Text 35940, 114 rader
Skriven 2009-09-11 14:56:56 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
  Kommentar till text 35931 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
Ärende: Down to the basics (was: Universal health insurance)
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Bob Ackley wrote to Joe Delahaye on Thursday September 10 2009 at 06:27:

JD>> And how much do you pay per month for this private insurance. The
JD>> stories I have heard, form US citizens, are rather scary. Prices for
JD>> your drugs are out of this world as all of the people trying to come
JD>> to Canada to fill their presctiptions can testify to.

BA> The government of Canada prevents drug companies from charging what
BA> their products are worth by artificially limiting the prices they are
BA> allowed to charge.

"Charging what they are worth"... and how would you start to determine that?

Anyway, no company sells long-term at a loss, and pharmaceutical companies are
no exception. If they weren't making a profit in Canada, they wouldn't sell
there.

The amazing thing to me is that there are actually people (yes, I'm thinking of
you) who actually appear to be _sorry_ for such companies because they may not
make as much profit as they would like. It's a little like someone being sorry
for the railroads in 1901 even after reading Frank Norris' "The Octopus" with
the famous line "All the traffic will bear".

BA> Other governments do the same thing. When the US government adopts the
BA> practice development of new drugs will cease.

Only if a drug is only sold in the USA and cannot be sold there at a profit.
But that's pretty naive, as drugs are generally sold worldwide (sometimes in
more profitable markets than the USA, such as Germany).

Aside from which, not all new drugs are developed in the USA. Nor, for that
matter, is the USA the largest customer for many drugs.

You seem overly pessimistic to me, and again, I wonder why you feel the need to
defend the profits of companies in which you presumably have no financial
interest - why identify with them instead of people like yourself who need
drugs at affordable prices?

JD>> With your govt trying to tell the people that they might be buying
JD>> unsafe drugs if the do that, is ludricous because a lot of those same
JD>> drugs are made in the USA and imported here.

BA> Agreed. Unfortunately the US government cannot extract an excise tax
BA> on those drugs being brought back into this country.

"Unfortunately"? Hell, they should imitate the Canadians and think about their
own population instead of trying to protect the profits of their pharmaceutical
companies.

BA> US customers *always* track down the cheapest goods or services they
BA> can find, regardless of the product quality or where it's made and
BA> regardless of the impact of such behavior on others.

If you need a drug, why should you give a tinker's damn if buying it at the
cheapest price reduces the profits of some pharmaceutical company from
exhorbitant to merely high? You talk as if it were somehow reprehensible to
want to buy a drug at the lowest possible price. Why?

Would you prohibit generics because they cut into the profits of the brand name
pharmaceuticals?

And as for the bullshit about "product quality", all I can say is that you're
apparently a victim of the US propaganda Joe referred to. It's one thing buying
Viagra online from an outfit in China, and quite another buying a prescription
drug at a pharmacy in a civilized western country like Canada or one of the EU
countries.

The scare tactics practiced by some American authorities presumably have two
objectives: one is to protect the American pharmaceutical industry from
competition, and the other to hold down the number of Americans buying drugs in
Canada and thus avoid a Canadian backlash when and if drugs become scarece or
prices increase in Canada because of the extra demand. There has already been
grumbling in Canada because of this.

Bob, you're not a doctor, not a hospital owner and presumably havce no stock in
a pharmaceutical company. Why, then, are you so vehemently trying to defend the
_profits_ of such people and entities without any regard to the welfare of the
people who are dependent on them - your own welfare in the final analysis?

This has nothing to do with "universal health care" anymore.

BA> This is why nearly all US consumer goods are not made in this country.

Because they can be made elsewhere more cheaply (which is not to say "with less
quality"), a feature of today's international world.

And before we get misty-eyed about the "unfair" competition to American
industry, we'd better consider how American companies operate overseas to sell
their products. Not one whit differently - and even with the help of the US
administration, which has for at least the last 8 years done its best to keep
the exchange rate of the US dollar low and thus gain a competitive advantage in
international markets. The Americans do the same as what they criticize in the
Chinese: keep their currency undervalued to make their prices expressed in
foreign currencies low and thus competitive. The only problem is that price is
not the only thing that counts: the quality must also be in line, and U.S. made
goods - except for electronics - don't have the best reputation in this
respect.

As for pharmaceuticals, the situation is similar - but not identical, since all
drugs sold in the States must be approved there and thus have the expense of
FDA testing and approval procedures. That's not to say that the same drugs sold
elsewhere without FDA approval, for example in the EU with approvals of the
health authorities there, are any less effective or safe - there merely have no
FDA approval and thus can't be sold in the States.

Take a look at the packages of perscription drugs sometime - the ones I get
here are often made outside Germany, and I presume that also goes for those
sold in the States. The main thing is that they are locally approved and
monitored.

Cheers, Bob

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