And THAT is the heart of the problem. Not that we pay "too much", but that the rest of the world doesn't pay their fair share.
Paying your "fair share" used to be a big deal for the leftists.
Posted on 05/12/2025 8:47:48 PM PDT by RandFan
@PeterSchiff
When Kamala Harris talked about price-fixing groceries, Republicans were correct to call her policy socialism. The same applies to Trump's desire to do something similar with prescription drugs. But as always, when government interferes with the free market, the plan will backfire, resulting in higher, not lower, prices for prescription drugs in the U.S.
Thanks to overly burdensome FDA regulations, it costs a lot of money to bring a prescription drug to market. As a result, pharmaceutical companies have a finite period of time to recover their costs and turn a profit before their patent expires, and other companies that spent no money developing the drug can knock it off.
Also, for every drug that gets approved, five don't. So not only do drug prices need to be high enough for companies to recover the costs of developing the drugs they sell, but to recover what they spent developing drugs they never sell.
The U.S. is the main market for prescription drug sales, so that is where pharmaceutical companies look to recover their costs first. They supplement that recovery with overseas sales. But since the marginal cost of those sales is very low, they maximize their profits by selling in foreign countries at lower prices.
This is especially true in poor countries that could never afford to pay what Americans can. Pharmaceutical companies still make money on those sales, even if the price is much lower than what Americans pay. But if they charged people living in poor countries the same prices as they charge Americans, the collapse in sales volume would result in lower profits.
Now some of the foreign sales are not to poor countries, but other rich countries. But there, U.S. companies compete with foreign pharmaceutical companies, that sell drugs that might not even be approved in the U.S., and that spent much less to develop their alternatives. To stay competitive and win contracts, U.S. companies often sell their drugs for lower prices than what the same drugs sell for in America.
Trump doesn't think this is fair. So his solution is to force U.S. pharmaceutical companies to charge Americans no more for prescription drugs than what they charge to their poorest customers in the world. According to Trump, this will result in pharmaceutical companies slashing prices in America to match prices in Bangladesh. The opposite will occur. Prices in Bangladesh and all other countries will be raised to match prices in the U.S.
The result will be a decline in earnings for U.S. pharmaceutical companies due to collapsing overseas sales. Since those companies will now have lower foreign profits to offset the cost of developing drugs, the price they charge for all drugs will go up, including here in the U.S. So the net result of the president's plan will be to lower U.S. pharmaceutical company profits and raise the prices Americans pay for prescription drugs.
Did he make that statement from his Custom Mercedis golf cart, on the back nine of his private golf course? Just asking.
lol
Costs a lot of money to bring mass murder to your home town.
I think you have to look at their profit margins.
Why not eliminate the overly burdensome regulations? Because they keep out the small guys and eliminate the competition.
Peter Schiff.
When you have a negative bias (and Schiff is a yuuge bear), you will see problems everywhere you look.
Schiff must be long Pfizer and Merck.
Don’t forget the 1:1 big pharma lobbyists to congress critter ratio. In some cases it’s 3:1 shelling out vacations, dinners, gifts, promises of board seats and employment post grifting, I mean post their term in congress. Basically WE are paying the bribes that big pharma uses to get crazy high prices. Maybe if new drugs weren’t so profitable we wouldn’t get all these new disorders that need a new drug to treat them.
most Americans have no concept of what it costs in $ and years to develop a drug: they only relate to the price paid. DJT is right in making countries who avail themselves of our drugs share in early development costs. we have been underwriting socialized medicine in other countries for decades.
This is exactly the same argument used by the pharmaceutical company I worked for many many years ago. The problem with drugs is that they are used by a captive audience. You go to the grocers or you buy a car, etc., and there is competition, regardless of product. You need a drug and there is for years to come little to no competition, so you pay the company’s price. And don’t they know it!
“Peter Schiff defends Pharma: “It costs a lot of money to bring a prescription drug to market””
and it costs WAY more for the tens of billions spent on TV ads and bribes to Congress ...
Don’t forget the bribes and payoffs to the government FDA. I hear is now a feature, not a bug.
It costs far, far more to subsidize the rest of the planet’s cheaper, cost-controlled meds.
But he left that part out, didn’t he...
Considering the vast majority of big pharma drugs are developed for fake made up diseases I don’t give a shxt what happens to big pharma.
Bullshit. Every modern nation except America has prices a fraction of ours. Trump is right. Sell it to us at the sands price of Canada or forgo the US market.
“Trump doesn’t think this is fair.”
Earth to Schiff, it isn’t fair. And it is President Trump or Mister Trump or Citizen Trump... not just Trump.
“it costs WAY more for the tens of billions spent on TV ads and bribes to Congress ...”
So true.
When the mouthy pols start making these kinds of statements they self identify as recipients of bribes.
And THAT is the heart of the problem. Not that we pay "too much", but that the rest of the world doesn't pay their fair share.
Paying your "fair share" used to be a big deal for the leftists.
your doctor takes First Do No Harm seriously
....somehow pharma has a lot of cash sloshing around to bribe congresscritters and support fakenews by paying high fees to run commercials on news shows that few people watch....
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