item 7 from trump’s healthcare plan:
“Remove barriers to entry into free markets for drug providers that offer safe, reliable and cheaper products. Congress will need the courage to step away from the special interests and do what is right for America. Though the pharmaceutical industry is in the private sector, drug companies provide a public service. Allowing consumers access to imported, safe and dependable drugs from overseas will bring more options to consumers”
So free markets and foreign imports are fine when it comes to drugs, but not other goods. If free trade stimulates competition and lower prices in the pharmaceutical market, why doesn’t the same logic apply to other markets?
If “Chyna” has unfair advantages that afford them the opportunity to sell goods to the US at lower prices, why does Trump not hold that same belief for countries that sell drugs at lower prices? Could it be that those countries have set arbitrary price controls on their drug companies?
I find the statement that “drug companies provide a public service” sounds suspiciously close to approaching a slippery slope where government bureaucrats determine that certain goods should be available at a “fair” price.
A good businessman responds to economic incentives, for which Trump has at times been unfairly attacked. That doesn’t mean that he has a good understanding of economic principles or that he will implement policies based on sound economics.
The problem is that pharma is not a free market in the United States. The government has allowed pharmaceutical companies to fleece the American public for decades while charging the rest of the world a fraction of what we pay for drugs.
This will instantly put an end to that and they will be forced to spread costs out some other way instead of fleecing us. The snake venom antidote that costs $1k in Mexico can no longer cost $80k here.
It may not seem ideologically pure enough for you, but the market is far from free now. We have moved so far from a free market that ideological purity becomes nothing but an unwillingness to deal with real problems.