Text 3767, 78 rader
Skriven 2006-07-08 18:48:00 av Robert E Starr JR (4240.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
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On Thu, 06 Jul 2006 13:28:31 GMT, Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>In article <a9uoa21j0mrcslod8lkcvspjofu9ccgijk@4ax.com>,
> Josh Hill <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> That being said, why ban drugs from /Canada/ when the problem has been
>> here, not there? It seems to me it should be the other way around --
>> Americans should, for their own safety, be required to buy their drugs
>> in Canada to protect them from phony American ones.
>
>  They aren't. Most of the differences are accounted for by currency 
>exchange rates.  You don't seem to be up in arms about the fact that I 
>can buy a $1 Snickers bar in Canada for 75 cents.. as I am. 

What difference does it make why it's cheaper? People should be
allowed to buy it.

BTW, I think it's fairly mean to brush off the plight of elderly
people trying to afford life-saving medications that can cost
thousands of dollars by comparing it to candy bars.

>   Also this isn't there across the board. Studies have consistently 
>shown that generics are higher Canada than US specifically because they 
>aren't regulated. So a big part of this is the mix of medications. 

Not sure what you're getting at here. AFAIK, the reason Canadian drugs
are cheaper is because the government negotiates the price.

>           Most of the rest is accounted for when the Economists do 
>their thing based on the realtive wealth of a country (there are 
>well-respected methods to do this). This is a little squishy for even my 
>tastes but there you go.

Really.

Actually, I think it's all squishy. People should be allowed to buy
cheap drugs in Canada. I order stuff from New Zealand myself: same
stuff, but cheaper.

I also think that there cases in which other countries are taking
advantage of us by regulating the price of our technology and stealing
our intellectual property, and that by permitting that our government
contributes to drug costs here. However, it seems that the assertion
that drug prices are high because of R&D expenditures is bogus.

>  Another rather interesting tidbit is that there are no real 
>differences between the US, Canada, UK and EU in the percentage of the 
>total pie going to pharmaceuticals. In fact, last figures I saw from 
>Canada is that a slightly higher percentage of their total budget goes 
>to drugs than in the US.

But since we pay more than twice as more per capita for medical care,
that suggest we pay more than twice as much for pharmaceuticals. Which
is kind of scary.

-- 
Josh

"I love it when I'm around the country club, and I hear people talking about
the debilitating
effects of a welfare society. At the same time, they leave their kids a
lifetime and beyond
of food stamps. Instead of having a welfare officer, they have a trust officer.
And instead
of food stamps, they have stocks and bonds."

- Warren Buffett
                                                                               
                                     
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