TrumpRx
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We’d have to shift the development burden more equally onto other developed countries. There’s a lot of way that could end up looking.
Drugs are priced ‘at what the
marketpolitical system will bear’. It would take some brow beating and some time to get Europe to pay more. It’s just as likely that we’d never get there and drug development would shift to China.Though AI could bring the costs down here at some point.
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I have a friend who was on some asthma medicine. It was a prescription in the US and cost about $5/pill (if I remember) for a daily pill. Not super duper expensive, but not super cheap either.
I could get it "over the counter" in Thailand for about 1/10 of the price. So, I used to bring some back when I would come back to the US.
(I would swallow it in plastic bags! LOL Just teasing)
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I would not expect a citizen of a country to happily accept that their tax dollars and their health insurance dollars should subsidize the rest of the world's health care. I would respect a political stance of breaking it, maybe at the cost of some research, in order to quickly reset the balance. Especially in the context of the issue having been widely understood for a very long time, with bipartisan frustration over it, and nobody doing anything about it.
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I have a friend who was on some asthma medicine. It was a prescription in the US and cost about $5/pill (if I remember) for a daily pill. Not super duper expensive, but not super cheap either.
I could get it "over the counter" in Thailand for about 1/10 of the price. So, I used to bring some back when I would come back to the US.
(I would swallow it in plastic bags! LOL Just teasing)
@taiwan_girl said in TrumpRx:
I have a friend who was on some asthma medicine. It was a prescription in the US and cost about $5/pill (if I remember) for a daily pill. Not super duper expensive, but not super cheap either.
I could get it "over the counter" in Thailand for about 1/10 of the price. So, I used to bring some back when I would come back to the US.
(I would swallow it in plastic bags! LOL Just teasing)
That’s unlikely to change directionally. A world where every country paid the same amount is a world with no drug development at all. You wouldn’t want, say, Somalia to set the ceiling for how much we’re allowed to value our lives and health.
If you don't take it, it can only good happen.
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@taiwan_girl said in TrumpRx:
I have a friend who was on some asthma medicine. It was a prescription in the US and cost about $5/pill (if I remember) for a daily pill. Not super duper expensive, but not super cheap either.
I could get it "over the counter" in Thailand for about 1/10 of the price. So, I used to bring some back when I would come back to the US.
(I would swallow it in plastic bags! LOL Just teasing)
That’s unlikely to change directionally. A world where every country paid the same amount is a world with no drug development at all. You wouldn’t want, say, Somalia to set the ceiling for how much we’re allowed to value our lives and health.
@taiwan_girl said in TrumpRx:
I have a friend who was on some asthma medicine. It was a prescription in the US and cost about $5/pill (if I remember) for a daily pill. Not super duper expensive, but not super cheap either.
I could get it "over the counter" in Thailand for about 1/10 of the price. So, I used to bring some back when I would come back to the US.
(I would swallow it in plastic bags! LOL Just teasing)
That’s unlikely to change directionally. A world where every country paid the same amount is a world with no drug development at all. You wouldn’t want, say, Somalia to set the ceiling for how much we’re allowed to value our lives and health.
The fact that another country's citizens couldn't pay market rate, would not destroy the domestic economic feasibility of the product.
Education is extremely important.
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I'm sure plenty of people have thought long and hard about this, and I haven't and won't, but it seems likely that the American pharm companies have found ways to exploit the uniquely complicated and opaque American health care system, such that they can charge more here rather than elsewhere. The framing of "Americans pay for R&D while the rest of the world pays for production" is probably just an accident of how the numbers fall out. Software might be a useful analogy where the cost to the company for unit 1 is nearly the entire cost, while the cost for units 2 through infinity is negligible. But Microsoft doesn't charge Americans huge amounts for software while charging Europeans a small fraction. Because that market is more recognizable as supply vs demand, while health care is anything but.
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As I said, in pharmaceuticals you charge what the political system will bear. Prior to Biden, it was illegal for Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies.
But yeah, of course that’s just how the numbers shake out (and it’s imprecise, the other developed countries do pay more than marginal cost). There was never an agreement or plan to charge the American consumer for development. Rather, development grew into the market opportunity surrounding it, with the US largely creating that opportunity.
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@taiwan_girl said in TrumpRx:
I have a friend who was on some asthma medicine. It was a prescription in the US and cost about $5/pill (if I remember) for a daily pill. Not super duper expensive, but not super cheap either.
I could get it "over the counter" in Thailand for about 1/10 of the price. So, I used to bring some back when I would come back to the US.
(I would swallow it in plastic bags! LOL Just teasing)
That’s unlikely to change directionally. A world where every country paid the same amount is a world with no drug development at all. You wouldn’t want, say, Somalia to set the ceiling for how much we’re allowed to value our lives and health.
The fact that another country's citizens couldn't pay market rate, would not destroy the domestic economic feasibility of the product.
The fact that another country's citizens couldn't pay market rate, would not destroy the domestic economic feasibility of the product.
My point was differential pricing is here to stay. The companies really do charge something like marginal cost to very poor countries.
The only way that would stop is if Trump considered that as the US getting ‘ripped off’ and disallowed companies to sell drugs in the US at prices higher than other countries (something he’s talked about). Realistically that would lead industry to more or less stop sales to very poor countries until a more humane administration took over.
