I'll bet you would make the same argument before the Pure Food and drug laws were passed. If people are sold poisonous food they can just stop buying it. If they are sold contaminated food they don't have to buy it. If your child would need a cancer fighting drug and it would cost the consumer $50.00 then would choose not to buy it if the manufacture decides to charge $1750.00 per pill and it required one pill per day. Libertarians are ridiculous.
Every pseudo intellectual libertarian would change their tune the instant their child came down with cancer and a drug company was charging "what it wanted."
There is always a rule of reason.
I'll bet you would make the same argument before the Pure Food and drug laws were passed. If people are sold poisonous food they can just stop buying it. If they are sold contaminated food they don't have to buy it. If your child would need a cancer fighting drug and it would cost the consumer $50.00 then would choose not to buy it if the manufacture decides to charge $1750.00 per pill and it required one pill per day. Libertarians are ridiculous.
Poor argument. Yours is saying if the drug companies made a cancer drug that instead of curing cancer, made you throw up, then I don't care. Not at all. To turn your argument to the drug one:
If I decided to start selling a new food no one had heard of before, and I charged $50/lb for it, then you have the choice to buy it. There's plenty of exotic stuff that costs too much, but people still buy it, or they wouldn't be charging that much. This stuff is crazy expensive, both in time and $$, just to bring a new drug to market, or even to get to clinical stages. And I've seen estimates up to 95% (of total drugs started) for drugs that didn't even make it to that point, but still cost a couple hundred million already. If government sets a price ceiling, how much R&D do you think is going to keep happening in the US?
Forbes: The Cost Of Creating A New Drug Now $5 Billion, Pushing Big Pharma To Change
C&EN Health: Cost to Develop New Pharmaceutical Drug Now Exceeds $2.5B
Estimating The Cost Of New Drug Development: Is It Really $802 Million?