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Biden launches action on "Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Ag" – can it be real?

mattstoller.substack.com

311–320 of 595 posts

Re: Biden launches action on "Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Ag" – can it be real?

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one is particularly prickly because the high cost paid in the US funds medical R&D and extremely expensive clinical trials which other countries are free riding on by imposing price controls. We still need to fund the R&D and clinical trials (unless they could be made less expensive somehow), so the most obvious solution would be to have other countries pay their fair share so the US could stop subsidizing every…

Idk why any politicians arent picking up on foreign price controls as a means of lowering costs in the US. It should be a part of the discussion during any trade talks with Europe.

The problem is chemistry isn’t that different from software. Once you publish the idea it isn’t too difficult to derive the chemical composition. Replication is the easy part. Design and testing cost money.

So in essence we’d have to design drugs and not publish the chemistry which would be uncovered soon enough anyways. This leads to a situation where investment dollars go into other things and human health suffers, especially with so-called rare diseases.

Not to mention the USA loses hegemony. The USA provides Europe with a great deal of military technology and protection as well as medicine but it isn’t for free. The EU exchanges agency in many ways important strategically to American interests. It’s mainly a fair deal.

Re: Biden launches action on "Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Ag" – can it be real?

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a third issue: The high cost of medicines that are low cost to produce, and are sold at low cost elsewhere

This one is particularly prickly because the high cost paid in the US funds medical R&D and extremely expensive clinical trials which other countries are free riding on by imposing price controls. We still need to fund the R&D and clinical trials (unless they could be made less expensive somehow), so the most obvious solution would be to have other countries pay their fair share so the US could stop subsidizing every…

This is an unfortunate moral hazard due to the petrodollar.

Re: Biden launches action on "Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Ag" – can it be real?

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a third issue: The high cost of medicines that are low cost to produce, and are sold at low cost elsewhere

This one is particularly prickly because the high cost paid in the US funds medical R&D and extremely expensive clinical trials which other countries are free riding on by imposing price controls. We still need to fund the R&D and clinical trials (unless they could be made less expensive somehow), so the most obvious solution would be to have other countries pay their fair share so the US could stop subsidizing every…

In 2018, the average insulin price in the US was $98.70, compared to $6.94 in Australia, $12.00 in Canada, and $7.52 in the UK. This is a 100 year old drug.

Re: Biden launches action on "Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Ag" – can it be real?

#314
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm having issues I'll call the doctor. I don't need a babysitter.

Some people do though. Imagine someone who just lets this stuff lapse and they are still being regularly prescribed stuff that should have been cancelled 8 years ago.

So? Some people need exercise, does that mean the government should force everyone to exercise?

Re: Biden launches action on "Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Ag" – can it be real?

#315

"Big Pharma" in the eyes of the public is two related but separate issues; 1) the weird employment-insurance-hospital loop that has developed in the US, and the terrible second-order-consequences of all the open-high/settle-low insurer carer system it led to, and 2) the medicine advertisements, and all the terrible consequences thereof. The second one seems like a much easier thing to get rid of using hard government…

Ironically, it's the governments attempts to lower health care costs that produced this mess of high prices.

Re: Biden launches action on "Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Ag" – can it be real?

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one is particularly prickly because the high cost paid in the US funds medical R&D and extremely expensive clinical trials which other countries are free riding on by imposing price controls. We still need to fund the R&D and clinical trials (unless they could be made less expensive somehow), so the most obvious solution would be to have other countries pay their fair share so the US could stop subsidizing every…

In 2018, the average insulin price in the US was $98.70, compared to $6.94 in Australia, $12.00 in Canada, and $7.52 in the UK. This is a 100 year old drug.

Correct. The price of Insulin has nothing to do with "funding research." It is simply price gouging - that's it.

Re: Biden launches action on "Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Ag" – can it be real?

#318
post #291
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding? https://www.rand.org/news/press/2021/01/28.html > Prescription Drug Prices in the United States Are 2.56 Times Those in Other Countries

So are the nannies and the landscapers. Are these also a racket?

It is just amazing to watch people in the US defend the price gouging in healthcare in the US.

The medicine prices are MUCH lower in other parts of the world - including in places where the cost of living is much higher than in the US such as Norway and Switzerland.

The cost of Insulin is 8x higher in the US than in comparable countries around the world.

https://pharmanewsintel.com/news/insulin-prices-8x-higher-in...

Re: Biden launches action on "Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Ag" – can it be real?

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one is particularly prickly because the high cost paid in the US funds medical R&D and extremely expensive clinical trials which other countries are free riding on by imposing price controls. We still need to fund the R&D and clinical trials (unless they could be made less expensive somehow), so the most obvious solution would be to have other countries pay their fair share so the US could stop subsidizing every…

In 2018, the average insulin price in the US was $98.70, compared to $6.94 in Australia, $12.00 in Canada, and $7.52 in the UK. This is a 100 year old drug.

It isn't a 100 year old drug. There are newer formulations that are faster acting, longer lasting, easier to administer, etc. They're newer so they're still under patent so they're a lot more expensive (because the rest of the world makes the US pay to develop the newer formulations). When insurance is paying for it, people prefer the newer formulations.

Then, since most people have insurance, there wasn't enough of a market for the older formulations for anybody to bother making them for the margins you get for making a generic. So the prices were high for people paying out of pocket.

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