[bigbob]

Sure but distribution in the pharma industry is exceptionally concentrated - 90% of all drugs are supplied by either AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson.

And that’s just the top tier of distribution.

[plain talk]

Sure but distribution in the pharma industry is exceptionally concentrated - 90% of all drugs are supplied by either AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson.

OK. Not sure how that is necessarily bad. Someone has to distribute the products. Not sure what big government is going to do -- micromanage the distribution network?

[Zhang Fei]

Sure but distribution in the pharma industry is exceptionally concentrated - 90% of all drugs are supplied by either AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson.

And that’s just the top tier of distribution.

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Their margins aren’t wonderful. MCK’s profits were 2.5% of sales for FYE 3/31/2017, and that was in a good year:

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MCK/financials?p=MCK

The big margins are with the successful drug manufacturers, but without those margins, they’d have no money to conduct new drug research. Pfizer makes over 15% of sales in profits, but that’s how it has money to spend on research without selling new shares every few years:

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PFE/financials?p=PFE