221–230 of 367 posts
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Why do you and many other characterize this as a free market failure? If anything this is a regulatory failure.
I am in the opposite camp. I characterize this as a free market success and as a failure of a civilized society to provide basic healthcare for its citizens.
I'm in Switzerland, and I bought some for my kid, I paid around 80$ per piece.
http://compendium.ch/mpro/mnr/22294/html/fr
You have the price at the far bottom of the page, around 76CHF.
I'm a bit concerned if the price is going to be x10.
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Yes; this is why using the free market to set prices in health care is always such a troubling thing. People don't like the idea of putting a price on their health.
People don't like the idea of putting a price on their health. They don't like it, but healthcare costs money and money is a limited resource. That's reality. In the US system it's the insurance companies that limit access (or the cost to an individual). In other countries it's the gov't.
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> The price hikes would immediately attract lower-cost competitors if this were truly a free market. Any participants in a free market for a product with inelastic demand (e.g. something you need to stay alive) and non-trivial entry costs immediately implements price fixing in the absence of regulation. When life-saving devices that require a significant supply chain to manufacture capture the bulk of consumer surplu…
The non-trivial entry costs are there because of regulations and the legal environment regarding liability. You can view the high price as the free-market finding the intersection of supply and demand given the regulatory and legal constraints but that seems like a less than useful way of understanding 'free-market'.
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> The government enforces some minimum safety standards I think this understates the safety regulations for automobiles by quite a bit. Maybe there's an example of an industry which makes lightly regulated, dangerous products, but I don't think cars are it.
True - the government's automobile safety standards are far from trivial, but there's no denying that the difference in safety between the cheapest smart car on the road and the safest car on the road is huge . In a head-on collision between the two, there's absolutely no contest. Asking why the government should allow an EpiPen competitor with a 0.1% higher failure rate is akin to asking why the government should al…
Is this only in the US? I'm in Switzerland, and I bought some for my kid, I paid around 80$ per piece. http://compendium.ch/mpro/mnr/22294/html/fr You have the price at the far bottom of the page, around 76CHF. I'm a bit concerned if the price is going to be x10.
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> Medical costs started angling up steeply in the 1960s with the advent of heavy regulation Broadly, to a first approximation: Medical costs, real-estate, and education have increased in price to capture the consumer surplus created by the decline in food. clothing, and fuel costs. > Isn't dumping competing on price? Nope, dumping is used to drive new entrants out of a market. It also acts as a signal to prevent new…
> have increased in price to capture the consumer surplus It is quite a remarkable coincidence that medical costs angled steeply upward immediately after heavy regulation and government involvement in it began. > I can maintain a monopoly It'll be pretty hard to swallow $1 million/year in losses to do so. You'd have to maintain those losses to beat back even a small competitor, who would have proportionally smaller l…
These are $125 for two pens or thereabouts in the UK, same device. Presumably import is regulated? https://onlinedoctor.lloydspharmacy.com/uk/allergy/epipen
And yes it is regulated; it is considered both a drug and a medical device.
[0] https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/formulary/bnf/current/3-respirat...
The US is subsidizing the rest of the world. When Canada decrees that the price of something will by X, then guess who pays?
Do these things actually cost more than $100 to manufacture? The US isn't subsidizing the rest of the world with this, we're subsidizing the shareholders of a single company. I've seen this argument made regarding American health care costs in general. Everyone else pays much less because we're subsidizing them, the argument goes. Except that American medical R&D spending is about $500/year per capita, while the gap…
One of the early on-line responses was "maybe we can figure out how to 3D print these cases". It turns out that an Epi-pen is just a plastic safety housing around a normal syringe. Some discussions: https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4y5481/cost_of_epipen... https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/4y7f26/epipen_f...
That second discussion got heated quite fast. I agree with the downvoters though. 3D printing a medical device is not something to take lightly. Edit: Here's why I agree. You download this design from the internet, and 3D print the parts. You then assemble it. Awesome! Some time later, you get an allergic reaction. You use the pen, but it fails to work correctly. Who's responsible? The designer? You (if you're alive)…
You are responsible for making decisions for yourself. If you think a 3D printed pen is not safe, buy the more expensive one. Don't hedge every decision you make against who you'd be able to sue if it goes wrong.