Text 14, 104 rader
Skriven 2009-09-12 06:54:16 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
     Kommentar till en text av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: (1/2) Down to the basics (was: Universal health insurance)
==================================================================
Replying to a message of Robert Bashe to Bob Ackley:

 RB> Bob Ackley wrote to Joe Delahaye on Thursday September 10 2009 at
 RB> 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
 JD>>> for your drugs are out of this world as all of the people trying to
 JD>>> come 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
 BA>> are allowed to charge.

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

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

They make up that profit *here*.  The bottom line is that in the pharmaceutical
industry the overwhelming majority of research done results in no marketable
product.  If those companies are prevented from recovering the cost of
unsuccessful
research in the products that they do manage to get to market then that
research
will stop.

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

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

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

As I said, when the companies can no longer recover the cost of their research
efforts, those efforts will stop.  Those who wish to control the pricing of
pharmaceuticals want to eliminate those 'profits' that fund that research.  The
unintended consequence of that action will be the cessation of research
efforts.

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

 RB> You seem overly pessimistic to me, and again, I wonder why you feel
 RB> the need to defend the profits of companies in which you presumably
 RB> have no financial interest - why identify with them instead of people
 RB> 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
 JD>>> same 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.

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

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

Because those 'profits' you hate so much provide the funding for the companies'
research efforts, most of which do not result in a marketable product.

And I wasn't specific to drugs or pharmaceuticals.  The problem is epidemic
in this country, and the (presumably unintended) consequence has been the
movement of manufacturing jobs out of the country.  Everybody is complaining
about the loss of jobs in this country, but they still drive down to the local
Wal-Mart or Costco (which stock no US made products other than detergents)
because of the low prices there.

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

Generics are available for most specialty drugs when the patent on a new drug
runs out.  And I have no problem with them.

<big snip>

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

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

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)