair I said "costly to manufacture"), but I meant it as an umbrella term for everything that can't be substituted by generics

EpiPen is just an epinephrine autoinjector which date back to the 1970’s. The medicine is much older and very cheap ~50 cents.

In term of cost syringe‘s cost ~15 cents and work fine in experienced hands, but auto-injection makes them slightly less error prone. It’s litterally over a 300x markup for a rare problem.

Re: The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins

#53

Post by Gibbon1 »

bluetwo wrote: post #22

Like the article says, previous research has come to the same conclusion. We pay much more, and are ranked nowhere near the top for lifespan, childhood mortality, and other measures. Obamacare was a great first step. Define what basic healthcare is and form markets that encourage apples-to-apples comparison. Let the free market work. Sucks that one party used this as a weapon to wrestle power. Oh well. Not going to a…

If you want an actual change that would have an effect change the law so that if a hospitals and doctors can't just balance bill patients, make them have to take the patients insurance company to court.

Re: The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins

#54

Post by tomlock »

airstrike wrote: post #2

It's worth noting that the U.S. market does pay for the lion's share of patented drugs, effectively funding a significant portion of R&D that benefits the whole world years later when generics come into market (at least for those drugs which are not costly to manufacture, which happen to be the majority). I'm not saying this model is right. I'm just saying that doing away with it will have fundamental consequences to…

I think it is also worth noting that number of drugs patented is not necessarily the best metric for measuring healthcare success.

I think one of the best is perhaps life expectancy - and that's dropping in America, patents or no.

Re: The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins

#55

Post by reasonablemann »

harimau777 wrote: post #48

Are there any measures of how America does compared to Europe if you only count Americans that have good health insurance? It seems to me that many people who are opposed to socialized medicine don't necessarily disagree that it would give the poor better care; rather they fear that it will result in them receiving worse care.

Would also be important to include the number of Europeans that are bankrupted by rejected insurance claims.

Re: The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins

#56

Post by cmurf »

airstrike wrote: post #2

It's worth noting that the U.S. market does pay for the lion's share of patented drugs, effectively funding a significant portion of R&D that benefits the whole world years later when generics come into market (at least for those drugs which are not costly to manufacture, which happen to be the majority). I'm not saying this model is right. I'm just saying that doing away with it will have fundamental consequences to…

Proof? What about the cost of marketing drugs? What about shareholder profits? Both of those could come down without affecting the R&D budgets.

Re: The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins

#57

Post by jfoutz »

dogma1138 wrote: post #19
craigc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any sources/data for this? I would be very curious to see it. The mentioned costs in this article only point to > higher drug prices, higher salaries for doctors and nurses, higher hospital administration costs and higher prices for many medical services I’m not sure if R&D costs are factored in at all for this particular study.

The US spends more on biomedical R&D and produces more drug patents than the entirety of the world combined. https://assets1b.milkeninstitute.org/assets/Publication/Rese... As far as it’s implications on the cost of healthcare in the US I don’t think there is data for it since it’s pretty hard to measure.

200 billion is a lot, but something in the ballpark of just 7%. [1]

I agree, it’s hard to measure, but do you think those estimates are more than 3% off?

Best case, eliminating all drug research saves you 10%.

Although if costs in other areas are bloated, that is a scarier number. [1] https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta...

Re: The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins

#58

Post by modriano »

airstrike wrote: post #16
brohoolio wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure what kind of R&D the $800 or whatever it costs now Epipen is paying for. R&D for lobbyists? Or profits because the company gamed the market.

The EpiPen is one of the "hard to manufacture" drugs I mentioned. Although it is top of mind to many, it is not representative of the market. EDIT: "hard to manufacture" is in quotes because it's what I said in my parent comment (though to be fair I said "costly to manufacture"), but I meant it as an umbrella term for everything that can't be substituted by generics

EpiPens used to cost under $100 for a 2-pack, but now they cost over $600 for a 2-pack. Epinephrine costs like $0.17 per ml, and an EpiPen dose is 0.3 ml.

http://mshpriceguide.org/en/single-drug-information/?DMFId=2...

Re: The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins

#59

Post by jjeaff »

dragontamer wrote: post #41
zzleeper wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it works. You invest if it's worth investing, not if you just have the money laying around. Paying a few billion dollars to a big pharma company is not going to make them invest more in research. They will instead pay the money out as dividends. The goal of patents is to create incentives for future research, but if you change the rules by increasing the extent of EpiPen patents after the drug was crea…

> Paying a few billion dollars to a big pharma company is not going to make them invest more in research. They will instead pay the money out as dividends. This is a misconception. No investor wants their money back. Investors want a promise of MORE money back in the future. If investors wanted their money back immediately, they wouldn't have bought stock in the first place! The vast majority of investors prefer (ex:…

Paying dividends is not giving investor's their money back. It is paying a return on the investment. Some companies like Amazon espouse the idea of perpetually trying to grow stock price, but that is not what every investor is looking for. Some investors are looking for an investment that will pay dividends every year going on forever.

Re: The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins

#60

Post by krupan »

airstrike wrote: post #2

It's worth noting that the U.S. market does pay for the lion's share of patented drugs, effectively funding a significant portion of R&D that benefits the whole world years later when generics come into market (at least for those drugs which are not costly to manufacture, which happen to be the majority). I'm not saying this model is right. I'm just saying that doing away with it will have fundamental consequences to…

Everyone asking for sources fornthis, just think about it. What if Europe decided that iPhones we're too expensive and implemented Single-Payer Phone Care? They'd dictate a price that the government would pay for iPhones in their countries and Apple would either not sell iPhones in Europe at all, or they would sell for the dictated price. They'd do their market studies and possibly conclude that they can jack up U.S. prices and still stay in business in Europe.

With something like pharmaceuticals, of course the U.S. customers are going to pay the higher price, they need the medicine! That means that European countries are of course squeezing the drug companies (which really means squeezing U.S. citizens) as much as they can get away with. They would be dumb not to.

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