Obligatory reminder that "negotiations" in this case just means that Medicare dictates a price.
Are the drug companies forced to provide the drugs at that price?
No one is forced to sell drugs to Medicare patients.
Drugmakers are ‘throwing the kitchen sink’ to halt Medicare price negotiations
51–60 of 106 posts
Re: Drugmakers are ‘throwing the kitchen sink’ to halt Medicare price negotiations
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much could a good lawyer with a long and distinguished career make in the private market? That's how much we should be paying our judges. If you want the best you have to at least be moderately competitive with what's on offer. I have a similar opinion about legislators -- we probably want top tier doctors and executives and lawyers as our legislators. Being elected to office should not be a step down in their li…
It may be idealistic, but I think that those elected to office or appointed to influential positions such as judges should do so largely out of a sense of public service instead of personal enrichment. For people who are motivated by greed or power, no amount of compensation will be enough, they will always be tempted to to increase their power and wealth by taking bribes or political favors. Pay them a respectable s…
I don’t understand this position. It feels to me like you’re proposing we financially exploit those who are magnanimous and duty-driven enough to tolerate public service. Do you have the same opinion regarding other organizations operating for public good, rather than financial self interest?
For instance, what you’re saying feels logically equivalent to me to saying we should tax charities more heavily since they aren’t driven by greed, or that we should underpay active duty military personnel since they’re driven more by love for their country than by self interest. It seems to me that it should be the exact opposite, and we should incentivize people to make sacrifices for the greater good.
Underpaying people who choose to enter a certain sector because of a personally held belief that they ought to be financially unmotivated, then ceding massive power to those people and allowing them to take bribes, seems to miss the forest for the trees.
EDIT: I’m also curious how you rectify your position with the empirical evidence that our current system, wherein public service is financially discouraged, has led to direct and indirect bribery and corruption in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. It seems to me that the current system isn’t working, and leaning further into the aspect that makes it not work is not a good idea. Maybe a more fruitful route would be reducing the power of individual representatives so that there is less incentive to bribe them, or outright banning the quid-pro-quo agreements that run rampant in our country currently, like prohibiting regulators from working for companies in the industry they regulated after their time in office.
Re: Drugmakers are ‘throwing the kitchen sink’ to halt Medicare price negotiations
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Now”? Seems like this has been going on for a very long time. We started paying attention now. As for the US gov and institutionalized corruption I highly recommend Lester Lessig’s work around political donations reform as the first step to democracy in the US. We the people and the republic we must reclaim is an excellent summary of the issue and the solution: https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people…
How about something far simpler - reduce to the us government to only enumerated powers. If they want to do something not enumerated pass an amendment.
That would just end in a situation even worse than now - such a policy requires a government in the continental European parliamentary form to make sure the government always has a parliamentary backing.
Re: Drugmakers are ‘throwing the kitchen sink’ to halt Medicare price negotiations
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Justice Thomas said (in 2001) that for the pay they receive no one would take the job if not for the gifts^H^H^H^H^H bribes. FTFY. As of 2022, the salary of a US Supreme Court Justice is $274,200 per year. The Chief Justice of the United States, who is the head of the Supreme Court, receives a slightly higher salary of $286,700 per year. Of course no one will take that job. How much does a banana cost again? $10?
How much could a good lawyer with a long and distinguished career make in the private market? That's how much we should be paying our judges. If you want the best you have to at least be moderately competitive with what's on offer. I have a similar opinion about legislators -- we probably want top tier doctors and executives and lawyers as our legislators. Being elected to office should not be a step down in their li…
" good lawyer " ??
Re: Drugmakers are ‘throwing the kitchen sink’ to halt Medicare price negotiations
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they're fighting to keep the price on rare lifesaving drugs. They are fighting to keep the price of insulin, cholesterol medication, blood pressure medication, and various other "public good medications" commonly used by medicare recipients as high as possible. Its the same tactic doctors use when dealing with medicare. I've been to several doctors that won't take it. The reasoning is obvious: your insu…
Not true: insulin is not a drug whose price is being negotiated here ( https://www.jmcp.org/doi/full/10.18553/jmcp.2023.29.3.229 ). The drugs whose prices are being negotiated are the brand new ones, the ones that took billions of dollars to develop. Without the promise of a payoff, future R&D will be halted, and humanity won't get benefit from the new medicines.
Yet many other comparable countries pay substantially lower prices, and presumably the drug companies are still making a profit of that.
"If you don't pay us through the nose with billions we'll stop developing drugs" seems like a rather odd argument; disallowing the government from engaging in the free market on price in pretty much any area it would set of all sorts of corruption red flags. This is why all sorts of regulation around public procurements exist in almost any jurisdiction.
If you need money to develop new drugs: fine, this is why things like grants exist. Right now the drug companies want to have the best of all worlds with none of the obligations and downsides: inflated prices from Medicare are just tax subsidies but without any controls or checks or anything.
Re: Drugmakers are ‘throwing the kitchen sink’ to halt Medicare price negotiations
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may be idealistic, but I think that those elected to office or appointed to influential positions such as judges should do so largely out of a sense of public service instead of personal enrichment. For people who are motivated by greed or power, no amount of compensation will be enough, they will always be tempted to to increase their power and wealth by taking bribes or political favors. Pay them a respectable s…
I don’t understand this position. It feels to me like you’re proposing we financially exploit those who are magnanimous and duty-driven enough to tolerate public service. Do you have the same opinion regarding other organizations operating for public good, rather than financial self interest? For instance, what you’re saying feels logically equivalent to me to saying we should tax charities more heavily since they ar…
>financially exploit
$274,000 doesn't feel like financial exploitation to me, even if it's below market rate.
Re: Drugmakers are ‘throwing the kitchen sink’ to halt Medicare price negotiations
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Medicare dictating a price sounds fine. Gravy train is ending (pharma dictating the price) and pharma is in shambles. I’d like the Times and the media in general to start reporting the names of the individuals participating in these efforts, instead of faceless corporations.
How about we dictate a price on whatever industry you happen to be in? Maybe your product cost billions of dollars to develop, but how about we force you to sell it to everyone for peanuts? There is no logical reason that pharma should be on the receiving end of all this hate. Especially considering that their job is literally to save lives.
There is no logical reason that pharma should be on the receiving end of all this .. "windfall profit" ..
Especially considering that their job is literally .. "preserved by natural monopoly and law, forever"
Re: Drugmakers are ‘throwing the kitchen sink’ to halt Medicare price negotiations
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure maybe they have to say “yes” to the price, but I’m asking if they have to actually provide the drugs. Could they just decide not to sell them at that price or to just sell less?
My post was ambiguous, sorry. I am saying my understanding is the drug companies are arguing that they literally do not have the ability to not provide the drugs. So no - they cannot decide not to sell the drugs to the govt. They cannot "walk away" no matter the price the govt names.
They can walk away, but the government can levy additional tax if they do.
But realistically, from a moral point of view, they can't really walk away in the first place unless the government demands are ridiculously unreasonable (e.g. demanding a price lower than production). The only drugs subject to negotiation are those without generic alternatives (i.e. where a free market doesn't really exist), so stopping supply would quite literally kill people. This gives drug companies an enormous advantage in negotiations in the first place, so this kind of compensates for that.
Re: Drugmakers are ‘throwing the kitchen sink’ to halt Medicare price negotiations
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't disagree with you, but at some point the number stops mattering. What's the difference in lifestyle between 300K and 500K? 500K and 1M? And even if there is a difference, is that worth the opportunity cost of paying everyone else a little bit better? It's not a very popular opinion, but there should be a maximum salary imo. Beyond a certain number money is a means of acquiring power and influence, and it feel…
$300k - after taxes - is not buying you a lavish lifestyle of in most major cities. It's probably not even getting you comfortably into one of the better neighborhoods, unless your partner is the bread winner. Chicago is one of the most affordable major cities in the US - and $300k isn't gonna do more than have you comfortably living in a small condo in the better neighborhoods.
Huh? $300k/yr will get you pretty much anything you want in Chicagoland. By standard consumption patterns, that's an $800k house. An $800k Chicago house is quite large. It's also a 4-bdr condo even in some parts of the Loop.
Re: Drugmakers are ‘throwing the kitchen sink’ to halt Medicare price negotiations
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
$300k - after taxes - is not buying you a lavish lifestyle of in most major cities. It's probably not even getting you comfortably into one of the better neighborhoods, unless your partner is the bread winner. Chicago is one of the most affordable major cities in the US - and $300k isn't gonna do more than have you comfortably living in a small condo in the better neighborhoods.
Huh? $300k/yr will get you pretty much anything you want in Chicagoland. By standard consumption patterns, that's an $800k house. An $800k Chicago house is quite large. It's also a 4-bdr condo even in some parts of the Loop.
$300k (household) isn't upper-middle, before the term became diluted to mean "middle, but with a little left over every month"—the upper-middle of Fussell's Class and The Official Preppy Handbook
- Good private school for a kid or two (guess what one of the bribes to Thomas was...). Not gonna get away with much less than $25k/yr/kid, there, and it goes up from there.
- Long vacations expensive places a couple times a year (again...)
- House somewhere nice (notably, however, the public schools can be shit, which saves a little money here)
- Country club membership, or similar
- Don't have to do, at least, the ~50% of chores you hate the most (you pay to have them done). Ditto the worst parts of childcare.
- (optional, but recommended) Attendance of fancy functions (esp. e.g. charity events–what's the point of it all if you don't feel fancy?)
- Second property with housing on it (doesn't have to be lavish, but can't be quite as shit as a hillbilly fishing shack, which even poor country folk sometimes have)
- (optional, but recommended) Any money left over after that.
That's gonna be $400k+, household, in a cheap but not crazy cheap market (who wants to be fancy in truly bum-fuck nowhere? Though your vacation property might be there...) in 2023. Bare minimum ([EDIT] that won't get you much of the "optionals", I mean, and the rest is gonna be teetering right on the edge of having to start cutting items—and then, only if you're somewhere relatively low COL).
You aren't living, to a certain social class, if you start having to sacrifice much of that. That's how you're supposed to live.