Posted on 08/06/2019 7:35:35 AM PDT by Kaslin
My wife and I are both almost 66. We have not taken any prescription drugs in well over a decade. And when I DID get shoulder surgery and they gave me some really powerful stuff as a pain killer (Ocycontin), I took none of it. It simply didn’t really hurt that much and I didn’t want to mess up my system.
Plus, the street value was way too high. :)
Let the free market capitalists of the medical industrial complex begin their conspicuously biased claims.
Medicine is nearly inelastic to price because it provides life. Thank tricky dick and his buddy george kiaser for allowing it to be for profit across the board. Even the not-for-profits have cashed in now.
I buy an anti-fungal nail gel from my podiatrist. $40 for the 10 ml bottle.
Outrageous you say?
Not so fast. I can order it from Walgreens and potentially have it covered with my Medicare Drug Plan. But there is no guarantee it will be covered and if it isn’t it will cost me $300.
Yes, $300.
I asked the podiatrist how that can possibly justified. All she could offer was that for reasons not known Walgreens did not buy directly from the manufacturer. They had to buy from a third party.
But $300? Give me a break. I handed her the $40 for the 10 ml bottle.
BTW, there 1000 ml in a liter - a bit over a quart. That would yield 100 bottles of my gel.
$4000 per liter at $40.
$30,000 per liter at $300.
What a business.
This is how you end up with a society of specialized professionals who are totally ignorant about anything outside their areas of expertise -- where the pharmaceutical executive complains about the cost of his legal fees, and the lawyer complains about the cost of his prescription drugs.
This is a well written analysis of the Big Pharma scam.
Big Pharma is a major donor to political campaigns and the Congress critters on both sides of the aisle do not want to cut off their ‘sugar daddy’. Which explains why the Congressional RINOs were so reluctant to totally gut Obamacare when they had the opportunity in 2017-18.
Our son’s MIL is a doctor. I asked her about the ‘knock-offs’ - generic drugs that are supposed to be ‘exactly the same’ as the original. I had gotten some eye drops that were generic and opted to spend $200 for the original.
Generics can be manufactured ANYWHERE - they make them in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mexico, and other s&%^-holes. They also make them in Israel, Canada, the US. AND they are protected from being sued!!
Your pharmacist will know, but they are often reluctant to cough it up. You can research it online from the label and find out.
For me, if I were taking an important medicine, I’d darned sure want to know if it were made in Bangladesh or Canada.
Go Trump.
Not everyone is supposed to be able to develop these products. Nobody expects that. What we do expect though is that someone do it and therefore society has supported institutions to train individuals who are capable and facilities to do just this. We have not created the learning institutions to recruit and train robber barons to hold us hostage to our needs and desire to survive. At least I don’t think so and long ago, in a time forgotten part of the criteria for selection of those we trained was at least claim of a desire to serve and not simply rake in piles of cash. We trusted someones to have the judgement to do the vetting process in our favor.
If the "public good" is the issue at stake here, then there's a simple approach that would be far better than anything else I've seen suggested: Have Congress set up a protocol for the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services to purchase the drug patents themselves. This would be no different than an "eminent domain" process where the owner of the patent can accept the value of the patent as it is established under the HHS standards, or fight the case in court.
At first glance I suspect this process would make everyone a "winner." HHS would probably overpay for these patents because there would be an actual human cost in a long, drawn-out legal battle. And yet drug prices would probably go down because the drugs would essentially become a part of the public domain.
I know you're a more sophisticated thinker than this.
Let me phrase it this way: what could possibly go wrong with government purchase of private property? Property created as the result of a long, risky, costly process?
No offense but if that isn’t the ultimate in state controlled socialist tripe I’ve never seen it.
Paul Harvey said so often: “Self-government without self-regulation will not work.” If the sheeple can’t manage this for themselves we all suffer. I guess “we all” and public good like shared roads, sewers, water, police, fire, military are also socialist tripe. I know what let’s do! Let’s just have anarchy and allow anyone to do anything they can get away with! Yeah, that will work out just fine! Let’s devolve to savages and forget all this civil society tripe.
“The ones who complain loudest about its price are the ones who couldn’t develop a competing product”
Maybe not from scratch, but when the OEM’s patent expires, much less expensive generics are made and sold by competitors at much lower prices.
>>> In truth, the Canadians may be a lot smarter negotiators than we are.<<<
No. Other nations fix service/drug prices to fit their “free healthcare” models. The drug manufacturers higher US prices subsidize the rest of the world. Just like employer sponsored health insurance subsidizes Medicare and Medicaid plans. It’s all f’d up.
I'm posting this in response to an article on a conservative website where the author praises President Trump and condemns pharmaceutical company executives in the interest of saving money for Americans.
If there's a risk in having the government purchase private property, then there sure as hell is a risk in having the President of the United States work around trade rules to undermine the patent protection of pharmaceutical products.
Products that are critical for life itself are meted out by patent-protected monopolies. Unregulated monopolies inevitably become inefficient and grossly expensive.
**********
Marxist drivel under the guise of supporting Trump:
1. A patent by definition creates a monopoly over the life of the patent. You don’t like patents? What’s your solution for drug development? Before you complain about the evil crony capitalists, try going without all the useful drugs whose parents have expired, drugs that would not exist without the patent system. A case can be made that patent protection lasts too long and creates needless
snares for generic manufacturers, but most of the usel drugs in the world were developed under the existing system. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.
2. Our drug companies must bear not only government imposed development costs, where a fresh look at their need is necessary, but our firms must cope with a tort system of legalized plunder. You need to subtract this cost from the huge profits that the drug companies allegedly earn.
3. You resent that drug companies charge foreigners less than Americans? If they do, it’s because foreign governments regulate their prices, thereby allowing their citizens to freeload off of our development and tort costs. What’s your solution? If they refuse to sell to foreigners at reduced prices, they lose whatever they can make from these sales,
the socialists attack them as greedy, and people like you listen. If they reduce prices for Americans to the levels charged to foreigners, they don’t cover the costs of bringing them to market and fighting-off tort lawyers.
The difference here is that a society or government collectively finances assets and services that have a collective benefit. Collectively financing assets and services that have an INDIVIDUAL benefit -- and medical treatments are the perfect example of such a thing -- is a disaster.
Too far apart. Can’t help you. I guess you think you are well covered for medical costs and can afford the luxury of an open checkbook. Either yours or the insurance company or the company you work for.
Good day.
I've read the negotiations follow these lines: If you don't offer it to us at a cheaper price, we'll make it ourselves.
Gordon Chang, a superb voice on the China Trade, says Pres. Trump is doing the right thing...the Free Market should stand with Trump on this.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.