> A more apt question is why the US Government allows a pharmaceutical company to charge $140,000 per patient a year for a medication. <
It’s a difficult situation. Something like 90% of all new drug trials fail, leaving the companies involved with a financial loss. So why do these companies take the risk? It’s because of that last 10%.
Clamp down too hard, and pharmaceutical companies will simply shut down their research departments. That would be a tragedy.
On the other hand, it doesn’t seem right that only the rich can access some of these new drugs. Where’s the middle ground? Maybe the government could help fund promising new drug research. (But oh, do I hate to see the government get involved in private commerce. That usually doesn’t end well.)
“Maybe the government could help fund promising new drug research”
They already fund a lot. It is money down a rathole. This is not the answer.
With medicine, we are now at the crossroads of technology, government, and morality.
You more than likely cannot have all three involved at the same time.
Are you willing to fund transplants and advanced treatments for the third worlds sick children?
If not you are immoral.
If so, you are allowing government to steal from taxpayers immorally.
Doctors and hospitals pretend to do charity cases, but that money comes from paying customers. It isn’t charity.
Britain is facing this issue before we are because they are socialists, and thus immoral and uncaring.
We also face a similar fate.
Everybody cannot get every advanced treatment that they want every time without delay.
If you cannot afford to pay for a treatment yourself, don’t expect someone who cannot afford their own health insurance to pay for it through increasing premiums, or taxation.
Socialism fails at a much lower level, but we will, at some point allow treatments to be withheld costing lives. It is inevitable.