Posted on 07/24/2020 1:49:22 PM PDT by rintintin
Agreed. The question is should American consumers pay for ALL of the R&D or should the rest of the world help? I vote for the latter. Why should a Mexican or Canadian pay less?
“The General” gets it. After recouping their substantial development costs in the US (months/years), the drug companies agree to sell to socialized medicine countries at near cost. This will result in higher drug prices for people not on Medicare and stifle new drug development.
The key word being "agreements".
That's not what Trump's talking about.
No. Medicare will shop the marketplace.
Who said Trump is going to dictate, or set purchase prices? Where does it state that?
What foreign countries often do, is they say "You will sell to us for $X, or we will invalidate and ignore your patent and make a generic version here".
Right here "...he is ordering Medicare to buy Rx drugs at the prices other countries pay."
You don’t have to go to Hong Kong. Think of all the people that ask why we can’t buy our drugs in Canada where the prices are lower.
My dad can buy a ninety day supply of his BP med for $10 at Walmart, he can also buy a 30 day supply of another med at a local box store for $9 - some pharms issue coupons for their stuff. It’s the high priced med’s that need to come down - but - you have to do research into the cost of bringing a med to market in the first place.
We’ve been over this tons of times here. One reason the drugs are cheaper in other countries is because low prices are built in to those foreign contracts so that those countries don’t pirate the medicines. Drug companies at least get something. If they had to pay the same prices as we do it would be open season on drug knockoffs and the companies get nothing on the foreign markets. Sucks but that’s the way it is.
There is a reason that drug companies are abe to sell to USA for $$$ and dirt cheap to other countries- GOVERNMENT CONTROL.
Let’s say you invented a drug that, oh - I dunno, allowed men to have more sex. Let’s call it ‘viagara’.
Do you think it would be in-demand at all? Do you think you could mass-produce it and sell it all over for pennies?
OR...
Would you prefer the government dictate that insurance companies HAVE TO cover it, at the introductory list price of $50 a pill.
Good on PDJT.
Yes, foreign governments use a lot of leverage, so what. The point is that the Feds by being the largest single payer is finally starting to do the same type of leveraging tactics.
The drug companies made this bed when they decided that the American consumers would subsidize drugs for socialized countries around the world. Germany would say “we will only pay $1 for Drug X” and Big Pharma, wanting to stay in the rest of the German market, would agree, but then hike up the prices for Drug X in the United States.
It is about time Big Pharma learns that Homey don’t play that game.
If I am reading this correctly, the order instructs Medicare to not pay more than buyers in foreign countries. It does not order the drug companies to do anything. Medicare is the largest and most reliable buyer of drugs in the world and in a free market should get the best price. Free enterprise at it’s best.
It was always absurd that Medicare wasn’t allowed to directly negotiate on price with drug companies, given that they’re the biggest purchaser of drugs in the USA. Instead, the power to ‘negotiate’ was given to middlemen for Medicare who in practice enriched themselves and the drug companies at the expense of taxpayers, which is exactly why Medicare was forbidden to negotiate on price in the first place.
The examples of Walmart pricing that some posters mentioned prove the point - Walmart offers low pricing on a long list of drugs because they drive a hard bargain with their suppliers in order to do offer those prices to consumers. If Walmart can negotiate on price, so should Medicare and without enriching a pointless middleman in the form of a pharmacy benefit manager.
+1
Trump’s real problem is with the patent system. Truth is that the other countries are freeloading off of American drug makers by subjecting them to price controls on drugs still under patent, and Trump wants to join them. Trump needs to tell us what substitute for the patent system he has found for bringing drugs to market.
Is that you Barak ??
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