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

mattstoller.substack.com

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

#461

Post by cryptica »

I'm generally skeptical about all such news but a few things make me cautiously optimistic:

- Lina Khan: I had heard about her a long time ago before she even got into politics. She is known for her academic work on antitrust and big tech so she definitely understands how monopolies work and how they are unfair.

- Biden saying "Capitalism without Competition is Exploitation"; simply the acknowledgment by a sitting president that what we have today doesn't look like capitalism anymore is in itself a huge achievement and lays the groundwork for real improvement. Now, everyone knows that something needs to be done and everyone knows that everyone else knows that!

- Biden is getting old and probably doesn't care about a second term in office. It's possible that he decided to make as many powerful enemies as necessary to secure a great legacy for himself.

That said, I think that people have such low trust in government and media nowadays that I don't expect anyone from the right to warm to Biden until we see actual results.

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

#462

Post by pclmulqdq »

bigbizisverywyz wrote: post #454
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe does drug R&D and still manages to sell their drugs at a reasonable price to sick people Most novel R&D, in America and Europe, happens in biotech. (“Big” pharma does trials, manufacturing scaling and distribution.) The investment thesis for most of this research does not work without the American market. This doesn’t mean high drug prices are a necessity. Just that the funding needs to be replaced if we wan…

MY understanding (at least in the UK) was that hospitals and universities also do a lot of research (often cutting-edge), and are often the source of innovation. These entities are largely publicly funded.

Most drugs appear first in publicly-funded research, but so does every other compound that can get past a p value of 0.05.

The main value proposition of big pharma is that they take those results, find the ones that actually work (very few of them do), study them for side effects, and characterize them. There is a LOT of work between the published research and an actual drug (there is actually significantly more risk and cost to go from a paper to a drug than to write the initial paper).

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

#463

Post by mucholove »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #301
hyperhopper wrote: post #293

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…

The rising price of Insulin is not funding the R&D of new drugs.

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

#464

Post by Hani1337 »

The reason we can afford universal health care in my country is because there are hard caps to the prices health professionals can legally ask, be it for fees or medication prices. If the prices are kept closer to their real value, and not inflated prices, then it's already much more affordable to consider paying for universal health care.

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

#465

Post by CrimpCity »

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #381
Sophistifunk wrote: post #289

"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…

And the Congress mandated monopoly on residency positions and building new hospitals. We would have a lot more advances in medical science if MD positions were not gate kept by the artificially limited residency positions.

Agreed! Also if residents worked regular hours like normal people instead of going after the cokehead who came up with the whole residency process. This isn't the military there's no reason for that sort of environment.

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

#466

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #301
hyperhopper wrote: post #293

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…

We're also funding massive advertisement campaigns, those can simply go away with a couple Thanos-like snaps as far as I care.

There is zero need to advertise drugs to potential patients which need a doctors prescription.

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

#467

Post by TheHypnotist »

mlindner wrote: post #331
sb057 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found this fact sheet more useful than the order itself or articles about it: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases... In the Order, the President: * Encourages the FTC to ban or limit non-compete agreements. * Encourages the FTC to ban unnecessary occupational licensing restrictions that impede economic mobility. * Encourages the FTC and DOJ to strengthen antitrust guidance to prevent employ…

All the good ideas are under the "Encourages" type of thing. How does this actually do anything?

It's an executive order, there is only so much the President can mandate outside of the organizations he controls. Look at most of Trump's presidency, feckless EO's that in the end were reversed anyway or were blocked by a court. My guess is that the goal here is to have the regulating authorities be "encouraged" to put the screws to some of these big-X companies. In other words, have them set their policies based on the general direction given by the President. I think that's probably normal operation.

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

#468

Post by roenxi »

mft_ wrote: post #447
roenxi wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Drugs are more expensive in the US simply because there aren’t any pricing controls... There aren't any other markets where "pricing controls" are needed. Drugs are more expensive in the US simply because it is illegal for a 3rd party to sell them. If it were legal, anyone could buy the drugs where they are cheapest and ship them to America. The problem is obviously that competition is banned. If that isn't the pro…

I’m not an expert on the import/export side. When I used the term ‘pricing control’, I was referring to the systems that some countries (eg UK, Germany) have in place for determining the price they’ll pay for a drug based on (roughly) the value it brings to patients. (The best known of these is probably NICE in the UK; it’s not a perfect system, but it’s a pretty good attempt.) Other countries in turn ‘reference’ the…

Well, ok. But the reason it costs more in the US is because it is illegal to go to Germany, buy drugs, ship them to the US & sell them.

If that was legal, someone would do it and make bank. And it is the US that is responsible for those laws.

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

#469

Post by long_time_gone »

roenxi wrote: post #444
mft_ wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of this discussion, ‘Europe’ doesn’t do ‘R&D’. Biotech/Pharma are international. Irrespective of the home location of the organisation, virtually every drug trial from phase I onwards will be run in multiple countries. Further, virtually every drug found to work and filed with regulators for a license, will be filed internationally: Europe (EMA), US (FDA), and a whole host of smaller independent countr…

> Drugs are more expensive in the US simply because there aren’t any pricing controls... There aren't any other markets where "pricing controls" are needed. Drugs are more expensive in the US simply because it is illegal for a 3rd party to sell them. If it were legal, anyone could buy the drugs where they are cheapest and ship them to America. The problem is obviously that competition is banned. If that isn't the pro…

==There aren't any other markets where "pricing controls" are needed.==

The minimum wage rate is a price control.

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

#470

Post by TheHypnotist »

footlose_3815 wrote: post #398
the-dude wrote: post #10

> hospital price transparency, Wasn't this already put in place by the previous administration?

definitely not trump

I actually think this was maybe one of the few things Trump's admin did that roundly was viewed as good.
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