If Taxpayers Pay For Development of a Drug, Should They Have a Say in Determining the Drug Price?

Pinochet

[pinochet]

I want to introduce a new perspective to the ongoing debate on prescription drug prices. I believe in capitalism. I am aware that drug companies exist to make profit, and not to play Santa Claus to our seniors or to anyone else.

I'll say this. If a drug company paid 100 percent of the costs of research and development, in helping to produce a new drug and bring it to the market, then they deserve to make as much money as they can from their product. If a drug corporation decides to charge the same high price for their medications, that Colombian dealers charge for their heroin and cocaine, that is their business.

But if American taxpayer money was used in R & D, then the taxpayer should have a say on the pricing of the drugs, that were developed with money taken from our paychecks. We fund the development of many drugs through the CDC and other agencies concerned with public health. Billions of our tax money is spent each year in the wars on cancer, Aids, etc.

If drug companies want to bleed us dry, by charging fantastically high prices on drugs that were developed with our tax money, under the guise of "capitalism", I say, EFF THEM!

If the corporations developed the drugs with their own money, then good for them - they can get paid and get laid. But not with my money. That is real capitalism.

[go star go]

name one...

[go star go]

also, i assume you think that if they have to discount cost because of gov r&d then the gov gets to share liability for lawsuits for any drugs under this scheme.

[Support Free Republic]

Rank	Location	Receipts	Donors/Avg		Freepers/Avg		Monthlies
19	Indiana	395.00	10	39.50	275	1.44	85.00	6

Thanks for donating to Free Republic!

Move your locale up the leaderboard!

[gcruse]

If drug companies want to bleed us dry, by charging fantastically
high prices on drugs that were developed with our tax money

Like who?

[AdamSelene235]

That is real capitalism.

There isn't any real capitalism but rather corporatism. Our democractic kleptocracy keeps the market in a box. If you do as you are told you are allowed to experience some of the benefits of a market economy. Corporations use public funds to take private risks. If they win the profits are private (and used to buy more privileges from Congress), if they lose the taxpayer eats the loss. This is the essence of our Banking system, the GSEs, agriculture, medicine, scientific research, just about anything that matters.

[Alberta's Child]

The phrase "paying for the development of a drug" is misleading, because it assumes that all taxpayer-funded research that went into developing the drug did not have any other public use. It also assumes that up-front research plays a larger role in the development of a drug than it actually does.

Economist Thomas Sowell uses the Wright brothers as an example to illustrate these points. Orville and Wilbur Wright did not discover aerodynamics, nor did they first conceive of air travel -- they were the first to fly a rudimentary aircraft under its own power. Commercial air travel became a reality during their lifetimes, and yet it would have been preposterous to assume that the airline industry should have given them any say whatsoever in the cost of an airline ticket.

[The Old Hoosier]

They definitely exist. Gil Gutknecht (R.-Minn.) gave a pretty good speech on the House floor on this topic a couple of months ago.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Our poor babies so screwed, so confused so desperate for more.

[pinochet]

[....Corporations use public funds to take private risks. If they win the profits are private (and used to buy more privileges from Congress), if they lose the taxpayer eats the loss...]

Good point. The founding fathers would never have approved this sort of fleecing of the taxpayer. Corporations should live and die in the free market.

[Sabatier]

Would that be like if the taxpayers paid for a baseball stadium and then got discounted seats for the game?
Something tells me that ain't gonna happen.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

But if American taxpayer money was used in R & D, then the taxpayer should have a say on the pricing of the drugs, that were developed with money taken from our paychecks.

Just like we do when the gov spends our tax dollars on other things. What does the Fed spend $2 trillion a year on?

[pinochet]

[...i assume you think that if they have to discount cost because of gov r&d then the gov gets to share liability for lawsuits for any drugs under this scheme...]

Your assumption is wrong. I hate trial lawyers even more than I hate drug companies that are feeding on the public trough. I support serious limitations on liability in lawsuits.

[Visalia]

Drug companies should be free to charge whatever they want. Their only obligation should be to pay the taxpayers back. There should be no freebies.

[AdamSelene235]

. The founding fathers would never have approved this sort of fleecing of the taxpayer.

The founders would have been shot dead in Modern America.

Corporations should live and die in the free market.

Can't get there from here. The beauty of a fascistic economy is that aligns the interests of nominally private wealth with the interests of the state. Pretty much an indestructable arrangement.

[AdamSelene235]

Our poor babies so screwed, so confused so desperate for more.

No, not at all. I grok. The system hold substantial rewards for even modest intellect. I've used many, many millions of gov. money.

[itsahoot]

This is the essence of our Banking system, the GSEs, agriculture, medicine, scientific research, just about anything that matters.

How soon we forget things like the Savings and Loan bailout that set us back 10 years. Not to mention the phony loans made to countries that will never pay them back, but not to worry the bankers recover their losses from the stupid taxpayers.

[pinochet]

[...Would that be like if the taxpayers paid for a baseball stadium and then got discounted seats for the game?...]

I think this is a little different, in that several cities get to compete for a major league sports team, they try to outbid each other in their determination to get the team.

Another thing. I many cities, voters often hold a referendum on whether to approve a new stadium or not. In such an instance, the voters choose to tax themselves, in order to keep their home teams.

[Mr. Bird]

What the..? Let's accept your premise for a second. How do you propose "the taxpayers" set the price of drugs? We all vote on it? Under the current U.S. health care delivery system, your idea takes on monumental complexity. The overwhelming majority of "taxpayers" receiving prescriptions are already being subsidized through insurance arrangements. Supply and demand is an alien concept, or at the least, a warped and sick one in the current structure.

The lines are so blurry as to who is paying for what as to be nonexistent. We have people who are paying $100/month out of pocket for insurance, their employer is paying an additional $400. The insurance company negotiates a price with preferred pharmacies and we all pay something different at the point of service.

But you say "EFF THEM". Well, that's easier than trying to figure out what's really going on, isn't it?

[The Old Hoosier]

From a November speech in favor of Reimportation:

Mr. GUTKNECHT. ...Unlike some of my friends on the left, I usually do not spend a whole lot of time saying shame on the pharmaceutical companies. I say shame on us because essentially we have created an environment that they are taking advantage of. We protect them like no other product from foreign competition, but let me talk first about the differences between what we pay in the United States versus what they pay in the rest of the industrialized world.

Let me give my colleagues some examples. We were in Munich, Germany, earlier this year; and we purchased 10 of the most commonly prescribed prescription drugs off the shelf at the Munich airport pharmacy, and here are some of the prices we paid.

We bought 10 tablets of Cipro, 250 milligrams for $35.12 American. That same product here in Washington, D.C., is $55. We bought Coumadin. That is a drug my father takes. It is a blood thinner that was developed at the University of Wisconsin. The generic version is called Warfarin. It actually is a rat poison. We bought it in Germany, 100 tablets, 5 milligrams for $21. That same package of drugs here in the United States, same product, made by the same company, under the same FDA approval, sells here in the United States not for $21 but for $89.95.

Glucophage, a miracle drug for diabetes, a drug that we purchased in Germany, 30 tablets, 850 milligrams, $5 in Germany, $29.95.

Pravachol, Prozac, Synthroid, all the same story. Come down here to this one, and this is the one that really gets to my gizzard, and that is the issue of the anticancer drugs , where we, American taxpayers, have paid so much to develop these drugs. Tamoxifen, we bought, in fact the actual number, we rounded it off here. It was $59.05 for 60 tablets, 20 milligrams of Tamoxifen. An amazing drug , a miracle drug in terms of the treatment of breast cancer. That same drug we checked here in Washington, D.C., local pharmacy, $360, six times more in the United States.

Here is what really chaps my hide: American taxpayers paid to develop that drug. As a matter of fact, through the NIH we paid to take that drug all the way through phase-two trials. The American taxpayer paid to take that drug through phase two trials, and then we licensed it to one of the pharmaceutical companies, and they sell it back to us.

...First of all, we subsidize it through the Tax Code. Now, when these pharmaceutical companies say, well, we spend so much on research, well, you might just ask them how much are you able to write-off on your Federal tax forms? And if you do business in Puerto Rico, how much Federal income tax do you pay? And in addition to that, is it not true over the last 10 years you have taken over $28 billion in investment tax credits for the research that you do; for research and development tax credits? So you add it up, and the net real cost to the pharmaceutical industry is much less than they sometimes say...So research is important, but we pay for it through the Tax Code. We subsidize it through the Tax Code.

We subsidize it also in the amount that we spend on research...This year we will spend upwards of $27 billion through the NIH, the CDC, even the Department of Defense on research projects which will directly or indirectly benefit the pharmaceutical industry.