Drug companies have a two tier price system. They sell to goverment buyers in Europe and Canada drugs at a far cheaper price than they charge in the US, because in Europe and Canada there is only one buyer (monopsony). Thus the US drug consumers subsidize drug research for the planet, including the almost as rich as the US part of the planet. That costs US drug consumers billions and billions per year. A law needs to be passed that prohibits drug companies selling in the US from having a two tier price system, except based on cost savings from volume sales. When that happens, the prices of the two areas will tend to converge, or Canada and Europe will have to do without cutting edge drugs.
That will happen eventually, but we really can't afford to wait too long, unless we want socialized medicine. Drugs are what medicine is more and more about. More and more, docs are just pill pushers, which just goes to show the miracles of modern drugs, and why their use is so horrificazlly expensive, and medical costs are threatening to eat us alive. It is time to slow down the flow in that direction - now.
And Bush is not in the right lane on this one. He's driving indeed on the wrong side of the road. And that is a fact.
Perhaps you don't understand, but the drug companies are forced through price controls to have lower prices in other countries. It is not their own choice.
I was correct in my assumption that you wished our law to change so that it would force other countries to deal with the high costs of R&D.
That is their problem, not ours.
The disparity, from what I've read and heard, is between the various international standards and perceptions of intellectual property and its enforcement. The big Pharm companies give the franchise away to the Canadian, Asian and Euros because they want to protect themselves from the rote reverse engineering theft that can be done with most ANY drug or technology that is science based. They want to protect their brand franchise here, in their biggest markets. So we Americans pay while the rest of the world mounts us again.
Why wouldn't Merck, Microsoft or Paramount want to protect their risk investments? They're inventing something out of nothing, for every success they get return, they have copious investments that fail. They need to maximize their winners, or investment will dry up. But we pay so the Canucks can not only avoid paying for military, but for any intellectual property assets in pharmaceuticals, bioengineering, technology ... etc etc. It's wrong.
It's the World that should be sanctioned for that theft, its not Americans that should pay a premium as ransom to the dismal Canucks or the mortal enemy Chinese.
Let's let Bob and Doug McKenzie invent something for a change, and we'll steal it. I consider this kind of theft an economic act of war. And, our pols are playing right into it. If we start allowing our HUGE Federal buying pools to pay cut rate prices from Canada and Mexico - Upjohn, Merck, Baxter etc will just stop inventing stuff.